Teaching Ain't Easy (or, Duh)

I think I've finally over-done it. I've bitten off more than I can chew. After a summer of fabulous productivity in the writing department, I'm spent. I know I wrote basically the same thing exactly a week ago, but it seems that Thursdays, I hit a wall. Or, more accurately, Wednesday I hit a wall, but habit dictates that I face this reality on Thursdays when I try to write my Thursday night post for Friday.

Teaching, it seems, it taking everything out of me. I'm completely redoing all three of my classes (for a total of five sections) to various degrees. My peer-driven classroom is mentally draining; the uncertainty of what is going to happen in every class is unnerving and stressful, I'm not going to lie. My other classes are using texts and techniques that are more traditional but unfamiliar to me. I'm re-learning how to teach.

But I also think that I have never had a clear picture about just how physically and mentally taxing teaching really is. When I was a PhD student, I was young, unattached, and only had one class to teach (at noon, no less). I started my first adjunct position (four sections) when I was pregnant, so if I was tired, I "blamed" it on the pregnancy. When I went back to the adjunct position after having the baby, I just assumed I was tired because I had a small baby who was still nursing and not sleeping through the night. And then, my tenure track job was an even split between being pregnant and having a newborn. 

And then last year, when I started teaching full time after a year off, I was also taking care of my son part-time, trading off with my husband. In other words, I've never been in a situation where teaching can and is the only source of my complete and utter exhaustion at the end of the day. But now, I think that I've been getting it all wrong; motherhood is easy, teaching is the hard part. 

This semester, I have no excuse for not being able to find some balance in my life. I know that one of the reasons my energy levels are down is because I'm not taking care of myself. Because the kids are back in school, I just assumed I'd be able to maintain my manic writing pace I set for myself over the summer. But, I apparently can't replace one set of kids with another with no impact. 

So, here's what I've decided: I'm reducing the number of weekly posts here from three to two. One on Sunday night for Monday, another on Wednesday night for Thursday. Mondays will still be about my peer-driven classroom, while Thursdays will be whatever catches my fancy. I'll still be doing my monthly posts for UVenus, as well as looking for other opportunities to guest-post (or even make some money!). And unless a call-for-submissions really catches my eye, I'm taking a break from academic writing, too. I mean, as soon as I get all of these essays I have left to write out of the way (seriously, there are two more). 

So thank you, loyal readers. My peer-driven class would not be nearly as successful as it has been if you had not been here for me, supporting me, offering advice, and just a sympathetic ear. I tell my students that this can have a ripple effect; I already know that I have inspired some of you to try this, and my students are also reaching out to their professors, introducing them to the idea that maybe they can handle having a voice their own educations. 

But, for tonight, I'm done. I'm going to bed.

Turning Group Work into Collaboration

I was desperate to find a way *not* to blog about some very real drama that is hitting one of my Peer-Driven Learning classes. It's amazing how one bad, poorly-prepared, attention-starved apple can spoil the whole bunch. And now the class has decided to break out into working groups, with the Bad Apple's group suffering from a horrible case of regression. Unlike the other groups, where learning and discussion is taking place at a fast and furious pace, this group's other members have regressed back into sullen, defensive silence, the kind that I'm met with in most ordinary classes when asked to participate or do anything at all. 

(I'll be writing more about what each of the classes is doing on Monday, as well as how tomorrow goes, trying to mitigate the damage.)

No, this post is going to be about turning group work, something most of our students see as a burden or tedious, into a collaborative unit, which most see as a positive force for good in the world. It's timely, as last week the #FYCchat was on exactly that, and much of what we talked about was how to create an environment conducive to collaboration, creation, and collective wisdom, instead of competitive units of who-did-more-than-whom. 

Coincidentally, last week's episode of Project Runway featured a perfect case study on how group work doesn't work and collaboration does. For those of you who don't know, Project Runway is the brainchild of former supermodel Heidi Klum. She pits a group of designers against each other in weekly clothes-making challenges, eliminating one a week until the next-big-thing in fashion is declared the winner. The challenges can be ridiculous (clothes made out of materials found at a pet store!), and the drama...Oh, the drama. Sleep deprivation and other physical hardships often push designers to the brink, and the contestants are fighting for their creative and professional life. 

Last week's episode, Off the Track, is no exception. If you don't have an extra hour or so to spare to watch the episode (which is what I linked to above), you can read a pretty good recap here. Unlike most weeks, where the designers work as individuals, in Off the Track the designers are forced into teams of three and then expected to create a three-outfit cohesive line. Two groups in particular dissolve into complete and total chaos. One group gets completely wrapped up in drama, and while the team member  (Bert) certainly deserved their ire, the other two forget to actually design clothes and the trouble-maker creates the "best" garment. The other group, equally drama-filled (Him: You're designs are dowdy. Her: TEARS), but the team leader sucked it up, said he was sorry, and she sucked it up and accepted it, they put their differences aside, ending up creating one of the winning dresses. 

(Personally, that dress is a big "Meh" for me, but compared to a lot of the other designs, it was the least offensive. I honestly think Heidi was rewarding the group that was able to work through, or at least get past, their differences.)

I really invite you to watch the full episode to see how the "group work" mentality can deteriorate and destroy the final product while trying to really collaborate can produce good results, in spite of conflict. The team that found a way to work together was rewarded. Another important lesson is that you can only control the work that you do within the collaborative setting. While certainly a trouble-maker who doesn't play well with others, Bert still remembers that the purpose of the challenge is to create good clothes; the other two didn't even seem to bother, focusing instead on complaining about how useless and difficult to work with Bert is. 

I don't know why this realization about Project Runway has eased my mind; I still have to teach tomorrow and I still have to deal with the Bad Apple group. But at least now I have an external example to think about and refer to in order to work through the issue. A few hours ago, I was despondent. Now, I'm hopeful. I need to get my students to become the successful collaborators, not the petty group workers. 

Eat your heart out, Heidi!

Peer-Driven Learning: Readjusting Expectations

Programming Note: I'll be taking a break from writing weekly Bad Female Academic posts, mostly because I don't have anything left to add. That's probably because I'm teaching again and am trying something completely new, trying to create a course based on peer-driven learning. So instead of Monday posts on gender in academia, you'll be treated to posts on my ongoing adventure in allowing my students to decide for themselves what we're going to learn and produce in our class.

Week one is over, and I'm staring down the reality of week two. Last week was hit and miss. The students seemed to really respond to Paulo Freire and the idea that there is, in fact, a different way to learn (well, lots of different ways to learn, but you get my drift). When I told them to pull out their cell phones and start texting their answers to question and that those answers would appear (anonymously) on the overhead, it was like I had just cured cancer. A teacher who was encouraging them to text, to use the technology that was most available to them and with which they were most familiar with? I blew their minds. 

Their blog posts (sorry, not public) on their initial reactions to the class and the readings were positive. One of my favorite quotes from a student was that they'd been trained to sit and not talk in class the same way a dog is trained not to pee on the rug. Another student also astutely observed that learning technology is only useful if it allows us to learn in new and different ways, instead of recreating more efficient versions of the banking concept. There seemed to be a consensus that the class was different, exciting, terrifying, would be a lot of work, but it was work they were willing to undertake because they "knew" (or at least claimed to know) that it would mean that they would learn more. Students were emailing me to ask about contract grading or if we could use tumblr instead of blackboard. I was psyched. 

Then came Friday. This, I said, is where the hard work begins. Now we have to start making some decisions and actually designing our course. What, I asked, do we need to decide? In my first class, there was silence. Absolute silence. I am proud to say that I waited it out, but it was painful. I have a number of students in the class whom I had last year, students who I know have something to say from reading their blogs, and yet, there was nothing. We finally got through a list, and their job over the weekend (I didn't want to call it homework) was to participate in a discussion (online) about each of the elements we need to decide on, offering ideas, brainstorming, and, you know, discussing. Communication, I reminded them, is a key element in making this class work.

My other class was better; I barely had time to get the question out of my mouth when a hand shot up and said: "Grading! How will we be graded?" We all laughed. This class had already proposed to break off into smaller groups, and each group would/should have a technologically savvy person in it to guide communication and innovation. They also want me to agree to learn something; one student offered to teach me how to weld. Another student asked if we were limited to our physical classroom in which to hold our meetings. We got threw the list and they, too, had the responsibility of discussing their preferences online so that next week, we can start narrowing our options and making choices. 

The discussion, thus far, at 9:30 PM on Sunday night, has been a relative failure. Very few students have even post or participated. I created an internal wiki to share other innovative class and project ideas, so they could be inspired (I know, make it all public! I'm working on it; most of this is really, really new to me, too). I'm not even sure anyone has looked at it. Most of the suggestions that were made were vague and not well articulated (We should read about Class, Poverty, and Wealth because it looks interesting). I was ready to throw in the towel, declare this whole experiment a failure when I took a step back and remembered that this is really, really new for them, too. No one has ever asked them their opinion on what they should learn or why they should be learning it. While I might have been completely exhilarated by the opportunity as an undergrad, I was a massive dork (still am, obviously). My students will need a little more patience and guidance before they believe that this is for real and that this can and will work. 

I also have to remember that I no longer run on a student's clock. Did I honestly expect an excited and intelligent exchange of ideas by 2 PM on Saturday afternoon, the first weekend of the school year? I did, and there is my problem. As the weekend has drawn on, the discussion has gotten more interesting, and more people have posted. I half-expect to wake up tomorrow morning and find that the whole class has been decided while I slept (not likely, but you get the idea). The whole idea of this class is to let the students run the show. Of course the students aren't going to work at the same times I would do my own work and preparation for the course. I need to readjust my expectations to meet their reality. My only fear is that they won't give themselves enough time to actually discuss; they will just post something and forget about it. 

Communication, true honest communication that represents an exchange of ideas, is something that is completely foreign to these students, both outside, but especially inside, the classroom. When I told them that I had commented on each of their blog posts, they stared at me in disbelief. It never occurred to them that one of the great strengths of social media and other technologies is to truly level the playing field between professor and student. I am just one voice in a sea of voices all sounding off on the issues in this course. The work that they produce isn't simply to earn a check mark or credit towards a letter grade at the end of the semester. We're all readjusting our expectations, and these things take time. 

Time, and patience. And, the strength not to lose faith at the first sign of trouble. 

Fall Burn Out: Uninspired Writing

I'm stuck. I don't have writer's block, but I am suffering from some pretty uninspiring writing. I volunteered to do a guest post on a pop-culture subject that I am (or at least I was) pretty excited about. And then, I sat down to write the thing. The words came, but once I got about three-quarters through, I stopped, re-read it, and hated it. It wasn't bad; it was coherent, followed the rules of standard written English, and communicated what I had intended it to say. But it was so...boring. 

I don't know what to do. It's due tomorrow and I want to send them something. But I also would like them to accept guest posts from me again in the future. Will a boring (seriously, this thing is so dry) post be worse than no post at all? Or, should I just chuck it, start again, and send off whatever I come up with (which, I have to admit, will have to be better than what I've already written). But what if it isn't? What if it's worse?

The timing of this guest post couldn't be worse. After a summer of writing, I am a week into classes starting, meaning I am absolutely exhausted. I had forgotten just how physically and mentally demanding teaching five classes (three preps) can be. Add to that the fact that I am trying to completely and radically reimagine one of my courses, well, it's not the best time for inspiring prose, even about a subject that I am excited to be writing about on a platform I am thrilled to be (potentially) a part of. 

This is rare for me, the inability to write and write halfway decently. This summer, starting in May, I've written 43 posts for this site, 11 posts for Chasing Laferrière, 5 University of Venus posts, 3 academic essays, 2 book proposals (one of them based off of my dissertation, one on my next project), and...I think that's it. This is the most writing I've done and longest sustained writing period I've had since I finished my dissertation days before my first-born showed up. So, maybe I should give myself a break if I'm a little burnt out. 

I have one more day this week of my peer-driven classes, and perhaps after I get that done, I'll be able to take a deep breath and try to write this piece again. But, I don't think I'll be doing much writing this fall (save for here and for UVenus). And, you know what? I'm really, really ok with that. I think I've earned a little break.