This is Living?

This ad has risen to the top of my all-time favorite commercials:



Favorite lines:

"I read an article...well, I read the majority of an article online...."

"I have 687 friends. This is living." 

What a brilliant ad. Yes, it's promoting the 2011 Toyota Venza. But I love the jab at the Facebook-addled Internet generation (and apparently, internet addiction is becoming a real medical "condition," along with gaming addiction) who need to "get a life."

These are my students!

Of course, it's not just 20-somethings who are "addicted" to social media. Here's the latest from Facebook's Statistics page:

People on Facebook:

• More than 750 million active users
• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• Average user has 130 friends
• People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook

 Activity on Facebook:

• There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)
• Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
• Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month
• More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month. 

Mobile Users:

• There are more than 250 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
• There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products 

That's a lot of people spending a lot of minutes per day interacting at (what most people would agree is) a fairly superficial level.

What Does an English Professor Look Like Anyway?

So it's 6:50 a.m. I'm one of the few people on campus. I'm dragging my rolling office behind me (a "Ricardo Elite" which we bought at Costco). It contains my notebook, textbook, folders, pens, pencils, tape, stapler, paper clips, scotch tape, dry erase markers, notebook clips, flash drives....etc.

In other words, I look like the adjunct professor that I am (real professors don't drag their offices behind them).

A guy driving a cart on the sidewalk approaches me. Mid thirties, maybe, with longish hair. I head towards the grass and stop, making way for the guy in the cart. I wave and smile, he waves back, in acknowledgment. Sidewalk courtesy. I walk on.

I'm about to turn the corner towards the MD building when I hear someone yelling something behind me. The guy in the cart has pulled over, stopped, gotten out of the cart, and is saying something to me.

"Do you teach English?"

"Um yes...how do you know? Have you taken one of my classes?"

"My girlfriend works in the bookstore. She says you're the prettiest English teacher on campus."

"Wait...but...what? Do I know her? What's her name? Did I teach her?"

"No, she's seen you in the store. I just guessed it was you."

Well, I just had to laugh out loud. What a sweet thing to say! (Maybe he says this to all the 50-something teachers pulling rolling briefcases behind them...?). I have to admit, this one kept me smiling for at least another half hour, even as I went from one copy room to another, looking for a copy machine that wasn't broken.

And wasn't it lucky for me that I happened to be looking pretty spiffy that day (if I do say so myself) in my brown leggings and flat slip-ons and layered tank tops and a short-sleeve khaki-colored tunic length dress (which I wear as a light jacket) accented by a jangly gold necklace which I'd tossed on last minute just before leaving the house this morning at 6:25 a.m. I guess I have a reputation to live up to. The "prettiest English professor" on campus better dress the part!

So the secret's out: I look like an English professor, and a pretty one at that.

But how did this guy know I taught English? I could have been a good looking Econ professor. I could teach science or math or physics, for all he knew. There are doubtless quite a few good-looking history instructors on campus.

But out of all the adjuncts on campus rolling their mobile offices behind them, he singled me out as an English professor.

Is it that obvious?

Psyching up for Summer, or, Why I Am Not a Math Teacher

This is my seventh year teaching summer school, so you'd think I'd have things mostly figured out. Why, then, am I struggling with what would seem to be a simple math problem? For instance, I was reading in the Course Outline of Record for English 50 that, for outside assignments (and I quote): "Students are expected to spend a minimum of three hours per unit per week in class and on outside assignments, prorated for short-term classes."
This is sort of confusing to me. Assuming I'm understanding this correctly, if students are expected to spend a minimum of 3 hours/unit/week "in class and on outside assignments," that amounts to  a total of 12 hours per week for a 4-unit class. Since students spend 10 hours per week in class during the summer, that leaves only 2 hours per week extra that they would presumably spend on outside assignments.

Not possible. Two hours per week would barely cover reading my syllabus. 

So I have to look at the phrase "prorated for short-term classes," and adjust my numbers. I emailed my department chair and asked for clarification on the amount of time summer school students might be expected to spend on homework for this class. Here's what she said: 

During fall and spring semesters, students would spend 4 hours per week in class, so they can reasonably be expected to spend a minimum of 8 additional hours per week on homework outside of class.  For summer classes, this does require some translation about the "prorating," since summer squeezes a sixteen-week semester into a six-week session; the basic formula is that you can expect them to spend at least twice as much time on homework as they spend in class.

This made sense to me upon first reading. If I can expect my students to spend "at least twice as much time on homework as they spend in class," and if they're spending 10 hours a week in class, I could reasonably expect them to spend 10 hours ("twice as much time") outside of class doing homework for my class. 

But then I read it again. And I got confused again. Does "twice as much time on homework as they spend in class" mean 20 hours (10 + 10) total, or does it mean 10 hours (in class) plus twice as much (20 hours), which comes to 30 hours per week on English 50 related work? 

That seems a bit much.

Now I'm really confused. Is this a math problem or a semantics problem? 

I emailed professor friend with these same questions. I tried to justify my fixation on this by explaining that I want to clearly convey my expectations on the first day of class so they know exactly what they're getting into (I didn't mention that what I'm really thinking about is how often students complain about the amount of homework I assign on Rate My Professor).

His reply: "I'd forget the equations. You expect them to do as much work as during a regular semester. I tell  my students that the first day. Like you say, so many think six weeks means not much work. Wrong!" 

He's right, of course! And by extension, I'm right, too! Students who take summer school should expect to do more work outside of class, not less! The should not be surprised with the amount of work they're assigned!

I've been tweaking my syllabus all morning, but after all my calculating and all my pestering, I think I've got the wording I want:

Because of the accelerated nature of summer school, students are expected to spend twice as much time on homework as they spend in class. Plan on allocating approximately 10-15 hours per week on English 50 homework this summer at minimum.

I italicized "at minimum" so students who are paying attention will understand that it's possible--probable, even--that they might spend more than 10-15 hours per week working on my assignments. 

So that should do it. Summer syllabus is finished. Check. 

(But I emailed my department chair again, just to be sure..).

Rating Me

I try not to give too much credence to the comments posted about me on Rate My Professor. I realize that the students who are the most critical are the ones who likely did not pass the class, so maybe there's some cathartic reward in justifying their lack of success by blaming me. I would probably be better off not reading the comments, in fact, since there is scant evidence that the comments are either constructive or relevant (hotness? easiness?).

Nevertheless, I do read the comments, and I do take them somewhat seriously. I was hoping my students from this past semester (Spring 2011) would "rate" me since I made some significant changes in how I teach English 100 and specifically invited feedback at the end of the semester. Some of the comments from semesters past have been critical of my requirement that they do a significant amount of pre-writing ("Invention & Research" is how my text describes it) for every essay. Students who resent this requirement think this pre-writing is a waste of time (they derisively refer to it as "busy" work). Never mind that students who comply with this requirement tend to turn in better-quality papers, or that there is less likelihood of them cheating or plagiarizing if they are required to pre-write for an essay (one of my main justifications for the requirement, by the way), or that the mere act of writing in and of itself actually makes them better writers. Never mind all that. These 19-something's resent the extra work, resent being marked down for not doing the extra work, resent my attempts to help them improve and become better writers.

Sometimes I think I should just skip it (and save myself a lot of time and trouble) and just assign an essay, tell students when it's due, collect it two weeks later, read it, grade it, return it. That's probably what the other professors do. If the student cheated, or if someone else wrote the paper for them, it's not the professor's problem.

Here are two ratings from Spring 2011:

Terrible teacher! who also might be a little crazy. A ton of busy work, homework assignments are never clear. The essays were easy but the amount of work that goes into them is so much. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS, unless you want to go crazy.

Her work was tedious busy work and i felt nothing good came out of it. We answered questions for "pre writing notes" that we answered multiple times before. She drove me crazy but she was not mean, very nice lady. just couldnt stand the class.

That Will Be "Professor Baby" to You, Young Man

I'm at an interesting blip in the history of my career in which I find myself teaching students who have probably been to my house. Fall semester 2009, for example, in walks Makenna, who briefly dated my son Daniel when she was a freshman in high school. They went to "Backwards Dance" or something. I still have a picture of the two of them dressed up in straw hats and cowboy boots. The previous spring, Cynthia sat in my classroom, best friend of Taylor, former girlfriend of my son. This semester, it's Arya, who played football with...who else? Arya remembers coming to my house for a team dinner. I suppose I should remember Arya, but he played defense and it was all I could do to remember the kids who played offense with Daniel.

I admit to not always welcoming the idea of teaching my kids' friends. Part of me wants to treat them harder, the way my mom did when she was our Girl Scout leader, holding us (her daughters) to a higher standard. The other part of me wants to nurture and coddle the way I might my own kids. I dread grading their papers, especially when they're below par. Worse, of course, is calculating the final grade. If God forbid I have to assign a non-passing grade, how can I look them in the eye next time we happen to run into each other? What if that run-in occurs in my own living room? Suffice to say, if any of my kids' friends ask if I'm teaching English next semester, I try to steer them away.

I still have a couple of years to go before the next cycle of students who graduated with my kids filters through. Then I'll be in the clear, happy and anonymous. Meanwhile, Arya has been a hoot. He's the kind of person who can't bear even a second's pause and must fill the silence with the sound of his own voice. His writing is much the same. He'll write that the author "gives many examples and illustrations." Why not just say "examples" and be done with it? Loquacious doesn't even begin to describe him. He's outgoing, gregarious, impulsive, and a bit crass. This morning he accidentally called me "baby." Standing before him at my podium I said, "That will be 'Professor Baby' to you, young man."

He laughed. We all laughed.

I hope he passes my class.