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.

Excuses, Excuses

Yes, I'm back to the excuses thing. I had a mini-episode last week when I got this barrage of absences complete with all the requisite excuses from both of my classes. Some of them were absolutely legitimate. For example, we got a huge snow storm last Tuesday and most school districts were closed. Mine, however were not so while we had class, things like day cares were closed leaving the working/going to school moms a little bit up the creek. I get that and I sympathize.

Then I had a few like "I worked later than I thought last night and I'm too tired to come in." And my personal favorite was a kid telling me that his Dad who was in Japan at the time of the snow storm had told his son (my student) not to drive to class on Wednesday morning because of the snow (a - you're in Japan - what do you know about road conditions here? and b - THERE WAS NO SNOW ON WEDNESDAY). I had one woman bring me a doctor's note telling me that she was sick all week and couldn't study for the exam (she's in her 40s).

And so this all added up to my husband and mother both having to listen to me rant about the craziness of excuses.

But here's the thing (to steal a phrase from my husband) - last semester I would have bent over backwards to help these people make up their work and labs and quizzes. I was writing out my own lecture notes for people and posting them on-line. I was waiving late penalties. I really didn't want people to do badly in my course.

I STILL don't want people to do badly in my course, but this semester something has changed. I simply don't care what the excuse is, legitimate or not, if you missed work I'm not going out of my way to help you and that's it. You signed up for the 8AM class. You scheduled an appointment for an exam period. You didn't check Blackboard until 9PM the night before the exam.

I don't want to sound mean and horrible. I'm not, in fact I'll still bend over backwards to help you.......but only if you were trying to help yourself first. Otherwise I'm not so much assisting you through the course as much as I am carrying you through the course and that's not in the job description.

Part-Time Job Number 2

Things never happen in a nice neat way and that's kind of the story behind my new part-time job.

This all started in early January. I was at school for a meeting with the other instructors who would be teaching Biology with me this semester and one of the FT instructors told me about some PT Anatomy & Physiology positions at another nearby technical college that needed to be filled ASAP (this was two weeks before the semester started). Now, A&P certainly isn't my forte, but I know enough that I could get through a course and I figured I had nothing to lose and I applied. I wasn't incredibly surprised when I heard nothing and a week into the semester I assumed they weren't interested.

Flash forward to Sunday, January 31st. I checked my e-mail around 11AM and found an e-mail in my inbox with the heading "URGENT." It was from the associated dean at the other technical college (from now on, my original school will be TC and the new one is NTC) saying that they still needed an A&P instructor, the course would meet 3 times a week for 3 hours each and let her know right away if I could do it. I debated for about 20 minutes. When I applied to teach an A&P position, I really didn't think I'd get it - and so I was now faced with having to teach students this subject that I wasn't that comfortable with. Also, NTC is actually in downtown of the city we live near and would be about a 45 min drive each way. Of course, more teaching experience is never a thing to turn down and the extra 9 hours of pay a week (I get paid by the hour, not a flat rate for a course, but that actually works in my favor) wasn't something to laugh at. I wrote back and said I'd do it. Five minutes later the associate dean called.

She began my thanking me, then explaining a little bit about the course and then started mentioning how, after looking through my CV thought I might be more suited to teach a Microbiology course. True, but what does that have to do with filling an A&P spot? Turns out that through a series of unfortunate events they also had a Microbiology course that was in need of an instructor. We agreed that that was the best route for me and so I was hired around 1PM on Sunday. My first class was going to be Tuesday at 8AM - and the course had been going on since January 25. So not only was I walking into my first week AMAZINGLY unprepared, but I was walking into a class mid-semester.

I went to NTC on Monday to meet everyone and get the paperwork started. That night I was up until midnight cramming Microbiology notes into my head. Tuesday wasn't the best lecture I've ever given, but I must say that the students were incredibly patient with the fact that I had just been hired. That whole week was rough - I didn't have keys to any rooms, I didn't have a copy code, and most importantly, I didn't have access to the NTC intranet - no e-mail, no Blackboard, which was a huge problem. I made it though and this week has been far more successful. I can post my lectures on Blackboard, I can contact my students and post their grades. Overall, everyone involved is much happier.

I'm incredibly busy right now, but I'm thrilled to be working more. I finally feel like I'm contributing again and I like not having a lot of time where I wonder what I should be doing. All I need now is one more PT job and I'll basically be working full time. All the baby steps in the right direction will get me where I want to be someday soon

Stuff my students tell me

I'm not sure if it's something about me in particular, or just that I'm an instructor in general, but I know way more about my students than I should. I mean I know about bouts with cancer, deceased spouses, issues with kids, issues with husbands, accidents, surgeries - you name it, they've told me about it. And that's fine, in fact, I'm flattered (at times) with how comfortable my students seem to be with me.

And then there's the stuff that I know because it's popped up in e-mails explaining why someone missed a class. The excuse. I hate "the excuse." I realize stuff happens - that's fine - but it's difficult to gauge whether the excuse is truth, fiction or somewhere in between. How am I supposed to mark someone's homework down because it was late when "I had a family emergency (complete with gory details)" is the excuse? I actually tend to believe that one - as long as there's only one family emergency, when one's grandmother dies 3 times I get suspicious. On the other hand, when you tell me you were sick, I hardly ever believe that one (I'm horrible, I know). That's amplified if you tell me you were sick on an exam day.

But today I got the mother of all excuses.

Backstory - I have 2 students who haven't showed up for any of the 4 classes so far this semester. At 3 I can drop them, but I e-mail after 2 and drop after 4. I haven't heard from one and next on the to-do list is to drop him from the roster. But I did get an e-mail from the other one this morning......

And the reason she hasn't been to class yet went something like this.......my best friend was murdered (add way more detail here, including the victim's name).

Yikes. What do I do with that?

First, I went to the local news website - and sure enough - the story checks out. Yikes again.

She went on to tell me that she's ready for something to take her mind off the sorrow and that she'll do whatever I want to catch up in class and will I give her a chance. So, I'm giving her a chance - she's behind and it's not going to be fun or easy, but if she's serious it'll work out fine.

I, on the other hand, am pretty scared. I'm happy to help someone catch up with school work and I can answer biology questions with the best of them - but I don't know how to deal with shock, depression or angst all that well and I hope that a minimal amount of that will creep into my dealings with this student.

Never saw this one coming - but I guess that's what makes it interesting.

8 AM

I think I'm figuring out what the issue with the 8AM crowd is going to be. I mentioned that they seemed like a nicer group than last semester and I'm sticking with that. I do have two boys who are starting to whisper when I'm talking - so if I hear that tomorrow I'll be putting an end to it. Other than that - really they're pretty tame. I will chalk this up to the fact that they're really not all that awake for an 8AM class.

What I am seeing though, is a huge trend of lateness and as of yesterday, just absences in general. Yesterday I had 6 missing (that's 1/3 of my class). For them what does that mean? Homework that is considered late (at a penalty of 10% off of their grade), a missed quiz, missed next assignments (which means they run the risk of having late homework again) and a missed lab (so writing up that lab report will be kind of difficult). And those are just the grade-related things they missed. My class is 2.5 hours long. A missed class means a lot of missed lecture. I suspect the gravity of missing an entire class won't quite hit them until after the first exam when they do poorly on the sections I covered when they weren't there.......

Missing a class is just bizarre to me. I remember having serious panic attacks at the thought of not being able to go to a class based on how far behind I would feel and I have a hard time relating to people who (apparently) don't have as much of a reaction to skipping a class.

I realize that of my 6 yesterday, some of them were truly sick. But I also suspect that some of them didn't love the idea of getting going for an 8AM Monday class. Well, guess what? I don't love to get going for the 8AM Monday class either - but I'm there because it's my responsibility. Issues with an early class? Don't sign up for that time. Seems simple to me - but maybe I'm just mean.

Comparisons

Two classes of the new semester are done. On Monday I left the class feeling like this was a much better group than I had last semester. I sort of chalked it up to the fact that this group had signed up for an 8AM class - last semester I taught at 3PM. If they're willing to get up that early for class, they must be serious, right?

Well, maybe not. My mother is the one (they always know best, don't they? - it also helps that mine taught at a the college level for many years) who politely suggested that maybe the group seemed better because my confidence going into class on Monday was light years ahead of my confidence last semester. True statement. I had zero nerves going into class on Monday - I had added significantly to my syllabus based on the experience of last semester. I felt ready to deal with the situations and personalities of this semester.

Monday's lecture was an improvement on last semester too. The first couple of chapters last semester were given pre-deciding to handle my Powerpoint presentations differently. For this semester I've gone through those first few chapters and turned them into they types of lectures I was giving by the end of last semester. I was more comfortable with this lecture and I think that also helped me on Monday. In fact, I had a student stop by after class and tell me that she had tried to take the class last semester but had to drop out because she hated the instructor's style. She told me that she loved the way I presented the material and was happy she had signed up for the class again. That sort of made up for the girl who told me I was horrible at teaching after the first class last semester.

Of course there will be those who don't put in effort and there will be those who get upset when we get into serious stuff - like exams - and grades, but overall I feel much better about class this time around.

On a slightly unrelated note - it was truly strange for me to see a new group on Monday. I was so used to my students from last semester that through much of the class I would look out and see, not the new faces, but the ones who used to occupy those seats. I wouldn't go so far as to say I missed my former students, but I supposed I hadn't realized how comfortable we get with a certain group of people.

Time Flies

I meant to blog more last semester, really, but things - aka, life - happened. Teaching took A LOT of time. More than I expected. So.....when I wasn't actually in front of the class I was correcting homework or quizzes, I was writing exams, re-working Powerpoints, writing out notes or coming up with hands-on activities that would make things easier for the students. When I wasn't doing any of that I was trying to keep the house clean and occasionally spending a few minutes with the husband. Needless to say, when I had a few moments, one of the last things I wanted to do was write about my class. And so the blog suffered.

On top of the busy schedule, there was another reason I let the blog suffer. There were lots of interesting things that happened throughout the semester, but whenever I would think about the subsequent blog I could never quite find a comfortable place between giving you all the vaguest blog posts and sharing too much about my students who are completely unaware that I have this outlet of communication.

I hope that with the start of the new semester I can correct both of these issues. First, since I spent so much time last semester getting my lectures to a good place my class-to-class work load will be significantly reduced. I hope to use at least some of that time to blog - maybe with more time to think I will be able to tell you about some of the events that take place during class in a manner that is both informative/entertaining while still being respectful to my students.

That being said, I have one week until this new semester begins. I guess it's probably time to update my syllabus.......