More Teaching

I thought, for about a minute, that it would be fun to draw and write a cartoon. If I did, it would be akin to Dilbert and Get Fuzzy, the former because I have some experience with school bureaucracy and the latter just because. Lampooning post-secondary education would be particularly enjoyable. Alas, my drawing skills are subpar. Maybe I could write a book of essays, sort of a Woody Allen tribute, just not as Jewish and depressed.

The Blahs

Blahhhhh. Much of today did not reach even that level of dissatisfaction. I am too tired to go to bed and too bummed to do much of anything else.
Faith, hope, love. . . all choices, huh? Must try, which reminds me of "must control fist of death." Anger is easier and so much more satisfying than blahhhh.
I did read a column in Newsweek today about making teachers accountable. I understand the theory, but like much of life, applying general standards and measurements nationally can not address the nuances of the advancement of the particular people involved in education. On the other hand, I think the SAT or something like it is necessary since students leave Wyoming to attend college in New Hampshire. It's the old apple and orange problem. Part of the trouble with measuring teacher success is the uncontrolled variable of the student. More about that another time. This is still rumbling around in my brain.

Tuesday's Class

Tonight's class sucked. Maybe there is a more polite word but I doubt it would be as accurate. As a teacher, I need to take ownership of the classes I teach and that has not happened this quarter, at least not on Tuesday evenings. Not wanting to embarrass anyone involved (except myself), I will leave the description vague: I did little; some students likewise did little; a couple of students tried but fell short of expectations; some students did too much and respected too little; some students performed well in spite of the rest of us. All in all, it was mediocre but only in the sense of averages. Sometimes I think I do better as a student. It is a freer role.
Late night television, on the other hand, has cheered me on to throw myself back into life full throttle. Botox and a stomach band should do the trick. I am particularly drawn to the diagram of a stomach with the constricting band at the top. And it's adjustable, in case I were to lose height, I'm guessing.

Just Choose

There is so much I could do, but instead I live this life. Some days I just choose not to choose. I glance at the small artist's print on the shelf of St. Francis contemplating a skull and I consider his intensity. Maybe I should ask him to pray for me that I be likewise inspired. Then the slogan "Be careful what you ask for. . ." comes to mind.
I have been reading higher education propaganda again. It's enough to wring any passion right out of me.

Charter is a Bad Word?

Two posts in one day. Better check to see if the sky is falling.
A nice young woman came to the door today and asked for my vote. She is running for local committeeperson in the Democratic Party. (For anyone who is unfamiliar with St. Louis politics, it is a one party system so everything is decided at the Democratic primary. Republicans and Independents basically do not count.) So this woman wants my vote in the primary in August. She was friendly and I appreciate her coming to my door. Part of her credentials included her children attending St. Louis Public Schools. (For anyone unfamiliar with the St. Louis School District. . .oh, never mind.) I told her my granddaughters attend City Garden that is becoming a charter school next year. She said that was a shame--not that they attended but that City Garden chose to go for the charter. She further explained that she is just so pro-public schools. So am I, sister, but the district sucks and the political atmosphere will not allow it to change for the better. Yeah, charter schools! Boo, entrenched and union saddled public schools where job security trumps student needs every time.

Fraud and Other College Opportunities

I read a blog today that is connected to a newsletter I receive about higher education. The woman was commenting students unprepared for college and she hit a nerve for (in?) me. Here is the comment I sent.
There are so many inherent problems in the school systems in the U.S. that I find it hard to focus on just one. First, when we talk about preparing high school students for college, we assume correctly that their earning potential will be severely limited without at least a two year degree. What good then is a high school diploma? If human resource people were honest, they might admit that the college requirement attached to some jobs is just a filtering agent rather than a true necessity for that level of employment. On the other hand, the high school diploma means so little today that employers want to know that a college experience has brought prospective employees to the point of at least being able to write complete sentences and to tie their own shoes. Second, as an adjunct and tutor at a community college, I have witnessed the repetition of courses in an attempt to remedy twelve years of bad schooling or else alleviate cultural and mental limitations often to no avail. I do not think I am exaggerating to call the developmental (read remedial) course load for some of the students a thinly disguised fraud. They are actively recruited and offered promises of being able to transfer to a four year school and complete a bachelor’s degree. All along, the community college willingly eats up the Pell Grants and other credit hour limited financial aid so that if a transfer ever does occur, there will be little monetary assistance left. It is not unusual for a student to have to pass five remedial courses, the two developmental composition classes and three levels of mathematics. That is a full semester of nontransferable credits (15 hours), and that number assumes none of the courses need be repeated. I am not even considering the returning students who take GED classes through the college and eat up some of the financial aid before ever being regarded as a college student. When the powers that be are confronted with the problem of the student who can not pass the developmental classes, the suggested panacea is either increased bandwidth or workshops to address learning styles. (I sat in on the process of sacrificing a new full time faculty position to buy the next best bandwidth package. At least the students will be able to check their hotmail accounts so the composition course will not be a total loss.) We even offer a freshman seminar that teaches students something about being in college, but the administration refuses to require the two hour class fearing the developmental students will complain about more nontransferable credit hours. Complaints=drop in retention numbers. So students already on the fringe of academic life are left to struggle on their own while some of us try to offer helpful hints about college life and responsibility during precious class time. Some who would have flourished or at least passed if exposed to the study skills and time management exercises in the freshman seminar class flail about for a semester or more failing two or more courses. Let’s see, two hours of preparation versus six or nine hours of repeated classes. It’s quite a system. Third (yes, I was enumerating issues), instead of a cell phone, get a library card, and instead of investing time and money in a bigger, flat screen television, read a book to a child. This is the toughest issue to address. We have full book cases in half the rooms in our home, so it is difficult to imagine a child who has no books to hold, no pictures to see, no text to hear so often it becomes rote. I cannot go into other people’s houses and force them to enjoy reading. I have some ideas, but I have rambled long enough. I just wanted to attest to the fact that at least some ill prepared college students were once blank slates upon which little was written by parents or by teachers in inadequate schools.
Boy, did you hit a nerve. . .

priorities

I just read my daughter Bridgett's blog entry http://south-city-musings.blogspot.com/and others' comments about Mt.Carmel High School's closing. It is a Catholic school in South Houston that Bridgett, her brother Ian, and I shared for a few years. They attended; I taught. It is one of those special bubbles in my life when I learned so much about myself. Bridgett caught the spirit of the place, as did a couple of her commentors: safe, diverse, imperfect. It was a wonderful incubator in so many ways for me and, I believe, for my children. It was the kind of place where lives could be nurtured and grown. Now that I have written that last statement, I wonder at how trite it sounds. I think the commentor who said he was left alone, not being ignored but in the sense of being allowed to stumble and find his way, was more on target. What a sad reflection of our church's priorities that such a place would not be worth saving.

Higher Ed

I was reading an article on the Inside Higher Ed--Daily Update about the abundance of PhDs in the arts and sciences and the dearth of tenure track teaching positions. Once again, I am of two minds.
There is something about tenure that rubs against the grain. It is the permanence of the achievement that bothers me. At the community college I just left, I saw newly hired full time instructors (assistant professors? terminology may vary from institution to institution) working diligently to get noticed by longer termed faculty. The newbies would serve on various committees, offer the fresh insights, come up with ideas and follow through with same, infuse lessons with excitement, experiment with technology, and generally keep their departments moving. Personally, I always saw all the activity as partly inspired by the new opportunity and partly driven by the requirements of their tenure committees. The stark disparity between the newbies and some of the seasoned faculty was striking. Whining about committee work, oft expressed despair at students' inability to perform, entrenched philosophies, bullying, and worn lessons or the infamous newspaper-reading-while-students-work-on-their-own approach characterized at least a few of the tenured folks. Like unions, I am sure there was a good reason for tenure at one time, but I wonder if there is at least some abuse. When I read someone's complaint about not enough tenure track positions at the university level, I tend to think of what that protective bubble can produce, and the article begins to sound whiny.
On the other hand, or in my other mind, I comprehend the probems created by the ratio of full to part time faculty. Where I worked, that was 80% to 20% in both faculty and support staff. From what I have seen, that is not atypical. So a student at that community college had an 8 in 10 chance of getting an adjunct instructor after being advised by a part time counselor. The student might then check on financial aid and be helped by a thirty hour a week clerk who depends and a woman in accounting, a man in IT, and a registration clerk who are all part time. Once the student gets into the semester and needs help, she will get tutoring from a math specialist and do research with a library aide who are also limited in weekly hours. There is no such thing as prorated benefits for the adjuncts and only leave accrues for the part time employees. Of course there are wonderfully motivated people in all of the positions mentioned, but the chance of burn out, leading to poor performance and high turn over, has to be omnipresent. So the system is definitely broken. I'm just not convinced more of the same, more tenure track positions, would be the cure.