On Friday I told a group who are supposed to be the innovative people at work about my zombie apocalypse. They looked at me like I was asking to eat their eyeballs and then shunned me. A few people who get it are excited, but then the one who I really look up to made some comment about how I will make it happen even if I don't get grant funding. Will I? Right now, no. I believe in what I am doing, but I certainly don't need to share it with others. I can do whatever in my own room for my own students, and that's an end. If they want innovation coming out of their institution, though, they can fund it.

I also found out that I'd been evaluated worse for one of my online classes by "Quality Assurance" because they are only looking at one set of criteria and those aren't the ones I did well. And yet, my students have written to me to thank me for caring about them, so apparently I am not doing so badly. They also thanked me for all the other stuff I didn't get evaluated for, like taking time to write comments on their essays. I'm a writing teacher. Shouldn't part of my evaluation be detailed comments on student papers? I teach Developmental English. Shouldn't I get some credit for forming one-on-one relationships with students? I just heard in a conference that one of the big problem areas in online education is that students talk to the instructor rather than each other. Mine don't. Maybe that should count for something? Apparently not. I shall spend my summer writing something on the discussion boards for each student post, and not giving them any friggin' feedback or personal connection. Then I will meet the guidelines for "quality" and my students will not know how to write any better than they did when they came to me.

Anyway, right now I really don't care enough to give more than the minimum of myself. I will give as little of my time as required and not a bit of my heart. My heart needs a break.

I feel the need to post here and communicate with the web. Yay! It may have to do with the fact that I have terrible end-of-semester-itis, which makes me disinclined to look at work at all.

I'm so very sick of this kid in my F2F class, so ready for him to be someone else's problem. Fortunately, he's one of the few who has not, to my knowledge, tried to get signed up to be back with me next semester. Most of my class wants to do next semester with me. This particular kid, though, is so friggin' entitled and rude and bullying, I wish he'd go away. I get kinda depressed dealing with him because he's such a little weasel and I have to just put on my teacher face and not say what I really think when he opens his mouth. The little jackanapse wants to tell me in detail all the ways that he thinks I should run my classroom, and pontificate on what college is like. I mean. OMG. I'm so glad that having failed a semester of college you are now such an expert on how college looks that you can tell me all about it. I've been teaching college longer than you've been in college. I started college when you were in diapers. Thank you so much for explaining college to me, you lazy-assed, entitled little boy. Deep breath. Not that I have strong feelings here. I have a student who stares this guy down whenever he starts up, another student who has told him repeatedly to shut up. He had the gall to come in late to my class the other day, sit himself down, and start telling me that someone else was disrespecting me. Funny, the other student does his work, shows up on time, and has never demanded credit for work he DID NOT DO. Hello! Anyway, I'm done. I love 99.9% of my students. I don't know why the one bothers me so much.

I had a weird experience. I'm messing around on ze dating site because I need another end-of -semester distraction. I was looking at this guy's profile, and thinking how very very perfect he seemed, and then....I realized I know him. Well, I knew him, we were kinda friends ages ago. We dated each other's friends. I always thought he was kinda cool, but, heh, I seriously was going to write him and flirt shamelessly before I realized who he was, not something I would have guessed. He's even grown into being my type physically, which he wasn't when we were younger. It's kinda awkward, I have no idea if he'll reply, and no idea where things left off since he was friends with one of my old boyfriends, but I wrote and said that I'm pretty sure I used to know him. Maybe if nothing else that friendship can pick up again. He used to be quite fun. Anyway, I'm all excited about that, but there's really no call to be.

Hm. Anyhow, I'm just procrastinating because I have to write a farewell post for one of my online classes and I don't want to. So far I have no work this summer, but 3 classes for fall, probably 4, so I'm not that bothered. I'd like one class this summer, just to keep the money flow going, but I have two brand-new classes to plan and a grant to keep writing, so it's not like I stop working even if I stop getting paid. I also have the lovely garden plot that mum and I went out and worked on over the weekend. 'S all good because my semester is almost over and then I get a shiny new one! So, off to do the farewell post, I guess.

I am trying to get a plot at the community garden. This is what I want to grow:


 

peppers, watermelons, carrots, beans, squash, and radishes, cucumbers. Watermelons may be a bit ambitious...

I think we'll do tomatoes at home with our lettuce so we have an easy-access salad, and we'll have strawberries at home.

May do corn and eggplant if there's room. I may be over-commiting my poor space already. Mostly at home, mum will run an epic herb and flower garden in containers on the 2, yes, 2 balconies.

These are all from Renee's Garden. I may look at other seeds too but I love the variety of colors.

Ok, I have the big picture written up for my zombie apocalypse proposal. It sounds very thoughtful, maybe even smart. he he! One of coworkers told me I'm brave when I told her the whole thing- that comp students will be the editorial staff of a planet-wide zombie survival site, and I hope to pull in classes across a range of content areas and campuses. I've got the basic reasoning behind it laid out, not I need to speak to how it fits best practices, the flipped classroom model and why that's awesome and how this works as a flipped classroom, how it fits state standards for transfer credit, and all kinds of other mad things. Just started reading a relevant book from our friends at Bedford St Martin's (thank you, ladies and gentlemen for all the free books!). Writing Across the Curriculum is a great survey, and I've found info that will be great for this project because I'm looking at bringing writing into stronger focus in other content areas as well as using our writing for integrated, meaningful tasks. I was on such a roll, and get back on one, but I got this nasty spring cold, and now all I want to do is read Robert Asprin and sleep. SLEEEP!

The cold doesn't help me write my other classes, either. I have a new 121 text, and will be teaching 122 in the fall. I'm excited for both, and am hoping in 121 to push my proposal paper assignment further than I have before and make them actually present the proposal where they can do some good, will likely make more than one essay revolve around that. he he! Evil teacher!!! I'll keep my 122 pretty normal next semester since I've never taught it, but the book is great. I think we're going to work on identity since that's what I like to work on.

Sleeep!!!

How often do I get tired and wonder what the hell the point is? More than I care to count. Those are the times when I want nothing to do with reading, writing, drawing, or anything that asks me to think. Like, dude, thinking is HARD. ;p Anyhow, I live life like a freshman essay....but with a hell of a lot more effort. I magpie knowledge and ideas, throw it all in the pot. I enjoy that, except when it all crashes into the stew of a purposeless rough draft, yanno, the kind my students bring to me late and say "hey, so I didn't do so good, Mrs." (yes, they've married me off this semester, not sure how I'll adjust to being single again). It's all very well, all this data gathering, but then you start wondering what the hell the point is and you have to take a nap. I should like to live beyond the freshmonic hope that a thesis emerges. I would like to live with a thesis. But, dude, this thinking is so HARD! In fact, I lost track of what I was saying.  I think I may just go back to throwing a whole bunch of ideas in the pot and see if they take! I will make it seem like I know what I'm saying by using exclamation points, too!!

Current reads:
Third Wave
Athenaze
Traveler's Tale Guides: Australia
.....and stuff

While I'm being uppity anyhow today.....

Some fool has an opinion about what is ok for adults to read and the NY Times gave him space to express it. Free speech is a lovely thing. See, apparently, this fella feels that adults should not read YA fiction, and it is so funny. This guy is the reason people grow up hating to read. Him personally. ;) I have so many students who are not readers, but then when you tell them that there's no law saying they can't check out the books they used to LIKE to read, they suddenly become willing readers. See, some jackass somewhere made them think that they couldn't read the books they enjoy. Honestly? JUST READ. Who cares. Read a damn cereal box. See, it's not really about what you read unless you're only reading for appearences. It's about what you THINK. After you read for a while, whatever you want to read, you'll be literate enough to write an asinine opinion piece for the NY Times. Zippity-yay, thank you, Bernstein Bears, for my ability to read and write.

Watch http://www.ted.com/talks/leymah_gbowee_unlock_the_intelligence_passion_greatness_of_girls.html

Then watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBmMU_iwe6U

Do I need to say more? Well, there is so much to say. These two videos create such a deep, deep text. I'd like to think about one issue, though, right now.

The problem to me is not the sexualization of the women in the video, but the fact that the message of sexual manipulation is the one Beyonce chose to go with both in the video and in her lyrics. I am thinking of the lines  "My persuasion/can build a nation/...you'll do anything for me". This keeps the focus of power fully in the realm of sexuality. It's old information that sexual violence is not about the sex, it's about power. It's also a tired motif to say that women's power comes from the exchange of sex. It was cliched enough 400 years B.C.E. for Aristophanes to write a comedy, The Lysistrata, about women withholding sex until the men met their demands. Until we take sex out of the power equation, we cannot fight the objectification or exploitation of women fully. Until sex is out of the equation, girls' existences will continue to center on their bodies, willing or no, and not on their potential. In a society that respects women, Beyonce's boob could pop right out of that skimpy dress while she crawled around on the ground and it wouldn't matter because the issue of whether she is catering to the crowd of men's power would be irrelevant, as would her implied trade of sex for power. She would have the power of her thoughts and actions to support her thesis that women rule the world. Beyonce is an artist reflecting back to us the value our society places on women as strongly as Leymah Gbowee is pointing the need for us women to make sure that girls have REAL power and opportunity.

Hmm, I can't get my fancy picture inserted here, but I am looking for Camp NaNo sponsorship. Heh. Help keep me out of trouble with enriching summer activities..

www.stayclassy.org/fundraise

I regret the passing at my alma mater of bathroom wall conversations, all those blank cream-colored spaces that got fuller and fuller as the semester marched on. I admit, many of these conversations were what one would expect of young people writing on bathroom walls- drugs and sex and rudeness. I believe the hallowed stalls of our library have seen more kids learning to cuss than most spring break tequila meccas. Now, I can't speak for the guys' walls, but in the women's, in between the cussing and partying, there was also substance, much like the undergraduate experience. There were impromptu political debates, reflections on body image and self-hatred, debates about pop culture that would do a sociology professor's heart good (yes, they hear you, they would just rather express their opinion anonymously on a bathroom wall). In short, those acts of everyday vandalism were a step toward citizenship. I don't mean what we consider citizenship today, I mean it in the terms that my classical education taught me to think in. See, here's this group of kids, the leaders of tomorrow, and some already voters. They are engaging the issues that move their lives in an open, public discourse. They don't agree, and maybe are not always respectful, but they are talking and sharing. That means they are thinking and learning how to be an educated, reflective member of our society. What better way to prepare citizens, I mean engaged stand-up and shout critical citizens, not ballot-box fillers who don't give a damn? I wonder, if they wrote on the stalls in Washington, would we be faced with hidebound ruin today? I don't think so. And so, I want to remark the passing of the blank, cream colored walls that hosted so many forays into public dialogue. After years of paining them over and setting a new canvas for a new semester of concerns, a few years ago, the university decided to paint the stalls black. While I admit that it probably saves a lot of painting money, and probably stops a lot of the silly or even offensive remarks from being aired publicly, it seems to me a small diminishing of democracy. A loss.