timna

finish each day and finish this course

and do not ever, on a Friday afternoon, ask if there's something wrong with the discussion board since no one has posted since content went up on Thursday morning, and what you meant to ask is if there's a technical problem, not a moral complaint, since these folks will not see that you posted on Friday afternoon, but they'll be reading it on Saturday afternoon and get all huffy that there are no weekends off of this online class and what a rude and unreasonable teacher she is. and this is what they will carry with them, in their bellies, never mentioning it aloud, until they can get to the student evaluation forms.

the end.

(actually I still have 10 papers to grade).

dinner cruise on the river

for my 50th birthday party at the end of August -- I just made reservations for 25 people on a Saturday night dinner cruise. me! we've invited lots of people from out of town (and country) and they're coming!

we're also having a big picnic at a local lake the next day for all these folks and our local friends. almond joy is taking care of invitations.

getting hotel reservations, however, is pretty darn tricky with all the republicans in the neighborhood that weekend!

weeeeeeee!

if you teach online, esp in the summer...

do not tell students to feel free to stop by -- that means that the course is inadequately prepared, there should be no need for them to stop by. it does not indicate your willingness to come to campus to meet with someone who needs help.

do not have 8am deadlines -- that means students have to stay up all night.

do not  be so standoffish -- and I think that means don't answer 5 emails in 24 hours if you can't answer them with long, loving, caring sentences about the students' well-being. if you're going to be curt, better you should answer just once a day. I guess.

do not ask them to read criticism -- this ruins the text.

do not ask them to read the discussion board -- or if you must, don't set up arbitrary numbers of posts that must be read or posted. or if you must have these arbitrary numbers, learn to be flexible. and if you've already reduced the number required from 80% read to 50% read, c'mon, so what's the stick-up-your- --- about 45%. it's close enough.

do not ask them to work over the 4th of July weekend. and that's 4 days, not one.

do not ask them to read ahead if you see that the 4th of July weekend might be something they'd want to have some time off for; obviously, if you planned the course better, they would not have to read ahead.

do not expect them to give up some social time -- working full-time and taking a class (or two) should not involve all of the waking hours of the day.

don't take it so seriously. get a life.

(good thing I didn't mention being in Hawaii and Cincinnati during the course as somehow that would also have been held against me and not considered in the "get a life" column)!

when ben t plays baseball until 11pm, he can't find his wrestling shoes in the morning

that says it all, I think. the game went on forever (ok, started at 8:30pm after a downpour). battle of pitchers, no action in the outfield. they did win in the end. the very end. the bitter end.

of course, not enough sleep makes a timna family not so nice.

I thought I was going to write a final this morning, but after looking at what course files my students have (not) opened, I'm afraid this might come out a bit bitchy.

almond joy comes home today -- yea!

we start painting the living room tomorrow -- yea!

sitting in the sun should be making me happy, but I'm still grumpy. wonder where those wrestling shoes are, anyway.

why is it always overanalysis when it's about children's lit?

my students don't complain about the analysis that we do in contemporary world lit. is it different students (I'm inclined to think at least partly), or is it the material, or is it me?

since I'm in there on all the classes, I'm going to say it's not about me.

since the students revel in analysis in contemporary world lit, I'm going to suggest that it's partly the content and partly the self-select of the students.

analysis is what we do in literature. critical thought. about the text. I know you're all tired after 6 weeks of intense children's literature, but no, we are not overanalyzing it. if anything, I seriously think that children's lit is more in need of analysis, careful critical thinking, especially when it goes in so easily as some of the texts we're talking about. and then it's there: consumerism, materialism, syrupy happy endings, and it's a setup for dysfunctional lives ever after.

or, we can make choices, as adults, as the ones who buy and read the books to the children, yes, it's about our choices, our critical thought, our brains --- no it doesn't matter to me that children are not reading this in the texts. it's not about them reading and understanding it, it's about us as adults.

ok. I did not yell this at my class today. it's a good thing that I teach online. this anger on their part seems to come at this point every semester. somehow I've gotten the ws class to the points that I want them to understand without the kind of eruption that I always always get in the children's lit.

good thing it's over this week. now what do I do differently this fall?

that vacation got away

we did some biking up and down (mostly up, I'm convinced) along river banks. one of the bike routes looked like so much up and down that we just went into town and had coffee and walked up and down the river front.

went to fireworks in the next suburb over. parked far from the lake and walked down to front row seats. sometimes we're just lucky that way.

garden has tomatoes so far. and at least one rabbit trying to get in.

I miss almond joy -- she'll be home tomorrow. haven't seen her since I left for Hawaii.

one more quiz and a final to write. ok and essays to grade (but I gave them feedback on a first draft, so these should be ok). there are only 11 still turning papers in of the 20+ enrolled.

painting this week: the living room and the entrance. book club is meeting here in 2 weeks so I have a goal. maybe I'll even get a sofa. not much chance of putting in a wood floor by then. that's the plan for August.

we are enjoying the piano. I actually played with ben t. on the cello yesterday. he's got patience, that kid.

almond joy and CONA

just got a call from almond joy: they're done with the conference on national affairs in North Carolina. she spoke in the plenary in favor of adoption rights for gay couples.

they're leaving Gettysburg and going on to NYC for the weekend. what a trip! 25 high school kids on a big bus!

online summer class in children's lit

we had our new neighbors over for dinner last night out on the deck. another old friend, in town for the summer from Israel, came too.

one of the things we talked about was what would be in a condensed summer lit class. I told them that my students were reading one Little House on the Prairie book, Birchbark House, one article and one chapter from the text over this weekend. did that seem like a lot? well, summer classes are indeed condensed and full.

it's over next Friday. the course has been interesting. it's down to 11 students (from 24). relentless would be another word I'd use to describe it. one more quiz to write and I'll be ready to run it for fall.

reading my dissertation

the weirdest feeling -- corresponding with a grad student who is reading my diss.

she likes it!

I had to go back and look at it to see what she's finding there. I remember the relief of having all that information written down so I could forget it. ok, not push it out of my mind, but no longer had to worry that I was going to leave out something important. there are a whole lot of details that are helping her think about the manuscript that I worked on.

still, it's an odd sensation.

hours in the day

ben t. is pretty much overscheduled this summer. each individual activity would be fine on its own, but somehow his days got filled in to the point that I'm wondering how this might add up for fall.

he's taking summer gym from 7:30am until 10:30am M-F at the middle school. this is because kids who take a language and play music don't have enough class hours in the day during the regular school year.

then he goes over to the high school for weight training from 10:45 until noon, 4 days a week. could be for football, but he's mostly interested in doing it for wrestling. same coaches, though, so even the wrestling coaches say, oh, maybe sign up for football if only to stay in shape for wrestling. we'll see what he decides.

then at the high school he's got noon to 1:30 with the wrestling team, only twice a week. those days he comes home pretty tired. sometimes he plays his cello. sometimes not.

3-4 days a week he has a baseball game or practice at 5:30. sleeps well, the kid does.

I'm not worried about the summer. it looks like it's been good for him. however, the fall has classes (lots of honors classes) and if he adds football and say math club, I just don't see how he can do the regional orchestra one night a week, too. have to send in the registration and major payment in the next week or so.

he stresses when he doesn't have downtime, not to mention what happens when he doesn't get enough sleep. but do we say: you've got to choose?  he's pretty cautious. I don't know the answer.