Life Lesson #1: Learn to operate one of theseThis started off as a rant in real life, but I realized that it would make a good rant for my blog too. My real and virtual selves have collapsed in on each other.
I'm so sick of being required to teach life to my students. The class I teach is supposedly titled "Composition and Rhetoric." That means that I should be teaching these kids how to write... and I do so. But that's not all that's expected of me. I can't just let them write whatever they want. No, no, no. The department has guidelines for what these students have to write about.
The first paper is called "The Literacy Narrative." Basically, the student has to reflect on some event in his or her past that affects his or her knowledge in some area. What's worse is that I'm expected to grade students based on how well they've reflected upon this event. As Batmite has repeatedly stated, the Literacy Narrative is the most masturbatory essay ever conceived. Most students end up extolling the virtues of completely trivial events, and I can't say I blame them. I'm the one who's forcing them to write on this ridiculous topic. They can even make up an event if they're so inclined. What time machine am I supposed to use to check up on them?
The paper I'm currently grading (and what set off this line of thinking) is called "The Genre Analysis." The other TAs teach this paper in many different ways; personally, I have my students pick some ads and analyze them. The problem here is that my students don't know how to analyze the specific things that they pick. Even after two weeks of discussing how ads work, I'm still getting brilliance like, "The color of the can or bottle is extremely important because an ad should pull the reader's eye in and flow nicely." I'd say 90% of them can't get beyond that initial, "This is there because it works" mentality. They don't give any thought to why these advertising techniques work. But with only one paper devoted to genre analysis, what can I really expect of them?
My students HATED this paper too. I get grumblings from a few of my moppets with all of the papers, but the Genre Analysis is universally reviled. My best students get really stressed because they don't know what to do, and my lazy students just give up entirely.
And who really gives a shit if they can analyze ads or not? Why is this my problem? Christ, I wasn't told how to do this. The English department wants me to just let them analyze any genre they want. I've done that in the past, but no one knows what to do. People chose to analyze music, ads, product packaging, poems, stories, TV shows, and other such things, but no one really knew what to do with these genres. In two weeks, I can't talk about each genre, so I just picked one. I had my own readings, and I taught the analysis of advertising in the best way I knew how, but the idea totally flopped.
I know how to teach writing. I can help students with introductions, conclusions, transitions, organization, grammatical problems, developing their ideas, etc. But I've never been trained to explore a student's learning moments, deconstruct the meaning behind every genre imaginable, or how to conduct an effective interview.
Yes, that's the next paper... The Interview. Everyone has to deal with this. Here's a newsflash: a Bachelor's degree in English does not qualify me as an expert on conducting interviews. The little two week training session that I had a year and a half ago didn't cover it either. I got to fly by the seat of my pants when telling my students how to conduct one. The only interviews that I've ever conducted were in my sophomore year in college when I briefly worked for the school's newspaper... and I didn't do a very good job if the handouts that I give my students are any indication.
In addition to these goofy papers, I'm expected to have deep discussions of the reading material from the textbook. The trick is that the readings in the book are all examples of the different papers that they're supposed to write... only a lot more artsy. For instance, they have two sample interviews in there, but no freshman English student could be expected to write in the same manner. Either way, the subjects of the essays are not related to the class AT ALL. For the interview paper, the first essay is an interview with a woman who's an alcoholic. The second one is an interview with one of the guys who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. These are interesting topics, but they have NOTHING to do with the paper at hand. My students catch on pretty quick that there's no practical relationship between a discussion about alcoholism and the paper that's due in two weeks (beyond the "this is also an interview paper" angle).
In our training session, we were told that part of our job was to expand our students' thinking. I have no problem with critical thinking, but give me something that I can work with. I'm tired of coming into class all the time feeling like their fucking life coach. I'm sick of giving bad grades to students because their analyses of advertisements are shallow because then I feel like I'm grading them as a PERSON instead of grading their work. "Sorry Timmy, but you get a C- in life."
I have no problem with freshmen learning all of these things, but I'm an untrained college student dividing my time between teaching, my own work (in theory), and lamenting a complete lack of direction in my life. I'm grateful that I get to go to WVU for free and get a stipend because I teach, but I am NOT qualified to teach the course in the way that they want me to. I do the best that I can, but the bullshit from the department always makes me feel like my best isn't good enough.
I'm not sure what brought this rant on now. Grading papers always puts me in a foul mood, I guess.
--------------------------
Parents of WVU Students: Do you have any idea what kind of instructors that your tuition dollars are paying for?
I'm so sick of being required to teach life to my students. The class I teach is supposedly titled "Composition and Rhetoric." That means that I should be teaching these kids how to write... and I do so. But that's not all that's expected of me. I can't just let them write whatever they want. No, no, no. The department has guidelines for what these students have to write about.
The first paper is called "The Literacy Narrative." Basically, the student has to reflect on some event in his or her past that affects his or her knowledge in some area. What's worse is that I'm expected to grade students based on how well they've reflected upon this event. As Batmite has repeatedly stated, the Literacy Narrative is the most masturbatory essay ever conceived. Most students end up extolling the virtues of completely trivial events, and I can't say I blame them. I'm the one who's forcing them to write on this ridiculous topic. They can even make up an event if they're so inclined. What time machine am I supposed to use to check up on them?
The paper I'm currently grading (and what set off this line of thinking) is called "The Genre Analysis." The other TAs teach this paper in many different ways; personally, I have my students pick some ads and analyze them. The problem here is that my students don't know how to analyze the specific things that they pick. Even after two weeks of discussing how ads work, I'm still getting brilliance like, "The color of the can or bottle is extremely important because an ad should pull the reader's eye in and flow nicely." I'd say 90% of them can't get beyond that initial, "This is there because it works" mentality. They don't give any thought to why these advertising techniques work. But with only one paper devoted to genre analysis, what can I really expect of them?
My students HATED this paper too. I get grumblings from a few of my moppets with all of the papers, but the Genre Analysis is universally reviled. My best students get really stressed because they don't know what to do, and my lazy students just give up entirely.
And who really gives a shit if they can analyze ads or not? Why is this my problem? Christ, I wasn't told how to do this. The English department wants me to just let them analyze any genre they want. I've done that in the past, but no one knows what to do. People chose to analyze music, ads, product packaging, poems, stories, TV shows, and other such things, but no one really knew what to do with these genres. In two weeks, I can't talk about each genre, so I just picked one. I had my own readings, and I taught the analysis of advertising in the best way I knew how, but the idea totally flopped.
I know how to teach writing. I can help students with introductions, conclusions, transitions, organization, grammatical problems, developing their ideas, etc. But I've never been trained to explore a student's learning moments, deconstruct the meaning behind every genre imaginable, or how to conduct an effective interview.
Yes, that's the next paper... The Interview. Everyone has to deal with this. Here's a newsflash: a Bachelor's degree in English does not qualify me as an expert on conducting interviews. The little two week training session that I had a year and a half ago didn't cover it either. I got to fly by the seat of my pants when telling my students how to conduct one. The only interviews that I've ever conducted were in my sophomore year in college when I briefly worked for the school's newspaper... and I didn't do a very good job if the handouts that I give my students are any indication.
In addition to these goofy papers, I'm expected to have deep discussions of the reading material from the textbook. The trick is that the readings in the book are all examples of the different papers that they're supposed to write... only a lot more artsy. For instance, they have two sample interviews in there, but no freshman English student could be expected to write in the same manner. Either way, the subjects of the essays are not related to the class AT ALL. For the interview paper, the first essay is an interview with a woman who's an alcoholic. The second one is an interview with one of the guys who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. These are interesting topics, but they have NOTHING to do with the paper at hand. My students catch on pretty quick that there's no practical relationship between a discussion about alcoholism and the paper that's due in two weeks (beyond the "this is also an interview paper" angle).
In our training session, we were told that part of our job was to expand our students' thinking. I have no problem with critical thinking, but give me something that I can work with. I'm tired of coming into class all the time feeling like their fucking life coach. I'm sick of giving bad grades to students because their analyses of advertisements are shallow because then I feel like I'm grading them as a PERSON instead of grading their work. "Sorry Timmy, but you get a C- in life."
I have no problem with freshmen learning all of these things, but I'm an untrained college student dividing my time between teaching, my own work (in theory), and lamenting a complete lack of direction in my life. I'm grateful that I get to go to WVU for free and get a stipend because I teach, but I am NOT qualified to teach the course in the way that they want me to. I do the best that I can, but the bullshit from the department always makes me feel like my best isn't good enough.
I'm not sure what brought this rant on now. Grading papers always puts me in a foul mood, I guess.
--------------------------
Parents of WVU Students: Do you have any idea what kind of instructors that your tuition dollars are paying for?
7 comments:
What has me in a foul mood about grading is that they've reconfigured the semester schedule so that both paper 2 and the midterm portfolio are due at the same time. It's pretty damned time consuming to grade 45 essays, but to then have to go back and grade 45 portfolios once you have that done is incredibly time consuming. After a while, you get so tired of reading it all and your evaluation comments get sloppy.
And ANOTHER bitch--did you know they told the new people not to cancel class for conferences except for one day? We normally do two, and I'm sticking to two, because there is no way I can cram all of them into one day--it'd be a 14 hour marathon. And I can't do it on non class days, because, oh, I have to work to actually make sure ends meet because the stipend doesn't cover everything.
Argh. Rant away
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
You have actual work to do.
JG: Is that the new handle of "Contemplator" by any chance?
I'm so glad that I eliminated midterm portfolios. They help NO ONE! The professor gets stressed, and the students either get stressed or don't give a shit.
And I was not aware that they can only cancel one class for conferences. Does that go for the MWF schedule as well? That's fucking insane.
Coltsrl: The difference between my work and your work is about $60,000 so kiss my fat pasty ass.
JG is the handle on my students' blog, which I was updating and hadn't switched out for. So yes, it was supposed to be contemplator.
Canceling one class day goes for MWFs. Which is fucking insane.
I enjoy my work.
$200,000/year > English major
Works for a Living > Lifetime College Students
I win.......
It's easy to win when the department is so full of fail...
:D
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