A Moment of Honesty & Cool English Word of the Week: A Reflection on 1 Month Left in the Semester

                With one month left in the semester, it is definitely a time to stop and reflect. This semester has galloped along without time for pause. I try to stop every other week or so to take some time to reflect on progress and strategies. This semester has been different for a myriad of reasons, one being I suffered a loss in my immediate family so I went from teaching, to funeral, and back to teaching without so much as a blip or pause. Teaching has actually allowed me to channel a lot of positivity since I teach 3 out of the 5 days of the week and therefore I am interacting with great students and engaging with texts that I love regularly.  Being in the classroom, interacting with students and helping them as they explore concepts has always been a very strong positive in my daily life and I firmly believe that will always be the case. 

                I am doing some pretty exciting things this term with my students and it has allowed me to look at the topic I am presently teaching (women’s Literature) with fresh eyes and fresh perspective.  I am teaching a university level women’s lit course that is a survey that runs from Christine de Pizan to Woolf and two sections of college level women’s lit that runs from Woolf onwards. I am working with two very different sets of texts and three very different sets of students.  All of these different permutations are pedagogically stimulating in that I can apply strategies that are tailored to each class. 

                For the first time this semester one of my college-level sections is a flipped-mode class. With this class I start with the premise that the students will do the information gathering before class and then we use class time to apply these concepts further through various types of exercises and discussions. I have been recording voice-overs for each of my class PowerPoints which has been received with some success. Some students have mentioned accessibility issues with the audio in that some have had difficulty listing to the voice commentary in the file. This is something I will need to work on for next semester and something I am actively trying to resolve. What can I do as an instructor to make this part of the class participation more accessible and seamless? One thing I have implemented is a brief review at the beginning of each class of the major points, themes, and ideas found in the texts as related in the PowerPoints. This seems to have helped those who had issues with the audio but I will find something more technologically nuanced for next term. This will involve me exploring even more facets of the LMS we use at the college and then in turn harnessing the great resources available.   

                I have implemented semi-regular graded blog posts on major themes in the readings as incentive to do that information gathering before class.  I have had much success with this and usually on average more than 85% of the students in the class complete them by the due date.  They in turn come to class prepared to engage with what they have read and we expand on this knowledge through in-class debates, problem-solving exercises, seminars, and through creative writing pieces. Their major paper due date is just around the corner and this week we are doing peer review sessions of rough drafts. This has also been well-received for the students are prepared and knowledgeable about the texts and larger issues in socio-cultural context.

                Discussion has always been and will always be a key part of my pedagogical strategy. In my other college-level section we often break to discuss how the texts on the syllabus relate to what is happening in the news or in the students’ individual communities. This allows the students to see the important aspects of the texts and put them to practical use.  Approximately 40% of the students in this section are ELL students so this relatability is of particular importance. Words and ideas that usually would have no context now make much more sense to them. I have also incorporated a “cool English word of the week” feature to each week’s class so they can also increase their level of diction and incorporate that word in their discussions and writing on the texts. This week’s word was “synesthesia.”

                My university-level class is different for the texts can be seen as more difficult to access but also because most of the students come in with a well-developed level of nuance to their argumentative skills. Discussion here is still very key. I do not want to be that professor who lectures from the front of the room and does not let the students engage. I play with classroom architecture, which I think they appreciate. I walk around; their eyes follow me as I do, not so much as to be a distraction but just enough for the class to know that I am part of this community of learning and not the gate-keeper if you will. Pausing this weekend to reflect on this class in particular made me feel very happy with the progress so far. The students participate, even those students who admit to have not read the readings for that day (I start each class with what I call “a moment of honesty” where students can raise their hands and be honest about not having read the poems or section of the novel for today).  I also have a class Twitter that I use to distribute class related announcements but also share links and articles of interest to the work we are doing in class. It always puts a smile on my face when I come to class and a student says, “that thing about Frankenstein you posted on Twitter, so good!”

                As part of this over-arching reflective exercise I am going to take time to write more on this long neglected blog (6 months, shameful!), mainly because it is very important that I access and record these thoughts more regularly, but also because I like to engage with the larger #HigherEd community in their discussion of learning and pedagogy. Twitter went through a strange metamorphosis at the beginning of term where there seemed to be more of a tendency to tear-down than support.  Lately I see this changing as academics far and wide brace themselves for a long winter. It is now that time of the term when grading becomes one of the predominant exercises, also #AcWriMo is in full swing, so the importance of shared experience is being highlighted.  We are so fortunate to have access to such a community of learners and I hope to add to that discussion through these posts.