teaching
October 31, 2009
- Once, a few years ago, I was sitting in my office at my college, minding my own business, reading a few papers. It was warm, sultry, a light wind whisking through campus. My door and window were open, and I felt of a purpose, a plan, content and busy and comfortable. Outside my office, a couple of students sat waiting for one of my colleagues, and they were arguing about some piece of ...
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October 27, 2009
- As a young girl living under the Communist system in China, nothing was more thrilling for me than breaking government rules and getting away with it. I traded ration tickets at the black market, and bought meat and eggs from the "back door," where Communist Party members obtained their fine food without the inconvenience of ration tickets or long queues. The story "Tea ...
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October 23, 2009
- Happy Autumn everyone. It feels like years have gone by between the September and October updates. I began writing this entry after listening to the students in my Craft of Fiction class at SFSU give feedback on each other's creative work. We're in week 9, and each week they've written a response to a challenging creative writing prompt (think of a more academic version of Project Runway, for ...
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October 11, 2009
- I have been teaching as a parttime adjunct at UM-Helena the last couple of years (drawing, painting, archaeology, sociology, environmental history/ethics). Just enough so I don't have to sign up for foodstamps, but still well below the poverty line. After three years of not being able to find a regular job, not even interviews, I have officially become a discouraged worker, and just try to find ...
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October 1, 2009
- Remember when your 9th or 10th grade English teacher asked, “what do you think Phineus symbolizes in A Separate Peace? Or, “what do the witches in Macbeth symbolize?” Then, you took her literally and responded with what you thought and heard, “wrong.” I remember that. Now, I’m a junior high school English teacher who hasn’t studied grammar since the 8th grade. You see, my ...
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September 23, 2009
- I've been meaning to talk about this article for some time, one of the better ones to show up in the Chronicle in a while. Author Keith Wilhite, who teaches at Duke, suggests that the current job search process at the university level leaves a lot to be desired--in fact, that it's downright inhumane. Outlining procedures in which hiring departments ask for massive portfolios (recommendations, ...
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September 23, 2009
- Yesterday I practiced tough love in my classes. Tough love is preferable to teacher meltdown day, another teaching mode I utilize from time-to-time, though it has a much uglier aspect.No, tough love day is about simply assessing the situation and acting with firm, bold, pleasant strokes and then continuing onward with such.Last week, I held conferences. I only saw over one-third of my ...
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September 11, 2009
- Where have I been? I'd love to tell you that I've been nonstop writing. However, let's just say I've been busy working on a lot of things that all tie into my writing in some manner. This week I will move into review phase of the Press Pause Now Anthology. The deadline still is September 25 so if you are putting the final edits to your submissions you have time. There are so many wonderful ...
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September 8, 2009
- Seriously, how? If you're any good at teaching, you'll give it your best energy, and you'll come home depleted. Perhaps you write during the blessed summers, on the rare sabbaticals. And maybe you've made your peace with that. You are fortunate to have a good teaching job, you know that.But this is the year of the new book, the collected poems, and you have invitations to read across the ...
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September 5, 2009
- Last week's blog topic was "Back to School"--a notion that's on most people's minds, in one way or another, at this time of year: many Red Room bloggers are teachers and/or students, many have kids in school, and all of us have memories of classrooms, lessons, and teachers (good and bad). Here are the three bloggers we chose to feature his week: Farzana Versey shares a memory of ...
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