Sabbatical

I miss my students and yet a break from teaching is exactly what I needed.  I have had several experiences with former students this semester that have caused me to reflect on my teaching style.  If truth be told I am too laid back. I routinely say to my students "just because I am nice does not mean that I am stupid."  After some reflection I have changed my mind.  I am stupid.  By effecting a laid back persona in the classroom I have led students to belief that I am a push over and that they can skate through my classes without much effort.

I want to commit to more rigorous student standards when I return to teaching next semester.  I know that motivated students will always learn a lot in my classes but I want to challenge those who are less motivated to up their game.

New Year's Resolutions

I took a break from blogging over the holidays, but I am back now and ready for a new semester (well, ready to blog about a new semester, but NOT actually ready for a new semester).

Right now I am teaching during my university's January term.  I was advised against doing such a thing before I was tenured, but I was never in the financial position to pass up the opportunity to teach in January and in the summer.  Even though I am tenured now (and promoted with the attached raise in salary) I still find that I can't pass up the extra income.

I am experimenting with yet another organizational strategy to help me be a better teacher.  I am creating a gmail address for each of my classes and then using it to conduct all of my correspondence with the students in that class.  I am hoping that it will help me keep things organized AND provide my students with electronic access to the syllabus and other course related documents.  There is a course-related software called Blackboard that my university uses, but I don't particularly like it.  I will see how it goes.

My initial experience is that I am having difficulty managing the several gmail accounts that I now have.  I am working my my new Chromebook and it requires me to sign out of all my gmail accounts before I can access the google drive for the gmail address for the course.

I am curious about what experience readers have with course software (both as professors and as students). Do you see any problems with my plan for using separate gmail addresses for each course?

Finals continued . . .

So, here is what I did.  I made an announcement that the purpose of the grade-sheets were to double-check to see if I had made any errors, not an opportunity for them to correct any of their errors (such as not coming to class or not turning in papers on time).  I am pretty sure that I was pretty loud when I was saying it too.  Being loud was not planned.  I was trying to get their attention when several side conversations were going on, AND I think I got caught up in the moment.

If it is not yet obvious, I will just tell you that what I struggle with most as a teacher is being "too nice."  I really want my students to feel comfortable in the classroom and to feel comfortable in approaching me for help.  These are good goals, however; sometimes this combined with my general tendency toward conflict avoidance, lead to me being  perceived by students (and my colleagues) as a push-over.  I continue to try to improve in this area.

So here is a question for you:

Is it better to be "tough" in the beginning of the semester and then loosen up as the semester progresses OR to take the opposite approach?

Finals

So, it's finals and the tensions are running high.  Students are under an extreme amount of stress and so are professors.  One of those professors is me.  Yesterday, during the exam time for one of my classes, that does not have a final, students were giving presentations.  While the first group was preparing to start I handed out grade-sheets.  BIG MISTAKE.  I think that I was just so proud that I had caught up on all of my grading for that class that I felt the need to show off my (although less than timely) organization. REMEMBER: grade-sheets on the day of the final when there is no time for the student to do anything about it is a BAD idea.  As I began to notice the faces of some of the students filling with panic, I came up with a plan to avoid an onslaught of begging, crying students descending upon me after the presentations were over ...

Welcome to the Professor Diaries!

So, I have been grading papers non-stop for several weeks now (it is the end of the semester!) and I decided that I really need an outlet to share some of the lessons I  have learned since I became a professor about a decade or so ago.

My intended audience is other professors, as well as my students (and anybody else who might want to follow me). I plan to share amusing anecdotes, the occasional rant, as well as useful information about how to improve

writing, be a better student, and other stuff like that.

I hope to have guest bloggers that are professors, teachers, professional writers, as well as students.  The whole purpose is to have some fun while also helping me get into a regular (ideally daily!) writing routine.  I invite your feedback and suggestions AND I ask you to be kind to me because I am sure that I will make grammatical errors, post things that later I will regret, and generally make mistakes as HUMANS are prone to do.

So here it goes!