Once again, inspiration is coming from Brene Brown’s wonderful website. I feel like every Friday I stop and think, Where on earth did the week go? And then the weekend zips by, I dive into a new week, and before I know it, Friday’s back. Realizing last night that there’s really only a little over a week left in the term was a shock. Luckily, I have made major headway on all three of my final papers, so I’m actually feeling fairly confident. <Knocking on wood>
So, this Friday…
I’m trusting my own voice and the knowledge that “academic writing” doesn’t have to mean impersonal writing; that there is room for the “I” as well.
I’m grateful for an upcoming beautiful weekend with my kids where we have nothing planned except playing outside.
I’m inspired by all the strong, smart, insightful women that I’ve met in my program thus far. [Not that there aren't men in the program too, I just have classes with almost all women.] They’ve challenged me to look at things in new ways, introduced me to new ideas, and have been a pleasure to get to know.
Perhaps I should have called this post “TGI-cheesy-F!” 
90% of the adults I’ve interviewed can recall a specific incident in school that was so shaming that it forever changed how they thought of themselves as learners.
Brené Brown, “I Thought It Was Just Me” read-along, pocast #1, around the 20 minute mark.
In one of my classes this term, there has been some tension around expectations. These tensions have bubbled to the surface in various ways, and last night–in the absence of the professor, but in the presence of his selected stand-in–we processed and discussed our (collective) concerns about the course. For two hours.
The biggest concern, well, the biggest one directly related to the course–was the syllabus. Strictly speaking, it not being clear enough. When you get a group full of former- and current-teachers in a room together and tell them that they are getting a grade at the end, well, they want clarity. They want rubrics. They want agendas. They want clearly listed readings and other assignments. As much as teachers live in ambiguity in their daily school lives, I have found that teachers as students are not very good with ambiguity. So, we you set up a class format that is a “seminar,” whatever that means to the different individuals involved, and the expectations are, shall we say, loosey-goosey, well, it takes a really good kind of chemistry to keep that group knitted together. And–and I suggested this last night–we really don’t seem to have that chemistry. I think–personally, I feel–that we found some of that connection last night that had been missing. Maybe it was solidarity in catharsis. Maybe it was being able to step out from under the pressure of the coursework. (books to read! papers to write! presentations to prep!)
All in all, it’s never boring…
Give control over to the students. It’s about herding cats–you want to keep them roughly in the same direction and keep them out of the trees.
Learner-centered theory and practice in distance education, Thomas M. Duffy & Jamie R. Kirkley
My lesson learned–or, lesson I felt deeply but found it clearly articulated by someone else (Karen Maezen Miller over at Cheerio Road)–this week is that multitasking does not help me get more things done. It helps me get more things started and left half-finished, like half-written emails in my drafts folder. Which, really, does no one any good.
And, just for a bit of springtime inspiration, I stumbled upon Warrior Girl’s fabulous paintings, and really took a shine to this one. It’s called “Flying Girl Learns to Let Go.”
I can hardly–in fact, I can’t at all–believe it’s April already. Not in the least because Turtle turns 4 this weekend, but also because there are only 4 weeks left in the semester. Which means I need to write an average of 18.5 pages a week, or 2.64 pages a day, for the next 4 weeks. I’m sure some of you out there are scoffing. That’s still less than 100 pages in the next month, that’s nothing! And I’m sure once I’m in my dissertation, it will seem like nothing. But when you only have maybe, MAYBE, 2 hours a night, and the lure of springtime weather on the weekends, well…it makes buckling down that much harder. Of course, we leave for Turkey the day after finals are due, for 3 whole weeks, so that looming vacation does make concentration even harder, when in between thoughts of CRT come, “Should I pack jeans? Or just all black–the better to coordinate anyway? Is it better to pack too much–we will, technically, have 8 checkable bags between the 4 of us–or too little, knowing that we’ll have to change plans with two toddlers and all our carry-ons in tow?” (I am imagining Istanbul on a par with New York or Paris in terms of beautiful people, and don’t want to be too much the laide americaine.)
Any thoughts? Three weeks in Istanbul, with a 4 year and and a 2 1/2 year old–what to do? What to see? Where to go? Where to buy loads of Turkish-English kids books (for all of us) and texts in English on education in Turkey/the region for me?
