Grades, Submitted!

Wow.

I cannot believe I am officially finished teaching here at EMU. I just submitted my final grades and I have alot to reflect upon. Hopefully I can write this in an organized way that is not too rambly...

Surprises:

• I am really surprised by the quality of some of my students-especially in the night class. So many of them had such awesome stories to tell. One young woman gave this horrific account of her childhood in foster care while advocating for the betterment of the system.
  
• One of my students ,who I swear thought I was incompetent, wrote me this very kind letter thanking me for the great semester. She mostly talked about the enthusiasm I bring to the classroom. She wants to be a teacher too. It was really nice. One of the panels at Central States told me to save all these letters for when I go job hunting. Great advice!

New Year Resolutions:

• At Georgia, Organization is going to be the name of my game. Everything will be meticulously organized. If it kills me.
  
• Prepare my syllabus and assignment descriptions in advance so they only need minimal tweaking based on my classroom conditions.
• Be better at grading. I really took way too long this semester handing things back to students. There was really no need for this because I had plenty of time to do it.
  
• Organize all the hard documents I currently have into a binder.
• Organize all files by a recognizable name in a logical place.
• Read and take notes of all of Condit, Biesecker, Happe, & Stahl articles.
  

The end of an era is upon me. Nick, Katie, and I had a couple drinks in Royal Oak last night and I furiously tried to keep up with their grad school talk. Nick is likely going to be paid to blog about his grad school experience during the next school year. Maybe our blogs can link up and be doubly awesome. We are research buddies after all.

I am beginning to like this independence. Still want a dog, tho'.

Lily Allen's new album ROCKS.

This thesis must get done. NOW.

Quick Reference Entries

Of course, I've procrastinated all of my grading and I am scrambling at the last minute to finish:

1)My Thesis
2) 124 grading
3)Comm Theory work

Bleh. With all of this procrastinated grading, I'm seeing several key issues in my quick reference entries. I use the quick reference entries in order to ensure the students were making some sort of meaningful interaction with the textbook and considering it on a deeper level prior to coming to class. This idea all stemmed from my Public Discourse Analysis and Ethics classes as an undergrad. Michael used these with the text to force us to read. It worked nicely in this format:

I. Summarize a key concept from the chapter
II. Provide a concrete (NOT hypothetical) example of the concept in our society. (This can include personal examples)
III. Discuss the implications for society, public speaking, and yourself.

Stupid internet made me lose the rest of what I wrote, but it basically goes like this:

1) A 100-level class is obviously going to have less complexity in the concepts than a 400-level for majors only
2) On average, the students in the 100 level are not as developed as 400-level (with the exception of students who are awesome writers but want to die when it comes to public speaking).
3)The entries have come back to me not nearly as in-depth as I've wanted them to, and the conversation sparked from there hasn't been great.

I think I want to create a rubric for future Quick Reference Entries. More on that later!!

In 570, Michael suggested that we maybe take a couple concepts from the text and see how they work together successfully...this gives them a bit more structure and could prevent them from just turning to a stupid place in the chapter to write something out of context of everything else.

I'll give it a try-it requires more upfront work on my part, but hey...what kind of good stuff doesn't?

I also wonder how the quality of my work will change with different student demographics. EMU's diversity is one of the best things about the University, although we often get students unprepared for the college classroom because they are the first to attend college. I know Georgia is more difficult to be admitted to as an undergrad-so I wonder how that will affect the quality of the work I receive.

I wonder if I can raise my standards. I always think-however-in order to have high standards, you have to model appropriate behavior. That means, in order for me to increase the expectations, I'm actually going to have to return papers and speeches on a decent time frame.