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kyrasantae
Week 7
Day 12
Yawn. Saw the teacher walking the other way on my way to the coffee shop again. I was wearing my toque, all bundled up (because it was cold), so at least she didn't recognize me this time.
Another reading about racism and representing/incorporating Aboriginal cultures in the classroom. Teacher, for some reason, brought back the discussion questions we didn't get to in the previous lecture as well as added new ones for today. She split the class into several groups, each tasked with one or two questions, and gave them a sheet of chart paper and "five minutes", which was really 10 minutes. While other groups got some substantial discussion questions (like "What strategies can schools use to prevent bullying?"), my group got "What did you learn from this reading? What ideas were thought-provoking?" (or something like that) and "Do you agree or disagree with the authors and why?"
And then we were rushed for time to share our responses with the class.
Day 13
I was up rather late last night to work on my reflection paper. I guess I didn't really need to be up so late as it was actually a bit difficult to cut the essay short and not ramble too much -- though I was really really reluctant to really do this "making connections" to the readings because every context is different. Appeals can be made for "connections" to broader parts of the theses of these readings (which, as scholarly research, are too often specific to a particular context), but it feels forced to cite articles in a reflective essay as though it were a research article.1
By the time I got tired of staring at my essay, it was almost 3:30 AM and I slapped the most boring title page ever on it and printed it off. Left the pile of pages on my desk, set my alarm, and went to bed. I wanted to do a little bit of skimming over stuff for the exam in another of my classes, but was just way too tired for that.
The next thing I knew, I woke up and it was 8:15 AM. OH CRAP! FAILCLASS STARTED FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO!! I rolled out of bed, got dressed (my flatmate was in the washroom brushing her teeth, slowing me down a bit), snatched my essay and plunked a staple through it, and walked briskly to class (couldn't run; everything's icy from the snow this week). On the way there I noticed that I'd stapled the thing upside down and stopped by the library to put one in the correct corner.
I'm thankful for living on campus because it only took me five minutes to get to the classroom (I time this by whatever song I'm listening to on my iPod). I rolled in just as the first student presentation was wrapping up. (Someone else came in later still.) Before commencing the second presentation, the teacher wanted to give us a couple of questions for group discussion, but YET AGAIN messed up the projector and ended up reading the questions to us. After we shared our opinions with the rest of the class, the projector was working and she pulled up a few slides on Bourdieu's ideas of field and habitus and their importance in his theory of social reproduction (neither of which I recall seeing in my readings) and breezed through them. I managed to scratch a few notes in my notebook with my pencil (pen would have been too slow).
The second presentation was on the queer school experience, presented by a queer classmate. I think it was a very effective presentation because she did not speak from the slides at all and put in some of her personal experiences. Unfortunately she was pressed for time and couldn't go into all of the detail that she had wanted.
Nor did we have time for the questions my teacher wanted to discuss on this topic. She didn't explicitly mention it, but she said "we'll have discussion on this next class," which is the signal phrase for everyone being kind of clueless because it'll be out of place within the topics for next class.
I hadn't read either of the articles for this class (hey, they were long and I have enough going on already) so I was a little bit in the dark about things, but what was more unfortunate was what I had missed in the first 25 minutes of class: apparently our teacher had given out half-sheets of paper to the students in the first five minutes and asked them to make some comments on how she was teaching.
I think that the two classmates who normally sit on either side of me, if nobody else, would have represented my opinions on my behalf. Content is interesting, we're engaged when our classmates are presenting, but time management needs a lot of work. Post notes online, or even if not full notes, at least post outlines and student presentation notes promptly (there hasn't been anything posted since last Thursday. Seems like she updates once every weekend or something like that).
Heck, you know what, if nothing else from the teacher is posted, I'd most like to see the discussion questions posted. Because these questions shouldn't just be talked about during class, they should be questions for students to "take home" and think about, in light of ideas shared by other students or throughout the course. We can't do that if we can't refer back to the questions. It's also good study material for essay exams.
_________
1 I think I had better luck with this in Into the Mirror because I was looking for articles to substantiate my specific experiences, rather than looking for experiences to relate to a choice from a specific set of articles. Even then, the references were very nominal, almost like dropped names.
Day 12
Yawn. Saw the teacher walking the other way on my way to the coffee shop again. I was wearing my toque, all bundled up (because it was cold), so at least she didn't recognize me this time.
Another reading about racism and representing/incorporating Aboriginal cultures in the classroom. Teacher, for some reason, brought back the discussion questions we didn't get to in the previous lecture as well as added new ones for today. She split the class into several groups, each tasked with one or two questions, and gave them a sheet of chart paper and "five minutes", which was really 10 minutes. While other groups got some substantial discussion questions (like "What strategies can schools use to prevent bullying?"), my group got "What did you learn from this reading? What ideas were thought-provoking?" (or something like that) and "Do you agree or disagree with the authors and why?"
And then we were rushed for time to share our responses with the class.
Day 13
I was up rather late last night to work on my reflection paper. I guess I didn't really need to be up so late as it was actually a bit difficult to cut the essay short and not ramble too much -- though I was really really reluctant to really do this "making connections" to the readings because every context is different. Appeals can be made for "connections" to broader parts of the theses of these readings (which, as scholarly research, are too often specific to a particular context), but it feels forced to cite articles in a reflective essay as though it were a research article.1
By the time I got tired of staring at my essay, it was almost 3:30 AM and I slapped the most boring title page ever on it and printed it off. Left the pile of pages on my desk, set my alarm, and went to bed. I wanted to do a little bit of skimming over stuff for the exam in another of my classes, but was just way too tired for that.
The next thing I knew, I woke up and it was 8:15 AM. OH CRAP! FAILCLASS STARTED FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO!! I rolled out of bed, got dressed (my flatmate was in the washroom brushing her teeth, slowing me down a bit), snatched my essay and plunked a staple through it, and walked briskly to class (couldn't run; everything's icy from the snow this week). On the way there I noticed that I'd stapled the thing upside down and stopped by the library to put one in the correct corner.
I'm thankful for living on campus because it only took me five minutes to get to the classroom (I time this by whatever song I'm listening to on my iPod). I rolled in just as the first student presentation was wrapping up. (Someone else came in later still.) Before commencing the second presentation, the teacher wanted to give us a couple of questions for group discussion, but YET AGAIN messed up the projector and ended up reading the questions to us. After we shared our opinions with the rest of the class, the projector was working and she pulled up a few slides on Bourdieu's ideas of field and habitus and their importance in his theory of social reproduction (neither of which I recall seeing in my readings) and breezed through them. I managed to scratch a few notes in my notebook with my pencil (pen would have been too slow).
The second presentation was on the queer school experience, presented by a queer classmate. I think it was a very effective presentation because she did not speak from the slides at all and put in some of her personal experiences. Unfortunately she was pressed for time and couldn't go into all of the detail that she had wanted.
Nor did we have time for the questions my teacher wanted to discuss on this topic. She didn't explicitly mention it, but she said "we'll have discussion on this next class," which is the signal phrase for everyone being kind of clueless because it'll be out of place within the topics for next class.
I hadn't read either of the articles for this class (hey, they were long and I have enough going on already) so I was a little bit in the dark about things, but what was more unfortunate was what I had missed in the first 25 minutes of class: apparently our teacher had given out half-sheets of paper to the students in the first five minutes and asked them to make some comments on how she was teaching.
I think that the two classmates who normally sit on either side of me, if nobody else, would have represented my opinions on my behalf. Content is interesting, we're engaged when our classmates are presenting, but time management needs a lot of work. Post notes online, or even if not full notes, at least post outlines and student presentation notes promptly (there hasn't been anything posted since last Thursday. Seems like she updates once every weekend or something like that).
Heck, you know what, if nothing else from the teacher is posted, I'd most like to see the discussion questions posted. Because these questions shouldn't just be talked about during class, they should be questions for students to "take home" and think about, in light of ideas shared by other students or throughout the course. We can't do that if we can't refer back to the questions. It's also good study material for essay exams.
_________
1 I think I had better luck with this in Into the Mirror because I was looking for articles to substantiate my specific experiences, rather than looking for experiences to relate to a choice from a specific set of articles. Even then, the references were very nominal, almost like dropped names.
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At least you keep the Fail class interesting, eh?
Date: 2009-10-17 12:41 am (UTC)~ Candace
Re: At least you keep the Fail class interesting, eh?
Date: 2009-10-17 12:47 am (UTC)But it's really difficult to pick just one thing to do with my life when there's so much I enjoy investigating in the humanities and doing in the arts.