Today was about the worst kind of day to have someone come into my classroom, but it went well nonetheless.? (My colleague Aaron visited to fulfill a course requirement for a pedagogy class, so the fact that I was helping him out lessened the pressure.)? We did our normal Gilmour-class work day, the students digging into each other’s papers and getting their portfolios ready.? Social psychology kicked in once again, and the students whose grades have been lowest all semester were among the first ones out, and the students on the top of the hit list stayed longest.? And they left as revision groups, so their selection of revision partners fell pretty well along grade lines as well.? I suppose such things happen when one allows students to choose.? But since I have them write philosophies of liberty, I really oughtn’t proscribe option too readily.
So here I sit, five more papers to grade, then I have six days to crank out a working draft of my paper for Dr. Medine.? I know pretty well what I’m writing, and I’ve found the notebook in which I’d been working on the paper, so I’m confident that I can produce on average three pages a day and produce eighteen to twenty pages before portfolios come due.
I’m looking forward to Christmas travel already; being around people again after these three solitary weeks is going to be nice.? But for now, into the study with me…
Your schedule makes me tired; I think I’ll take a nap.
(By “nap,” I mean “grade one of 6 sets of papers in my hands right now.” Teaching= unparalleled glamour)
I think you’d like Aaron; he’s unabashedly intellectual and runs into the same frustrations you do when he teaches students who want to fight rather than to think. In the last couple days I’ve actually had two first-year TA’s in my classroom, and it’s odd but satisfying being one of Park Hall basement’s old farts.