I was observed this week. The director of the program came to watch me teach. I was nervous. Then I was terrible. I blame my students. Under normal circumstances, it's difficult to keep them from talking the entire time. But when I needed them to participate in class discussions as part of my displayed lesson plan . . . dead silence. It's discouraging, but I'm trying not to dwell. There's always next semester's observation.

Deadlines pile up at the end of the semester. I'm currently trying to stay at least a couple of hours ahead of them. My day today has been spent watching scenes of violence from American films and attempting an amateur dissection of the film techniques displayed. Hurray for the study of Medieval British Literature? It's the most random final assignment ever.

Grading

Grading has become a regular part of my life. Students turn in free writes, short writes, and essays. I read them. I assign more. They turn in more. It's a cycle.

I just returned my students' third major paper to them. This means I have graded 57 papers for this class. I then realized that I am a hard grader. Out of those 57, only two earned A grades.

It's a difficult process. A single paper can take me from forty minutes to an hour-and-a-half to grade. It's time consuming. It forces me to reflect on myself as a teacher and the things that I prioritize in writing, which is a good thing, I think. But sometimes I feel as though I've failed them as a teacher - I start to internalize the grade I am giving them. Then I have to stop.

The line between caring about the performance of my students and assuming responsibility for it is a fuzzy one. Ultimately, they are the owners of their writing. I can offer support and guidance, but I can't write their papers for them. I'll try to hang on to that scrap of knowledge as I finish out the semester. Only a couple more rounds of the cycle and I'll be assigning them their final grades - the grades that will stay with them for the rest of their college years. No pressure.

So, this blog was last updated nearly two months ago. Sorry about that. You can all breathe a sigh of relief; I am alive. Milwaukee has not yet swallowed me whole.

I am teaching one lucky group of nineteen students how to write as college freshmen. As far as I can tell, it's going well. There appears to be improvement from paper to paper and none of them openly hate me. The director of the First Year English program will be observing my classroom on Friday. That observation will give me some feedback from a third-party. I'm only mildly terrified.

Classes proceed apace. As the end of the semester nears, so do the due dates for my various papers and presentations. There's time enough to complete everything if I can avoid the trap of easy procrastination. In other news, I've developed a coffee-habit. This habit is particularly useful on nights before major projects are due. I plan to break it again over Christmas.

Here is where I would normally put some kind of conclusive or summative paragraph. Not today. I'm breaking the mold. Insert your own conclusion here.