Blasts from the Past

As I gather a stronger following, I want to share with readers some of the posts I am most proud of from the "early" days of my blog (before I was posting at University of Venus, before Blogger began keeping stats for me).

"If Not the University, Where?" A very early post where I am still trying to figure out where I belong, if not teaching at a university. There has been much talk (most recently a hysterical video) about how students shouldn't even bother getting a PhD in English/Humanities. I may have chosen my path naively, but looking back, even on the worst days, I can't imagine doing anything else.

"A Women's Work in Higher Ed" and "Higher Ed's Missing Women" Where I examine the effects of an entire generation of women who are off the tenure-track and thus excluded from the ranks of leaders in higher education, essentially silencing their voices in the quest to shape the university in the 21st Century.

"Loyalty or Desperation?" When we are off the tenure-track, at what point does our loyalty to an institution become a form of desperation? One of my first University of Venus posts.

"Who Will be our Future Teachers?" With the continued vilification of teachers in the media and much of the education reform debate (most recently with New York publishing the value-added scores of teachers), I wonder who is going to become the next generation(s) of K-12 teachers? I think one can start asking, too, who will be our future university professors, as well.

"The Resilency of Trees" Possibly the post I am most proud of, if only because the image has stuck with me throughout the past eight months. For any of us who are going out on a limb for what we believe in, this is for you.

Thanks everyone for your support, your feedback, and thanks for reading.

Good Web Week for Me!

I've been featured over on EDleadernews.com in their Higher Education section. To quote my brief introduction (that I had no hand in writing):

It isn’t very often that you stumble upon an academic writer whose style captivates wildly and whose content informs greatly.  Such is the case with Lee Skallerup of collegereadywriting.

I'm very flattered, obviously. My recent post over on The University of Venus, "The Tenure-Track Position: No Longer the Brass Ring," has generated quite a lot of interest. Paired with "How Higher Ed Makes Most Things Meaningless," I seem to have become a sort of role model, at least according to Jo Van Every, a career coach who works with people in higher education.* My career trajectory seems to prove her point that doing what you are passionate about pays off. 

You can bet I'm going to be blogging about that one.

I teach, I write, I blog, I learn. And I am humbled. Thanks everyone for your continuing support.

*At the request of Sean Cook, founder of Higheredcareercoach.com, I have changed the wording of Jo Van Every's job description. 

The Personal Is Political - Please Vote

We are well into the political season, gearing up to vote in a short number of days. By now, we are exhausted and probably disgusted by the negative ads and vacuous campaign rhetoric. No matter the collective cynicism we hold now for politics and politicians, please remember to vote. I can’t, and each election cycle that passes me by reminds me of how much I value the opportunity.

My first opportunity to vote was in the 1995 Quebec Referendum. I had just turned 18 that summer. Obviously, I was on the “No” side, the side that was not in favor of Quebec separating. I say obviously for a few reasons. The most important was that my mother’s family is from the same small Quebec town as the then-Prime Minister, Jean Chretien. My great-grandmother taught him English. My grandfather employed some of his younger sibling in his store. He was a hometown hero for our family, and thus there was never any question as to which way I would vote when the time came.

I was at the Unity Rally in downtown Montreal with tens of thousands of other Canadians who had come to show Quebec that they were loved. Three days later, on October 30, we voted. We watched all night as the numbers fluctuated between “Yes” and “No” being in the lead. In the end, Quebec remained a part of Canada by the slimmest of margins, a couple of thousand votes. Voter turnout was over 90%. Our votes, my vote, had clearly made a difference.

I was naïve then. The Unity Rally was a huge point of contention, with major corporations basically giving plane, train, and bus tickets away so people would attend. A large number of ballots in certain ridings were deemed spoiled, ridings where the “No” side was in the lead. Jean Chretien was implicated in what became known as the Sponsorship Scandal, directing huge amounts of Federal money to his supporters and inner-circle members, in the name of unity. Some in the rest of Canada were fed up with Quebec monopolizing federal politics and opposition parties from the Western provinces began to gain real strength; in 1997, the Reform Party became the Official Opposition in Parliament.

The real eye-opening experience for me, however, came a year later when I left to attend a French university in Quebec. Most of my classmates were “sovereignists,” or in favor of Quebec’s independence from Canada. Politics is as much about vilifying the opposing side, and while we were all burnt out from the previous year’s battle and avoided politics as much as possible, it was important that we met, became friends, and earned each other’s respect.  I’ll admit that I had never met and gotten to know a “real” separatist, while many of them told me that I was the first English person they had ever really known. Gradually, the certainty of my “No” vote wasn’t as easy as it had once been.

None of this shook my belief in democracy. Nor did living in California whose state government has lurched to a standstill, unable to pass a budget. I had the privilege of working at an HBCU when President Obama was elected and saw the same feeling of pride and wonder on these young students’ faces, many of whom had voted for the first time. I saw a little of myself in them. It broke my heart to hear so many of them discouraged and disillusioned less than a year after the historic event.

The cynicism and “dirty” politics we witness today is not a reason to give up on democracy and voting, but a reason to invest more fully in the process. I wish I had known more than the simple rhetoric of separatist politics, or been able to see the larger implications of the debate. As a professor, I believe it is part of my job to teach critical thinking, civility, and tolerance to my students, to try and inoculate them against a debilitating feeling of futility. My idealism was shattered; in its place, I rebuilt something much more meaningful and valuable.

I just can’t do anything about it.  Go out and vote.

The Truth About Grading

I finally handed back all of the papers I had today. Last week, it was my developmental writers. This week, it's my more advanced 200-level writers. They're all decent writers, so grading becomes less about correcting grammar and more about how they fulfill the requirements of the specific essay assignment. This is much more art than science.

The students had to chose a piece of rhetoric (speech, op-ed, or advertisement) and break down the rhetorical "tricks" the author/speaker/creator used. They were limited to using the six essays we had discussed in class about rhetoric. I had approved their selected piece, seen an outline, and given feedback on their introductions. We had done a number of peer review and self-assessment exercises in class. The peer review questions addressed the exact questions I would be asking when grading, as well as the self-assessment exercise. I felt confident that if the students attended class and took the exercises seriously, they would produce decent essays. 

I was partially right. I neglected to include an assignment checklist, which I give to my developmental writers, wrongly assuming that the 200-level students didn't need one. Essays are like a house of cards; take away one of the fundamental pieces, and the whole thing collapses. But how badly did it collapse? Was the roof missing or was it just a mess of cards? And what corresponding grade accompanies each unique deficiency?

Take the following example: I have one student whom I particularly get along with. We both lived in Southern California, and he's tracked me down after class to talk about living in a place so completely different from the one where we currently find ourselves. He comes to class, does all the work, and does it well. He chose a particularly challenging piece of visual rhetoric: an illustration used pre-American Revolution that was intended to garner support for taking up arms against the British. We talked about how it would be a challenging, but possibly rewarding project. 

The end result was well-written and thorough, but poorly organized and neglected to refer to any of the rhetorical tricks we had discussed and they were required to use. So what grade does that earn? Complicating matter is that I like the kid and I know that he has worked hard on the paper. If I give him a C, am I being too harsh, but if I don't, am I being too generous? It's hard to compare the papers because each paper did different things well and poorly. If I didn't know who this student was, what grade would I give the paper? 

I don't know. I can never know, really. Built into my writing classes are lots of opportunities for feedback directly from me, meaning that submitting papers anonymously is practically impossible. Getting to know my students is my way of a) remembering who they are and b) knowing how best to give them feedback. I might not have the time or freedom to personalize how I deliver the courses I teach, but I do have complete power over how and what I say to my students to help them become better writers. The only way that works is if I get to know them as much as I get to know their writing. 

You could argue that I took the easy way out of the problem; I decided that each student would have an opportunity to revise and resubmit their essays for a new grade. I knew that the aforementioned student would be troubled by the grade that I gave him (he was) and would come to talk to me (he did) with the aim of rewriting and improving what he had done. I knew that all of the students who had worked hard but produced flawed papers would come and see me in order to be able to resubmit their revised papers. I also knew that a poor grade would serve as a wake-up call for the students who weren't taking me seriously yet. 

Grading is, indeed, an art, but one I take very seriously. The feedback I give to justify that grade is as much an art and no less important. If getting to know my students makes the former job more difficult, so be it. The latter is more meaningful in the long run.