Milestones

Today I had my 2nd portfolio evaluation. In my program, students all prepare an electronic portfolio [mine is here] to track their growth and development. We must each pass three portfolio meetings with our advising committee, and demonstrate that we are making progress towards a dissertation. This whole process is a really wonderful way of both marking progress and forcing us to stop and think both reflectively and analytically about our goals and research interests. It is, essentially, what we do instead of comps, comprehensive exams, that are still prevalent in some disciplines. That is an over-simplification, though, as both the process of preparing the portfolio and the periodic evaluations, are far more than mere assessment–the growth is largely in the doing.

As a result of working on my own portfolio, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to incorporate the use of non-test based assessment and evaluation in my classes. This summer I experimented with having two classes keep a writing portfolio. At the midterm and end of the courses, the students looked over their portfolios and answered questions about how they had improved in their writing, and set goals for themselves moving forward. I’m somewhat lukewarm on the results. Some of the students really got into it, and showed that they were able to really reflect on their writing; others simply mirrored the comments that I had given them on their essays. And then there were the students who hadn’t turned in any work at the midterm–or even the end of the class–and of course it was quite difficult for them to reflect on evidence that simply wasn’t there. I haven’t had a chance to really think about the whole experiment and how I could have scaffolded the activity better or more clearly modeled what I was hoping they would do with their portfolio reflections.

I am not using portfolios this semester, mostly because I didn’t want to continue with it without taking time to reflect on what worked and what didn’t, and to make improvements. I might return to it with the graduate classes I teach; I think perhaps that trying to learn to critically reflect, and to articulate those reflections, is a lot to ask of students who are also English language learners, unless I am able to figure out how to better prepare and support them through the task.

Getting old…

You know you are getting old when…

1. Your skin-care products are the same ones your mother has.

2. You can’t figure out how to answer your own mobile phone.

3. You walk around campus and see students wearing trends you wore as a kid. Whoever brought off-the-shoulder sweatshirts and leggings BACK?

4. You realize you are closer to having a teenager than to being one yourself. Much, much closer.

5. You hear loud music and think, “crazy kids…”

6. People call you “ma’am.” Not just the kids. Everyone.

7. Your kids say things like, “MOM, let me show you how…”

8. You tell a story about your school experiences, and it hits you that grew up without cell phones, blogs, Facebook, Google, reality TV…or pretty much anything computer-like except those electronic “word processors” and an Atari. (Pong!)

My life right now

From: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com

And, yes, I note the irony of simply posting someone else’s super-cute picture rather than writing a post of my own, when the post is about “stuff I have to do.”

100-iversary!

Logging on this morning for a quick little update–along the “we’re busy! semester’s almost over! busybusybusy!” line–I realized that this, right here, is my 100th post. I started over 2 years ago with this birthday post, and so I guess that averages around a post every week and a half? Eh, math, whatever. I do know that I clipped along at a pretty good pace until last spring, coinciding with starting school.

Since starting to write here, as opposed to the previous couple years here, it’s been a busy couple years…

• ~200 pages written (that’s in the neighbourhood of 50’000 words)
• 405 hours in class
• 20 (academic) books & ~250 journal articles read

And, I’m not quite half-way through! Um, coursework. Not even thinking about how long the dissertation might take. Although, I did secure 2 of 3 committee members this week, with a strong possibility for the third, so that’s a big step in the right direction.

But, there more to life than school! Although my husband might just give me a look if he read that (and perhaps a sardonic snort). So, in other listyness…

• Changed jobs twice
• Had hand, foot & mouth disease, bronchitis, (probably) H1N1 flu, assorted colds
• Travelled to Florida, New York, Turkey (haha, oh the jet-set life)

Hmm. When I started that list, I thought that it would be a fun way to sum up my 100 posts. But, none of the day-to-day is captured (well, except maybe the pages read and written). Even if I had “hours spent prepping lessons” or “mornings I was woken up at 5am” (answer to both: A LOT), those numbers wouldn’t really convey the important parts. The snuggling with the babies in the pre-dawn dark, as they crawl in our bed to kiss and cajole me awake. The struggle to make lesson planning more deliberate, more focused, more connected, and the reality that–some days–I change what I’m doing 5 minutes before class starts because the photocopy machine isn’t working, or my internet links aren’t loading properly.

I was reading an article last night written by a woman I once had the pleasure of working with, and she wrote:

Wisdom–like philosophy–is found in the interaction between a person, her developmental complexity, and the demands and supports of his society. It is not enough for a person alone to embody wisdom. Instead, she needs to offer wisdom in a way that can be seen and understood by others. The context of what kind of wisdom is needed in a particular situation is likely as great an influence as the actual wise one himself.

I certainly wouldn’t say that I am “wise” just yet; what I understand from this is that the maxim “context is everything” is true for great questions, like what is wisdom, and for small ones as well. New jobs and books read and other milestones mean nothing without the context of a life–and I am so lucky that mine is a rich, rich life. One that I am struggling to construct–and to deserve.

Half-way done…

Well, it’s November already, and I don’t know where September and October went! Oh wait, let’s see…

• Quit my (full-time) job to teach (part-time) and be a Graduate Research Assistant (part-time). So now I’m teaching 16 hrs a week and GRAing 20 hrs a week
• Started tutoring international students in English (writing, mostly, with some speaking practice). Also started facilitating an English conversation group.
• Taking 9 credits of courses.

Unsurprisingly, that’s where the past two months has gone. Getting back into teaching–I’m now teaching English to undergrad international students–has been a huge challenge. I have 4 classes, each meet twice a week for 1h40m, and the amount of prep I have to do is just crazy. I’ve been pretty consistently getting up at 5 or 5:30 every morning, finalizing prep for that day. The weekend after I gave midterms I spent probably 12 hours grading. And I still feel like, to really be the best teacher I could be, I should be better-prepared and planned out. But, when there aren’t enough hours in the day…

Luckily, the GRA work is really going well, and is both entirely flexible, intellectually stimulating, and has the added benefit of overlapping in content with some of my courses, so that the research I do for one benefits the other.

And, the courses. I’m really enjoying all three, and feel like I’m doing a decent job of keeping up with the reading and the work. I did decide not to take the instructional design class, thank goodness. I have comparative international ed, research on teacher ed, and a research methods class. After this term, I should have just 4 more semesters of coursework, including the summer, so that should put me at starting my dissertation in summer 2011.

Next term I’m dropping 2 of my ESL classes that I teach, to pick up teaching one of the graduate-level classes in the TESOL certificate program, which is for international graduate students who want to learn how to be ESL teachers and then go back to their country to teach English. It will be a seminar on intercultural communication. That I have to develop over winter break. Luckily I have almost a month off, because the list of work to do during the break is adding up…

August, die she must

From April, Come She Will.

I’m a little bummed today. Although I still have a week before classes start, and two weeks before Turtle and Bug head off to school, summer feels well and truly over.

[Yes! Bug is going to school! I can't believe it either. Only 2 days a week, mornings, and it's a co-op. But, school! She's excited, but I'm worried she thinks that she gets to go to school with Turtle...she will not be pleased when she realizes that isn't the case.]

I am self-medicating with a big ol’ piece of chocolate cake. Not surprising, it’s not really making me feel better.

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On the way to work this morning, I heard the “Toes in the Water” song by the Zac Brown Band on the radio. It has quite a catchy tune, but when I started listening to the lyrics, I was more than a little disappointed:

Adios and vaya con dios/ A long way from GA
Yeah, and all the muchachas they call me “big poppa” when I throw / Pesos their way
Adios and vaya con dios / A long way from GA
Hey boss do me a favor and pass me the Jaeger / I’ll grab my guitar and play

Adios and vaya con dios / Going home now to stay
The senoritas don’t care-o when there’s no dinero / I got no money to stay
Adios and vaya con dios / Going home now to stay

Why is it entertainment to throw a little zenophobia and misogynism into a song? Why didn’t anyone involved with the production of the song–from the writers all the way to the record executives who approved it to the radio DJs playing it–stop for a moment and think, “Gee, this is really reinforcing some pretty negative stereotypes right here. Maybe we shouldn’t be involved in it or play it on our station.”

Granted, there are doubtless many, many worse songs out there in terms of pandering to really hateful stereotypes. My guess is that the majority just happen to be on stations I don’t much listen to, so they haven’t come to my attention lately. It’s just getting a little frustrating to have all the radio stations I do like to listen to playing music that I wouldn’t want to have to explain to my kids. Much less have to worry about the thousands of subtle ways that stereotypes about different groups of people are inculcated in their minds.

I *really* don’t want the only station I can safely have on be the Christian station.

Minimum Wage

If an adult making minimum wage and working 40 hours per week can’t earn enough money to keep her family out of poverty, what does “minimum wage” even mean?

Path, Diverged

This one time is time enough only to stay planted for a life time OR to wander around and end up in paradise.

Although I might disagree with “this one time” being truly our only one chance at life on earth, I was really stuck by this line, written by an old acquaintance, comparing her life living abroad to her father’s living in one town for much of his life. I grew up somewhat wander-y, and am surprised to realize that I’ve been living in the same place–not house, but general location–for seven years now. Very surprised. Of course a lot of stability-engendering things (grad school, kids, home-buying) have happened in those seven years. With having kids, I have thought a lot about how I wanted ours to grow up. I’ve always had a this romantic notion that I wanted my kids to grow up in one house, that we’d chart their growth with pencil marks on a door jamb, that summers would be full of cookouts with the neighbors, and that the kids would have wonderful, lifelong friends living only blocks away. A few weeks ago, our neighbors across the street moved away. It made me realize that they were the only family in the neighborhood that we ever spoke to, and that it had been nearly a year since we had them over. I’ve not once marked up a door jamb with a height line. And in our neighborhood, even if we were to stay here, enough people will be moving in and out that it’s pretty unlikely that our kids will have “lifelong friends” from the area.

The other event that has had me questioning my romantic notions of home and roots is our trip to Turkey. My husband’s family has roots, and even more than roots, branches. They are connected and interwoven among the generations and siblings and cousins in a way that I never have been. And while it does require a shift in thinking about how loyalities and alliances and space/time planning should go–it is much simpler to think about these things in relation to a nuclear family of 4 than in relation to a family as large as ours–I wouldn’t trade our large family for anything. They are the ones we will have cookouts with. They are the lifelong friends for my children.

So, this summer I have really been questioning the whys of living where we are. Although I love our house, love that we (in large part) built it with our own hands, that we picked the bathroom tile, designed the floor plan, painted, put up curtains, and (now!) have planted a garden–and in many ways it would break my heart to leave this house we have worked so hard to make a home, in the end “home” will come with us wherever we go. And I can always pick out new tile, and see it as a good thing, to be able to reinvent our conception of home and how we breathe life into that idea and flesh it out into walls and floors and paint colors.

Chaaaaanging…

Settled in the new office space now. Not entirely a fan. I’d evidently gotten used to working alone, because suddenly having all these people around, asking questions, wanting to chat, YELLING THINGS AT EACH OTHER DOWN THE HALLWAY, well…let’s just say that it’s a little freakin’ annoying disconcerting.

Goals for August:

• Finalize program plan.
• Select program committee.
• Prepare for first portfolio review.
• Submit Hugely revise and then submit paper on borderlands to a journal.
• Hugely pare down massive amounts of stuff in the house. Yard sale? Probably will just end up at Goodwill. It’s just not worth the little money we could get selling stuff; hopefully we will get some good karma from donating anyway.

A (Different) Good Argument for Universal Health Care

One of the smartest (education-related) reasons for supporting universal health care coverage came from Dean Dad’s recent post:

My proposal for long-term prosperity: combine an educated population with national health insurance (since going without health insurance is a colossal barrier to starting a new business) and a focus on providing the kinds of public goods that lead to all manner of positive externalities – basic research, mass transit, that sort of thing. If that sounds a bit Scandinavian, well, Norway and Sweden aren’t doing too badly these days. Iceland followed our model instead, and effectively collapsed. In places with plenty of smart people running around, where the cost of failure isn’t so awful, it’s not shocking that Nokias and Ericssons pop up. Here, we get Wal-Mart. We can train people to work at Wal-Mart, and there may be times when that’s the least-bad short-term option. But it’s not the same thing.

I thought this was interesting; I hadn’t thought about the implications of universal access to health care for people who stay in their jobs because of the benefits, such as health insurance, who might prefer to go out on their own and do something different. As the bringing-home-the-benefits spouse, I personally would love to have health care for my family that wasn’t tied to my job. Then maybe grad students like me wouldn’t need to work full-time on top of going to school full-time; or at least we’d have the option of taking a GRAship and maybe a little teaching on the side to make it through school.