The End of a Year

It's been a year . . .

Seasonal staff and my time at Barakel - already fairly documented. 

I left Barakel. I miss it a lot. I miss the people a lot. I miss the forest.

I left Michigan. Never having lived outside of the state before has led to some moments of frustration and unexpected culture shock.

I moved to Milwaukee. Now I know why their sports team is called the Brewers. Lots of beer. I guess it goes with the cheese? Also, cheese curds are delicious and apparently an essential part of any party platter. There's a cheese castle about half an hour away from Milwaukee. I hope to journey there at some point in the upcoming year.

I started grad school. It's crazy, busy, and a mess of stress. I kind of love it. Most of the time. It's been challenging and different and unexpected.

I began teaching rhetoric and composition to freshmen. Freshmen are a frustrating breed. They're excited, nervous, and occasionally incoherent. I loved teaching them, even when they emailed me several times a day with questions. I'll miss that first class. I suspect that no group of students ever quite has the same impact as your first.

Coming up . . .

This next semester I will be teaching two sections of the second semester of rhetoric and composition. Grad school will continue. Being in Milwaukee will continue. Basically, more of the same. Does it ever stop being an adventure?

Christmas and grades

It's over. I've turned in their grades, ruined their GPAs (probably not as much as they thought I would), and fled the state. Technically I left the state before doing those other things. I'm home now and loving being able to watch small children dance around the room wearing antlers.

Yesterday Toby and I spent the day together in Ann Arbor. We went to two stores and then I was tired. His energy remained boundless, as did his commitment to singing Christmas carols. Deck the Halls was a particular favorite. Sadly for me, he only knows the fa la la bits.

During our drive home, we saw a deer in the road. 
Toby: "Where did the deer go?"
Me: "It ran off the road."
Toby: "But reindeer fly!"
Involved explanation about how there are actually different kinds of deer.

Later we passed a reindeer made out of Christmas lights and he exclaimed, "We'll call that one Rudolph!" It was a good day. I'm glad to be home.

One semester nearly over

I have one more class period with my students. It's odd to look back at how nervous we were with each other only a couple of months ago. Today, there was laughter and joking in the classroom that none of us would have been comfortable with. I hope that I can cultivate relaxed class atmospheres next semester as well.

I presented at my first poster conference this week. I hesitate to say that it was a complete waste of time since I at least gained a few free books. As an experience, however, it was underwhelming. The attendees had difficulties negotiating the limited space, so it was difficult for them to see the posters and engage individual presenters.

One more week and I'll be back in Michigan. That week contains many tasks. And at the end of that week, I'll still have a stack of portfolios to grade. But I'm still clinging to the thought of change being only a week away.

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.

Titles are Important

It's hard to believe that I'm in my fourth week as a student and instructor at Marquette. Time is travelling at the speed of light (metaphorically, not literally - it's an important distinction, I'm an English teacher).

As a TA, I have not yet earned the right to be called Professor. So when my students asked me in class yesterday (I'm not sure why they didn't wonder before) whether to call me "Miss Hendrickson" or "Professor Hendrickson," my answer was clear. Miss is the way to go. In a nice affirmation of our student-teacher rapport, one of my students immediately piped up with an explanation. He said that "Professor Hendrickson" was very solemn and stern and that "that isn't you."

I offered to become solemn and stern. Students immediately asked that it not happen on Friday, which is when they are all turning in their first major assignment. I agreed not to "lower the hammer" (their words, not mine) on Friday and we all continued about our business.

It's nice to get a glimpse, however small, into what they think of me.