Here I Go Again

It's that time of year again - all the job postings come out. I'm torn. I love my part-time life: lots of time with my little one and some teaching. On the other hand I tend to go a little stir crazy and still have those big career goals in the back of my mind. Applying is certainly no guarantee though and so I'm back at it. One application got mailed last Wednesday and a second application will be completed within a week or so. The waiting begins again and to be honest, this time around I'm truly not sure whether or not I want to be offered a job. My plan is just to take it one day at a time and trust that if I'm offered a job that was what was meant to be just as it will be the right thing if I'm not offered a job.

Evaluations

It's summer and so I don't have too much going on in the teaching arena. I was offered a course but I turned it down since I didn't think it would be fair to the students for me to teach one half of the course and then have to disappear to have a baby. And so I find myself with 3.5 months to do not very much related to school. One thing that does happen during the off time though is that friendly little e-mail from the department secretary with a summary of my evaluations attached.

Evaluations are a weird thing. First, 95% of the form consists of questions followed by a 1-5 scale. The students are asked to rate me on that scale without explanation. The ones who did well in the course give 4s and 5s, the ones who did poorly give 1s. I take this part of the evaluations with a grain of salt.

I am most interested in the part of the evaluations where the students actually have to write out what they liked and didn't like (should they so choose). I must say that I'm always pleasantly surprised at how many students actually write something - I know when I was in college I rarely took the time. Before giving out the forms I do give a tiny little speech about how I know there's a tendency to focus on the bad during evaluations but that I appreciate knowing what was bad AND good and that it takes both for me to improve in subsequent semesters. The students seem to take this to heart and I really do get a decent range of feedback.

Things students tend to like about my classes: I put everything on Blackboard, I'm organized, I'll help through e-mail or in person just about any time outside of class, I know what I'm talking about, I explain well.

Things students tend to not like about my classes: subject matter is a little dry, they want a little less lecture, I'm not enthusiastic, I rely on the Powerpoint too much/I put too little on the Powerpoint.

It's never easy to read/hear criticisms, but my goal is to get better and so I take them seriously. I do, however, wish I could sit the students down one more time after hearing the complaints and let them know a few things that make ensuring their complete happiness so difficult. First - dry subject matter - it's Biology, I happen to love it, but I can't force everyone to love it and it is a dense subject matter. I do everything I can to make it interesting including as much time in class as I can possible afford (leading into point 2 - less lecture) that is devoted to working together or doing labs rather than listening to me. What they don't know is that I have state-mandated guidelines as to what I must cover - and sometimes that is at the expense of some hands on experience. Not ideal, but true. Third - my enthusiasm - this one bothers me a lot and what makes it worse is that I know it's true. Ask anyone who knows me......I'm not an outwardly emotional person, not at all. My mannerisms/facial expressions/tone of voice when I'm happy are pretty much the same as when I'm sad, angry, super excited etc. It's part of my personality, but I know that my course would be more interesting if I could figure out how to sound as excited about science on the outside as I really am on the inside......working on that one. The last point is also a difficult one - I could put everything the students need to know on Powerpoint slides so that they could use all their energy listening to and understanding the concepts rather than wasting time taking notes - but then I'd be told that I just read off slides. I could put much less on Powerpoint slides than I do forcing the students to take copious notes while listening - but then I'd be told that I go way too fast. What I try to do is aim for the middle - they have to take some notes, but hopefully not every single word that comes out of my mouth. Of course even aiming for the middle ground doesn't make everyone happy.

And then there are the reviews that make me laugh. This semester my favorite comment was "I don't like the tests. I thought they were quite difficult and some questions were extra difficult because of my lack of knowledge."

Will I be changing my tests anytime soon? Let's put it this way - most students in my class want to go on into nursing or a surgical tech program. My tests have to be hard enough so that I can sleep at night knowing that the students I pass might be the nurses I encounter in a few weeks when I go to the hospital to deliver my baby. So no, I won't be making my tests any easier any time soon.

How Good Am I?

There are times when the instructor is just as nervous about the outcome of a test or a lab as the students are. Why? Seeing how well students did on these graded items is how instructors can tell how well they did conveying the material to their students.

I'm in one of those nervous periods right now. In my Microbiology course we've spent the semester doing a variety of labs which are designed to help someone determine which microbe they might be dealing with. Of course as we did the "warm-up" labs the students were given known microbes and knew what the correct answers were supposed to be. After each lab the students gave me lab reports in which they were supposed to tell me what the results were and whether or not these results agreed with what they knew about the bacteria.

Sounds simple, but in reality getting my students to see the connection between the tests they were doing and what's already know about the bacteria they were using was anything but. I tried many different techniques to help their understanding. I would go over the how and the why of each lab as we started them. I would go over what I wanted to see in the lab reports each week. I would write constructive comments as I graded the labs. Many of the students began to improve, but unfortunately there were/are quite a few of them who never quite grasped the why of these experiments.

About halfway through the semester I let them know about the final lab that they would have this semester - the dreaded "unknown lab." This is the monster of all microbiology labs. It's the lab in which the students have to take everything they've done in labs up to that point and put it all to use......on their own. I explained to them that during the final classes of the semester I would give them each a tube full of some, unknown bacteria. They would have all the media and reagents they needed at their disposal and they would be responsible for performing whatever tests they deemed necessary to tell me the identity of their unknown bacteria. They would have 3 lab periods in which to do this and (the scariest rule of all) they could not ask me or their classmates for any help whatsoever - their "only" guides would be their lab manual, the textbook, the lab handouts and the internet. At this point they all started taking lab seriously, but I could tell that there was still some difficulty in translating what we were doing on a week-to-week basis into what they'd be expected to do at the end of the semester.

I gave them hints and study guides right up until two days ago when the lab started. We're now on day 2 of 3 of the unknown lab and I'm terrified of the results. I know that some of my students will have done fabulously on this lab and I also know that while some won't get the right answer (I know which bacteria each student has) they will have gotten the wrong answer in a thoughtful and logical manner - meaning they understood, but went slightly astray somewhere. Sadly, I know that some will be completely off base and I feel like that is completely a reflection on my effectiveness during the semester.

Only one more week of suspense before I get these lab reports handed in and I get to see how well they did. Until then I'll be keeping my fingers crossed........

A New Adventure

As this semester wraps up, schools are already looking ahead to the fall. I have been hired back at my original technical college for my 3rd semester of General Biology and I'm waiting to hear which class I will get at my newer school. I'm looking forward to not feeling quite so "brand new" at this whole process, but at the same time, returning to teaching in the fall comes with some anticipation for me.

Between now and the beginning of the new semester I will be giving birth to our daughter. So, while I won't be new at the teaching thing anymore I will certainly still be new to the mother thing by the time I go back to school and I will be new to the figuring out how to do it all thing. In fact, I will only be about 4 weeks into the whole parenting part of my life (due date: July 22 - return to work: August 25 ) and so the beginning of the semester promises to be a little bit rocky.

Obviously there will be some adjustments. Currently I grade exams and have the grades posted within about 4-6 hours of the students having taken the exam. I think a 2 day turn-around time might be a more reasonable expectation come this fall. Also, while I do the bulk of my work on the weekend, I do save a significant portion for the day before the class. That's not going to work very well either since I will no longer have those days all to myself. Of course next semester won't be my first time anymore, so the amount of work I need to do for each class will be reasonable.

So, while I still look forward to a full time job at some point in the future I have to say that working part-time in the mornings and then spending the rest of my days at home doing work/taking care of the baby/taking care of the house (not in that order) doesn't sound like such a bad situation to me. I'm looking forward to the challenges ahead.

The Most "Wonderful" Time of the Year?

It's that time again. No, I'm not stringing Christmas lights and putting up the tree. Instead, I'm updating the CV, rewording the teaching statement and bracing myself for another round of applying for full time jobs - or job, at the moment.

About a month ago a job announcement appeared on the website of the institution that I went to the final round with last year. It's a little bit different this time. Last year the position was just an instructor position - teaching only, no committees, no lab, no advisees. Not quite what I wanted, but if it would get me in the door then I was ok with it. This year it's the perfect job - tenure track, assistant professor - this would come complete with teaching AND lab duties as well as the more political aspects of the job (advising and being on university committees - painful, but helpful on the CV).

My husband laughed when I told him the job was posted and for 1 entire second I thought about not applying. And then realized that I absolutely had to apply. If their time frame is anything like last year, then I would hear something in the next week or so - good or bad. We'll see. At the very least, if I don't get the job this year then it won't be nearly as upsetting as last year since I know I've got 2 part-time jobs waiting for me in the fall.

Here we go again...........

How Old Are We?

This time I refer not to students, but instructors.

This semester I am enrolled in a Teaching Methods course. This is a 10-week, on-line course and it will extend my technical college teaching certification for 2 more years (I'll be good through 2014). It only requires 4-5 hours of time a week, and because it's on-line, that time is at our pace, at our convenience. Sunday marks the beginning of each new week and we're given new learning and assessment activities. By Wednesday night at midnight we have to post these on our on-line interface. We then have until the following Sunday to participate in discussion about each other's activities. It's not too difficult and I have gotten some good ideas so far.

This week I posted my 4 page Word document regarding my classroom management strategies on Tuesday - I usually aim for Tuesday to give myself that one day buffer should something unforeseen occur. Today I was browsing the other posts to find ones I wanted to comment on and happened to look at my own - which had no comments yet. Instead of copying and pasting my document, I uploaded it as a link. I clicked on the link and to my horror found that it didn't work and just lead the clicker to an error page. S--t.

I quickly went to my Word document and fixed the problem by copying and pasting the paper and reposting. I wrote to my instructor and told her that I fully understood that this would be considered a late assignment, but did just want to let her know that I had fixed the issue if she wanted to look at my work.

None of this is what upsets me the most.

When you click on someone's post there's this little bar that shows you the view count. It give you an overall number of views and lets you know how many of those are your own. My post had a view count of 39 - 4 of which were mine. That meant that between Tuesday and today 35 people (or some combination of people adding up to 35) had viewed my post. That means that 35 times people saw that I had a non-functional link. Number of people who replied to my post to let me know that I had a non-functional link - ZERO. Come on people.

I forgive the instructor for this - she's the instructor and if one of her students was an idiot this week, it's not her job to save me. I do not forgive the other people taking this course for this. We're all instructors - we all know what it's like to teach and be taught. Not to mention the fact that it would take about 2 seconds to reply to my post and let me know.

Why would someone not take that time? I'm really struggling to understand. Did they also take the typical instructor point of view and figure that it was my problem to know whether or not my link worked (not necessarily wrong, but we're all in this together)? Did something like this happen to them, they weren't warned and so they are bitter and won't help others out anymore (because I'm going to be in this category from now on, believe me)? Is this schadenfreude - where they saw that I would get a lesser grade this week and that somehow made them feel better about how they did on their assignment?

Here's hoping that I don't fail this course by the one point I would have gotten by getting this assignment in on time......

Every Grade is a Fight

I find myself dealing with a new personality this semester - the student who will fight over every single point on every single graded item.

Of course students always check their grades and over last semester and what has gone by of this one I've gotten a few questions here and there but for the most part students accept their grades and move on.

In my new course though, I have one student who is now consistently raising some kind of issue with virtually every graded thing we have done. This began a few weeks ago just a couple of days prior to the first exam. She wrote frantically to me on Sunday (the exam was Thursday) and explained that she had to be at her son's school that Thursday morning at 9AM (I give exams from 8-9). What could I do for her? I reminded her of the policy that I will be happy to let each student take a late exam once with no penalty so this was not really a big deal. I also reminded her that of the 3 hours that make up class, exams will only ever take up the first hour, so if she really had to have an appointment on an exam day making if for after 9 would be fine. Of course it's not ideal to miss lecture/lab, but easier to deal with than an missed exam. We discussed when she would take the make-up and I thought that was that.

Not exactly. Over that week I got several e-mails from her suggesting that this exam should not count as her make-up exam. Her reasoning? Her excuse was really good (this was true, on the grand scale of excuses). I don't think she made up her reason for not making it to the exam, but as I explained to her when I said that yes, this really is your make-up exam, I refuse to be the judge of what is a "good" excuse and what is a "bad" excuse. I cannot allow some students to have 2 make-ups and others only one. Happily, she did seem to understand this and we've moved on......for now.....there are 5 more exams to go this semester.

One effect of her missing that class was that she also missed a lab. She was able to make that up during the following class as well and while most people needed to have their reports in last Thursday, hers would be due on Tuesday. This Tuesday came and went and I didn't have the lab report. What I did have though was an e-mail telling me that she was trying to finish the next report (which again, she was passing in a day later than everyone else) but I hadn't graded the last one and so she was going to wait until she saw how she did before passing this next one in. What? I didn't have the report - or so I thought. Turns out that she just handed it in with all the new ones passed in by everyone else. I had zero time this week to look at those so her late report just stayed with the pile and I had no idea it was there. We've fixed this problem - I asked her just to mention to me from now on when something late is coming in so this doesn't happen again. But I'm not sure I'm enjoying her flexible relationship with due dates - and the fact that in her mind she seems to find it justified since it was "my fault."

Next issue - on Tuesday the students took a lab quiz, very short, very simple, grade out of 6. Yesterday she asked if I had her quiz - I didn't. Did I have a blank copy - I did. She proceeds to go over the answers with me and she knew them all. Great. Then she starts with the "so I don't understand why I got 2 wrong on Tuesday." I told her I would take a look at her quiz when I got home. By the time I was at the house I already had an e-mail from her telling me to not forget to check the quiz - this is going to get old, fast. I did and found that she had swapped two answers around. I'm sure she knew the answers, but we all make mistakes like that which is what I told her when I e-mailed back. I also reminded her that there would be 2 lab quiz grades dropped so she shouldn't worry too much. Imagine my joy when I got the e-mail back that said "I don't know about that quiz. I knew all the answers." So now I have to take her quiz back in next week to prove to her that SHE got things wrong and that I'M not out to get her or unable to read.

We have about 7 lab quizzes, 8 lab reports, 5 exams, 1 research paper, 2 spelling quizzes and a couple of other random graded things left this semester. I'm not sure I can make it if there's going to be a fight over everything. But I will look upon this as a good experience. Every new personality I have to deal with just makes me a better teacher. I hope.