timna

49er

Yes, indeed. I'm celebrating today!

Those at home wished me well. The garden gave me many tomatoes. I'm terrified about the new class I'm teaching at 3pm. mr t returned after leaving for work bringing croissants and orange juice for a breakfast on a sunny deck.

We'd had dinner out last night sort of spontaneously while ben t. was at football practice and almond joy was swimming. she swang by and joined us for awhile and then took off for her next stop.

Lots of adjusting to do as our world shifts. My goal is to be more in contact with friends and consider a bit more community? That and find something that gives me pleasure as I exercise.

Cheers!

sorting hat

have to run to an early morning class (how did I schedule night class Tues before 7:45 W?) but a short comment on the children's lit. lost 1/3 of the students at the break. ok, I definitely let them know early that there would be lots of reading and writing in this class, and I'm not sorry about that. but I think I overkilled on covering the first 4 chapters via powerpoints. not my strong point. usually there's a whole lot more more discussion.

I did a lot with ABC books after the break, including 50 years of ILL books that were amazing. Our new equipment allows me to show books and documents on the overhead and zoom into the details. Dr. Seuss from the 1950s in a book called On Beyond Zebra!  about not stopping at the letter Z.

Just sad that I'm feeling not very compelling in the lecturing. On the other hand, I'd really rather that the ones who are surprised or not interested in extensive reading and writing, leave now and not moan throughout. And there is quite a bit of reading of history and criticism in addition to the fun children's books.

first day of school

one student couldn't find us. she was looking all over the website, online, for a f2f (blended) class. I told her the classroom number and that we'll be there again Wed.

one student emailed me with a name I don't recognize. no idea what class the student is in. not into checking 1115 115 new names to see what this yahoo address might resemble. I took the opportunity to address her/him as "dear student". I suggested a more useful subject line than "question". it's only the first day and the snark is showing.

one student stopped by and asked how I was doing? one student (who failed the summer comp) also stopped to talk to me. one student from last year asked if I was using the common book in the contemp world lit course?

a few students have emailed me about not being able to get to campus this week. I emailed them the syllabi. why do we start way before the kids go back to school? mine are ok at home, but our students have small children without daycare or school for the next 10 days.

my last guest speaker is lined up and I'm thrilled. 4 of the 16 children's lit meetings will have other folks telling about their expertise. it's going to be a good class.

a mostly good day

It's late now, but the syllabus is taking shape and I think that I'll finish it tomorrow.  It's got the "Crux Busters" from Quod She and Rob Barrett that have been in the back of my mind for awhile. I think I even have a logical format for putting it about half online and half in the classroom. We'll see.

Today started with not waking up in time to wake almond joy for swimming. She needs a better alarm clock. Even if it doesn't come with hugs. Wait, no alarm clocks with hugs unless it's me or her dad. At least not yet.

Then ben t. and I went to weight watchers - since he's a lifetime member and wants to get back to goal for wrestling - he's more into this than I am. However, my doctor said get back there and take it off again - that same 10% that I lost last year and it's back again since I stopped going. OK. I guess he's right. just so much resistance. maybe the Dec trip to Israel will help me visualize a really good reason to get going on this. maybe getting back to yoga or softball would be helpful, too.

I still wasn't ready for the day so I found the paper and Sensational Designs and went back to bed. It's really nice to be thinking about something for my class and remember where I read that and find it on my shelf and for it to actually be in the book. This should happen more often.  As compelling as that was, I fell asleep for two more hours, waking up at a better hour of 11:30am.

The boys went out biking and came back after a collision. Many bruises and battered bike. Helmets are good.

Almond Joy and I went downtown to her work neighborhood for a very big sale in a very small store -- I must really be glad to see her to go not only downtown, but to shop for clothes? At 90% off, she did find some pretty good clothes for fall. However, the gold dress, even if it was a great deal and looked stunning on my baby, still came out too expensive. (the 10% was over $150...). not today.

Then we went to her favorite lunch place -- hard to picture the girls having a downtown lunch place, but there it was. patio and all. Yesterday they did a presentation at a very large chemical company and she still wonders if they've done well. I tried to convince her that the place they were interning wouldn't take them out on the road if their work wasn't compelling. Yea!

home again. ate more tomatoes from the garden. still no squash - that seems to be the sacrifice to the rabbits if they leave the rest alone. we have beautiful yellow flowers and then it's as though they've been clipped off instead of leading to little squash.

and the rest of the day I've been plugging texts into grids for a syllabus. 

having the books in my grubby hands

One book still not here and school starts on Monday.

Around 1pm I'm talking to the nice Norton sales rep and asking just for a copy of the table of contents with pagination. That would help me immensely this weekend to figure out the final syllabus.

She said that someone at the college signed for the missing textbook this morning at 10:30. It's here! It's here. Somewhere. And so is the weekend. And I must leave soon to take ben t. to his cello lesson. So I check the mailroom in the dept (it was close by). Then the closest mail distribution place. Then I call the other campus. And drive over there on my way home. Find that it's not there, but maybe it's still in the loading dock? Deep in the warehouse, the person asked which company it was coming from and pulled it precisely out of a pretty big stack. Asked my name, and yup, it was my book!

I was pretty pleased.

It's a good book. This class is cooking slowly, but I think it's going to be ok. The books should be in the bookstore in a week or so. I can work with that.

Shabbat shalom!

she's been driving a week

but she still wants a big, get-in-my-bed-with-me hug in the mornings when I wake her up.

so far, it's much easier all around to have her drive herself to swim practice and weight-lifting and school registration. the parties, you know, I think it's better for her to be in control of when she leaves rather than asking other folks for rides. she's still driving alone, though she did take her brother to a friend's house yesterday after mr. t. said ok.

she's a good driver. I'm not sure I like the idea of driving to school when there's a school bus option, but the school bus doesn't cover daily swim practice at a different location, so it's not really helpful.

you're doing great, almond joy! (oh, and she's in the boring subaru, not the rav4).

incoherent: blended courses

we have the options of teaching fully online or not using the online interface at all and there's a middle option that is now called "blended." this middle option allows for seat release at the discretion of the teacher. the students have no idea what to expect because the range could be 10% face-to-face and 90% online (and, indeed, that's what it sounds like when they are registering: "online, limited seat-time") or the opposite or literally anything in between.

I'm getting emails from students who are not expecting to meet, in a class that I'm preparing as fully on-the-ground except for quizzes and an online gradebook. there's going to be lots of frustration for everyone.

why do I want all of my courses to be " blended"? for some unclear reason, in order to teach online, at this point, we have to teach 2 semesters f-2-f and then a blended course. blended is so different from online that this routing makes no sense to me. and it's totally confusing to the students. seems like an uneccessary hoop for teachers who have the mechanics of online figured out.

finally, our department is now being called on the carpet because people who are teaching blended courses are not required to have a writing center component in their classes, and now it seems that blended courses are becoming very popular. this is not very well thought out policy at the moment.

I know this is not very coherent. I am working on syllabi. I am exhausted. So, maybe I'm not coherent...

found again

went into work early this morning hoping that I hadn't taken the usb memory drive home. and there it was indeed. didn't help last night to read the "lost in a flash" at inside higher ed...

back to work. right after I save on the server.

studying together

great seminars today on the common book. more tomorrow.

I'm really pleased to find that the 9/11 commission report has a graphic novel version. this will work so well in the comp class when we read "we have some planes" in the regular text and then in the transition to Persepolis, I'll bring in the 9/11 graphic version. it's stunning in how different it feels.

one set of syllabi printed. the online class got email welcome letters today and the first set of material is open for them to browse.

3 of the 4 guest lecturers set up for the children's lit class!

finally, a really funny blog about the college has come to light. hope there will be more commentaries. one of the sarcastic entries is about our publicity blitz about being flexible for busy people. this version: "you're busy, we're easy" or how even if you have 2 full-time jobs and 3 kids and a major medical condition, you too, can get a college degree because we'll do everything to help you. reminds me of how they promised us everything in our semester abroad; just that somebody should have figured out that there are only x-number of hours in the week in Israel, too.

missing the usb drive

here's hoping that it's in my office even though I remember pulling it out of the computer there. if I'd have started working before 10pm at home I probably would have run over to see if it's on my desk there.

too much recent work there not saved elsewhere. two classes syllabi posted, two only on that stupid drive. all the work for my dean there. usually it's connected to my keys.

argh.