Category Archives: teaching

September 14, 2012 · 10:25 pm

On Again, Off Again Scheduling

This term I’m teaching three days a week: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That leaves the other two days a week for research, writing and editing.

It’s been a while since I’ve had two days in a term that were out of the classroom, especially in my heavy term which isn’t as heavy as some have been. Only three courses in my official workload but there’s also one graduate directed readings meeting at a timeslot still TBA. Usually I’ve been lucky to have one non-teaching day in a week and that usually gets further complicated by being on a day when I have regular committee obligations. This year? Not yet. All may change when the T&P committee ramps up for actual meetings but if they’re slow to get started, that might wait until next term. For now, my Tuesdays and Thursdays seem safe.

I must say that I’m enjoying the on again, off again nature of my work this term. The format helps me to recharge my introvert batteries after a long day of teaching, for one thing. For another, even though I know I can write in small timeslots set aside during a busy day, I write best when I have at least two or three hours to pour into one project. Uninterrupted time allows me to better see how what I’m adding fits into the bigger picture.

The schedule also only works by making sure that teaching prep or, in a few weeks!, marking doesn’t eat up my research and writing time. I’ve found that the weekend is the best time to finalize my visuals and class plans for Western Civ (so that the files can be uploaded to our CMS in advance of Monday’s class) and to review the readings for the Tudor seminar which meets on Wednesday mornings. The grad students meet on Friday so I’ll go back through my discussion notes on Wednesday evening (after a veeery long day). Tuesday and Thursday? They’ll stay free. They have to or all of my fall writing plans fall apart.

So yes, I’m eating into my weekends in a big way this fall. It’s unsustainable to work full-out seven days a week all through the academic year, yet somehow so many of us do just that, right? But for a few short weeks I know that I can keep it going and reap the benefits of focused, productive time to research, write and edit on some days while devoting myself fully to teaching and campus contact duties on others.

I’ll see how the rotation holds up once I’m at the midterm point, just around the time I hie off to Potterfest. That’s when a boatload of marking lands on my desk and even with the able assistance of my GTA, I suspect I’ll have to give up a Tuesday here or a Thursday there but don’t let it get to be a habit. I’m fully booked up with writing, editing, revising and researching right through the first of November. After that, it all might fall apart but I’ll hope to sustain the schedule through the end of classes in early December.

What’s your term schedule looking like? Thumbs up or fingers in ears?

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September 7, 2012 · 6:01 pm

Observations on the Start of Another Term

  • I hate starting teaching in the middle of the week. I understand why we’re starting on a Wednesday. My OCD tendencies just don’t like it. Ditto for the last day of term, the first Wednesday in December, being taught as a Monday to compensate for the Monday we’ll miss on Canadian Thanksgiving. It’s logical. It just doesn’t feel right. It also means that my Wednesday morningsenior seminar will wrap up on November 30.
  • Speaking of the seminar, which I’ll do frequently this fall, we’re currently standing at 36 enrolled. I’m printing out fold-over name cards for each student to set on their desks in hopes that it will not only help me remember all of their names more readily, but also encourage them to use each others’ names in the lively discussions I hope will ensue.
  • Why is discussion so difficult to inspire and maintain? Ah, that’s the million dollar question of academia, isn’t it? If it was easy, everyone would do it. I love what Dr. Virago posted about encouraging discussion earlier this week: that feigning ignorance or error inspires students to attempt their own explanations. It’s not so much the “lying to student” part of not giving them the answer that’s important, it’s how avoiding giving them the answer helps them to generate answers on their own, sometimes even more than we’d be able to give them as the ‘sage on the stage’. Reminder to self: silence is golden, patience is a virtue and the Socratic method still is pretty awesome.
  • Tuesdays and Thursdays will be writing and editing days. I’ll also be devoting a chunk of Monday mornings to writing and editing. And, given the daunting number of projects I have on the go and due in the near future, most of the weekends. Of course, the challenge is to not let administrivia, errands and other issues fill up these blocks of time. Already there’s a service task which is in the process of blowing up in my face (not through any wrongdoing on anyone’s part, it’s just when this particular committee gets called upon, it means Work and lots of it). I’m pretty well-resigned to some of that writing and editing time getting eaten up by the service task from beyond the grave but I can hope that the only time we can tackle that problem is sometime on Friday afternoon instead, when I know I’m too tired to do a good job of writing and editing and focus, instead, on less demanding occupations such as filing, emails and blogging.

And that reminds me, it’s off to Dame Eleanor’s for the weekly writing group check-in!

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August 31, 2012 · 2:57 pm

The Importance of Being Kempt

Early modernist here so I can legitimately use the term “kempt” whereas those poor folks who don’t at least mentally reside for a good chunk of the year in premodern texts are stuck with only the inelegant “unkempt”. (Check out this fun explanation of the shift in the decline of kempt and the rise of unkempt.)

Bardiac posted about pre-semester rituals – hers include a hair cut which is top of my to-do list for Tuesday. Shaggy and Scooby I fail to get hair cuts during term time so if I don’t do this now, I’ll look a lot like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo within a month or two, minus the stubble, of course!

I don’t aspire to the fashionista heights of blogworthy professorial fashion but I do believe in the power of kempt. Whether you’re rocking the jeans and turtlenecks in the manner of the late Steve Jobs or something a bit more fashion-forward, it behooves a professor to have clothes that are clean and relatively tidy. I’ve culled the wardrobe this summer, ditching the threadbare jeans and shirts along with the items that just never worked (why did I think that pale tan was ever a good colour on me? It isn’t!). I added a few new tops and a skirt or two.

But the number one rule of being kempt? Forgoing those messy condiments during term-time lunches. No more soy sauce, ketchup or, heaven forbid!, mustard. Because there’s nothing more guaranteed to mess up your look than a mustard stain on your shirtfront.

How do you keep it together when in front of the classroom or out in the field?

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August 21, 2012 · 9:43 pm

Preparing for the Unprepared

Fewer than a third of the thirty-five students enrolled in my senior seminar for the fall have taken what I’d consider to be the closest thing to a prerequisite. (We don’t actually ‘do’ prerequisites here in our department but I’m careful to offer courses in sequence so that students will have an opportunity to take a second or third-year course on a topic before enrolling in the seminar.) More of the students have taken another survey that might sound relevant as that particular class has been offered multiple times in the past three years but courses that begin after 1700 won’t give students much useful background for a class that wraps up circa 1600.

A bit over two-thirds are veterans of Western Civ but that’s not a big help. At best, if they were in class on the right days, they would have had about half an hour of class time that touched on our seminar’s subject of Tudor Britain. A little bit of class time and reading two or three years earlier hardly constitutes a sound basis to tackle the range of Tudor-era topics we’ll study over an entire term.

Knowing this, I’m paying careful attention to the background readings that I suggest. I’ll put two copies of the survey textbook (Newton & Key, 2e) on reserve in the library and point them to an array of other possibilities they can purchase if they so wish. However, given that I’m expecting them to read a hundred or more pages each week just for the class itself, I’m going to have to really push hard to get them to read even a couple of dozen more for background on a regular basis.

How do you encourage under-prepared students to catch up on the background? My first plan is to circulate the course outline and suggested background texts this week, along with the advice that if they haven’t taken the early modern British survey, they’ll really need to pay attention to the background readings.

I’m thinking of also preparing a one paragraph summary to post to the online discussion board each week. The post would highlight cool themes about that week’s background alongside links to a few amusing videos and intriguing primary sources. The thought is that this would be enough to ‘hook’ the students to read that little bit more which will help them to understand the assigned readings.

I’m wary, though. I don’t want to do a lot of extra preparation for this class if it will likely be wasted. I’m facing another very busy fall with three regular classes as well as two grad students to supervise and all of my writing to move along. So if anyone has a bright idea on how else I might get students lacking background courses up to speed, leave some advice in the comments, please!

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July 21, 2012 · 7:38 pm

I Love Course Planning

I have to confess, I love to prepare for my courses. It’s probably one of my favourite parts of working as a professor and, sadly, it’s a pleasure I’ve been denying myself for months as I focused on pressing issues of writing and editing.

Thursday, I finally broke down and opened up my word processor to get down to business. I’m starting with my senior seminar – I’m using three “new to teaching” monographs and one that I’ve taught with before (students will love/hate that book because it’s really engaging and opinionated but it’s also over 500 pages long). It was fun to pour out on paper the thoughts I’d been mulling over in my free time over the past few months: how many weeks for each subject area? What kinds of discussion questions to pose? Then I move onto the assignments and that opens up a new round of options. Will I be able to shoehorn in an essay proposal along with the essay itself? Do I ask for the essay in the second-to-last class meeting or at the very end of term?

A well-planned course is a thing of beauty. It clearly plays into the overall curriculum of the program, helping to build needed skills and guiding students clearly along their path to mastery. It lays out expectations for the overall class as well as each individual. It answers their questions about process and asks them questions about what they’ve learned.

A well-planned course is an awesome creation and even the best course can get better. That’s why, each year I toss my notes on what worked well and what didn’t into my course planning folder so that they’re right at hand when I’m back to teaching the course again. (Thank you, fabulous notes I left for myself in 2008 and 2011 to guide this fall’s revisions.) I eliminated some questions that weren’t really fruitful for my senior seminar and broke up another subtopic differently in light of how difficult it was to jump-start discussion the last go-round.

That’s the part I love about course-planning: playing with the possibilities of topics, readings, assignments and questions. A bit less fun, but just as engrossing? Tweaking the flow of the course over the meeting dates. It’s a lot of work to track exactly which days we meet in the term when the university’s calendar only shows start/end dates for the term along with holidays. (I’d kill for a calendar that included, you know, an actual calendar so I could see the dates each class is meeting instead of having to remember that if my class is a Wednesday-only class that we don’t meet the final Wednesday of term which is, instead, a make-up date for Thanksgiving Monday.)

I’ve put the planning aside again after this initial rough-in. Why? Because I know I’d spend too much valuable writing and editing time on the course planning work, tweaking and testing and twiddling some more. I don’t have to have the outlines ready for reproduction until very late in August so I will keep my hands off, as much as possible, in order to focus on the other work that needs to be done now.

But it’s soooo tempting. Ah well!

Please tell me I’m not the only one who likes some aspect of course-planning and, if you enjoy some part of it, what’s your favourite?

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May 1, 2012 · 10:42 pm

Out with the Old

Ding, dong, the term is dead. Well, except for one last grad course assignment to wrangle. I have to get the chair to sign off on the big survey class’s marks tomorrow morning, as well, but, really, it’s done. I taught two undergraduate classes, one graduate directed readings for two students (so two separate classes but we kind of mushed them up by finding common ground for this past term) and yet one other graduate class that actually integrated in with my senior seminar. Officially four classes on my plate with just over a hundred students between them all.

This term, I’ve also written two short chapters (well, solo-written one, and co-written the other) as well as prepared and submitted a research grant. I’ve edited so many chapters, I’m no longer able to keep count of those!

No time to rest: I’m already knee-deep in the thick of other projects. We’re copy-editing STar Wars and History (which is a fascinating process in and of itself), I’m back to draft-editing chapters for The Hobbit and History and putting in a few hours on my regular research agenda, each week until our July vacation.

Oh, and there are book orders for the fall. And a personnel committee meeting. Oh, and I need to follow up on that research grant application. And get working on the next one. And there’s the conference paper for the end of the month, I need to pull that together, too!

Oh, lordie. I’d better stop thinking right now. I promised Mike I’d take off a day or two. Maybe Friday?

How’s your May shaping up? Crazily busy with conference trips, grading galore and classes still to meet? Or are any of you wrapping matters up already. Take a break from the grind and let us know!

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April 23, 2012 · 4:45 pm

A Window Opens

A brief grading window, that is – I just finished marking the last of the tutorials (and recording marks from the oral presentations) in my super-huge class of 80. My TA, bless her heart, is tackling a bunch of the other discussion portfolio material.

Tomorrow, at 9, the same class writes their final exam and the entire pile should be ready to claim at noon.

*headdesk*

Then the marking begins anew!

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April 15, 2012 · 7:13 pm

Super Size My Seminar

I’m wrapping up the 2011-12 term this month. One aspect that’s felt luxurious has been my seminar. It’s both been a good class and a small class with under twenty in either term. (Pro tip to faculty wanting to shrink their course sizes: schedule your class for 8:30 on Friday and then have the registrar screw up the listing to suggest it starts at 8:00. You’ll scare all but the determined or the desperate away!)

Next year, the picture is bleak. Due to budget constraints and sabbaticals, we’re offering very few senior seminars: fifteen credits worth (or 2.5 full year options). Students with a concentration in history have to take twelve credits of seminars to graduate while majors only need six. Theoretically, fifteen credits should be enough but not when you factor in the large number of majors and concentrations history attracts. And I don’t even get the scary Friday morning time-slot for my seniors. This fall and winter, I meet my seniors on Wednesday mornings. (Grad students? Prepare for a Friday morning fun-fest!)

The crisis of classes and credits has become personal for me in the looming fall and winter terms. I’m teaching six of those fifteen credits offered in our program: seminars on Tudor Britain in the fall and Stuart Britain in the winter. Having crunched the numbers and chatted with others in the department, I safely expect to see a record-setting enrollment of more than 38, especially since some majors have ambitions of finishing up their 2012-13 coursework in the fall term by taking my seminar in conjunction with another scheduled for the fall. In the winter term, mine will be the only senior seminar into which a student in need of seminar credits can enroll (the other six credits on offer is a fall/winter course): also an enrollment booster!

Help?

I’ve told our admin that my ‘hard cap’ is 44. There are twelve weeks in the term and every student needs to make one in-class presentation the way that I run seminars. (I’m not willing to negotiate on the presentation component: I don’t consider it a seminar without students having to prepare and make a formal in-class presentation.) Week one won’t count for those purposes since I can’t get students ready to present before class has begun. So there are only eleven weeks left and I know that I can’t run a good discussion session in a three-hour class and take time for more than four oral presentations. The math is then simple: 4*11=44.

Gulp!

Now I have to come up with 44 presentation topics stretching from Henry VII’s reign through Elizabeth’s (with forays into Scots and Irish history along the way). I’ve used biographies before: these are very easy to generate as topics but also quite easy for students to plagiarize. Nothing demoralizes an educator quite like listening to your senior students read the Wikipedia entry word for word! I don’t want to use articles or monographs for presentation topics: these tend to turn into snooze-fests as most students do little more than summarize the contents.

I’ve toyed with the thought of having the in-class presentations be on historical events but I’m a bit staggered at the thought of coming up with so many topics that I can also equally and usefully distribute across the 1485-1603 period so that we’re not having someone present on an early Tudor topic when the discussion’s all about late Tudor wars! So wish me luck or give me suggestions of the almost four dozen topics I’ll need to nail down for Tudor history presentations before the syllabus goes to the press in late August. Please?

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April 3, 2012 · 10:34 pm

Term’s Over, Marking’s Not

Hooray! The last undergraduate class met this morning. No more 8:30 classes until September. I’ll still be up as early every day, mind you, but I won’t be staring out at a sea of sleepy students at that hour.

Classes wound up wonderfully. Now all that’s left is exams and marking. That won’t even be so bad, thanks to this being my lighter term (our U is on a 3-2 system and this is my 2 course term, although I’m teaching more than that when you count my two grad courses).

And then there’s all the writing and researching. . . .

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February 12, 2012 · 10:55 pm

Just a Marking Machine

The chapter draft is done. I’m pretty impressed with myself. It took less than a week to come up with a chapter of just over five thousand words, most of it dealing with historical parallels far afield of my early modern British ‘comfort zone’. Thankfully, my magpie ways of research and the speedy services of our inter-library loan system gave me lots of great material to work with for the subject.

Now I can pick up the pieces of my life, aka get back to marking. It’s amazing how quickly this backs up. I get a feeling that term-time marking is rather like “I Love Lucy” on a factory line. One bobble and instant disaster.


Poor Lucy! Only, hey, at least it’s candy, not papers!

Bring on the rubrics and polish up the red pen. Tomorrow I’m going to try and get through the backlog of tutorial responses. Once those are done, maybe I can whittle down the pile of quizzes that still have short essays to be assessed. I hate it when the turnaround is more than a week for small assignments such as these but that’s what happens when a writing project is suddenly thrust upon you!

Stay tuned for the week of the 20th when I hammer out a grant proposal.

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