Grading ... Not Grading

I am supposed to be grading.  It feels like I'm always supposed to be grading.  Yes, I knew this was going to be part of the job going in, but I never in my wildest dreams could have imagined the sheer tedium of grading essays into which virtually no effort has been put.

I have ranted about students and grading before (here and here), but the apathy appears to be getting worse.  Either that, or I am getting more and more bitchy and sensitive about the students' lack of care.

To top it off, at one of the schools where I teach, there is a culture of doing more to make the students happy, rather than put the burden of educational responsibility where it belongs - on the students themselves.  How are we teaching them to survive in the real world if we continuously pander to their dependence?  My teenager is more independent than more than half the students who come into my classroom.  He know that excuses don't fly, so don't even try.  He could teach my students a thing or two about taking responsibility, but they wouldn't hear it.

School can be a fun and exciting time, but the majority of the time spent in school is time spent working, including approximately 2-3 hours of work outside of class for each hour spent in.  Many students don't do the work for reasons unknown to me.  It could be that they're lazy, they forgot, or they just don't bother (I'm leaning toward the last).  Am I not supposed to assign work outside of class now?  I can just see it: "Students are unhappy with completing homework outside of class; therefore, we have decided that all work must be completed in class, so students are free to party and not think about school once they leave every day."  This is not outside of the realm of possibility: students were just given equal parking rights.  If you're an adjunct instructor with classes later in the day, you get to park in the back of the lot.  Hope you didn't piss off any students today, or you might end up with a keyed door.

The whole thing has made me a bit bitter about my chosen profession.  Yes, I entered into this career knowing that I had to do the dirty work, but I didn't foresee the politics involved in making sure students are happy so that they stay enrolled, rather than focusing my energy on those students who give a shit about learning something, about bettering themselves to get that better job, about learning for the sake of gaining knowledge about the world.  Why do I have to spend my and my family's time putting energy into something that so blatantly doesn't deserve it?  Maybe I'll start using this method to grade essays from now on (he uses exams, but I think the principle will hold): Guide to Grading Exams.

I just now realized that my blue pen and correction tape match, as do the grey pen and stapler - that was totally not planned.  I'll try to take that as the silver lining to this cloud.  Maybe it will spur me to continue grading.....

Sunday Morning Ritual

I am a creature of habit.  Quite often, I stick to an unwavering routine, though I'm not against change, especially when it's really really good.  Today was good.

I wake up by 5 every day during the week, and Sunday is usually the only day of the week I don't have to wake up to an alarm.  Of course, when your body is used to waking up at 5, it considers 7 "sleeping in."  So it was that I awoke at 7 this morning.

I decided to go with it and get some things done.  I got my 5 newspapers (yes, you read that right - visit me at www.suzyqpon.com to see why) and got my 5 coupon inserts and checked the ads for more great coupons.  I sorted my inserts and typed up a list of the coupons in today's paper and posted to my website.  I then sorted other loose coupons that I have floating around and started my list for Winco.

I had almost 2 hours to myself and got quite a bit done.  That little bit of quiet was something I really needed.  Once the family began to emerge, I made pancakes for breakfast (Bisquick - recipe is on the box; use the Supreme Pancakes option YUM!), ready to get on with the usual routine - grading and class prep!

Sunday at 7 am - be ready, you'll be seeing me from now on.

Adventures in Gardening

I am not a gardener.  I am got good at keeping plants alive, so I never kept any.  But since we moved into our house, I have found that some plants can pretty much keep themselves alive.  The poppies that come up every March, for example, are extremely hardy and need absolutely no interference on my part to do their thing (you know, make my front yard gorgeous for a few months each year).  The roses in our back yard, as well, have fared without me doing much of anything, other than annual pruning.

But this year, our rose bushes have not done so well.  They grow well and are producing large, beautiful roses, but they appear to have some sort of fungus and they are full of aphids.  We don't like to use pesticides on our plants, so off HC went to OSH to buy some ladybugs.  Tonight, after hosing down the rose bushes and waiting for them to be out of the sun, we released our new little friends.

We all had fun, trying to shake them out onto the plants while many of them flew away and many crawled over our hands and arms.  Finally, we got a large number of them onto the bushes, happily wandering, drinking water, and searching for food.  According to the container, in a couple weeks, our bugs will lay eggs.  I hope in the next couple months, we have lots of larvae and many more ladybugs.

For not being a gardener, I sure am enjoying have living plants in my yard!  I have no idea what to do about the fungus on my poor rose bushes, but once our little friends eat those pesky aphids, we'll move on to that.

One of these days, I will post photos about our wildflower garden (which takes no work, either)! 

Happy May Day!



Freedom!

Yesterday, at 1:53 PM, I felt the most amazing, incredible, wonderful sense of relief.  It washed over me, taking (almost) every bit of stress out of my body.  It wasn't until about 15 minutes later, getting out of the elevator at Howard's office, that I felt the sense of freedom that the end of the quarter brings.  I had a huge, goofy grin on my face as the elevator doors opened.

It is difficult to describe this quarter.  As I do every quarter, I change up the information a little bit, present it a little differently, try to change those things that didn't work in previous quarters.  I don't think it was me.  In two of my classes, my students did well.  The ones who didn't pass knew the reasons why, and they know what they need to do to pass next time.  In my other 2 classes (2 sections of the same class), I had the worst results ever.  It's disheartening when out of a total of 36 students, only 10 pass.  But again, I don't think it was me.

The 26 students who didn't pass all had one thing in common: missing work.  There seems to be this sense among students that it's OK to miss work.  I have this feeling that in high school, students were allowed to make up work at the end of the term in order to bring up their grades, which gave them a false sense of how the world actually works.  In real life, you don't get do-overs every time you screw up or forget to do something.  Sometimes, forgetting or blowing something off has real, definite, and serious consequences.  So, too, in my class. I allow late work - students have basically 2 weeks to get every assignment turned in.  So why is it so difficult to get it done?

The questions will remain - I don't know why the students do what they do and don't do what they should.  All I know is that I'm free today, and I feel good!

Tour of California

Christian and I went off to see the end of Stage 5 of the Tour of California about a mile from where we live in Old Town Clovis. We were hoping to catch a glimpse of Lance Armstrong (ah, the draw of celebrity). Of course, there was no way to know if we saw him - they were going by so fast! All I saw was the dust from the road in a cloud surrounding the riders and the blur of color and spinning wheels as they flew by us on the sprint to the finish line. But it was awesome!


So we went to the finish line where we could see the riders as they came across the finish and slowed down. But, the course was a loop, so we decided to go over one block (7th and Woodworth) to where we could watch them as they sprinted by and then run back and watch them cross the finish line. We made a wise move! We may not have been able to see Lance, but we met some local celebrities - Kim and Kopi, the news anchors for Great Day (local morning news show). We love their show and they were very cool in person. I chatted with them both as we waited, and Kopi was wandering around with a video camera filming for their Great Day Faces segment (they film people at events smiling and waving and then show the footage throughout the morning show). We may be on the news :)

We had our Livestrong signs and chalk and we kept hearing reports about how far out the riders were. It was exciting, and we knew they were getting close when groups of highway patrol motorcycles kept going by. Finally, we saw the riders flying down the street two blocks overs, flashing through openings in the crowd. When they got to us, they were going so fast, and I could barely get my phone up in time to take a photo! I got a shot of the middle of the pack - I have no idea who is in the photo.


As soon as the group was past, we and all the other people in our area, ran back to the finish line to see who would win. We were behind the crowd that had already gathered there and behind the photogs catching their photo finishes. We could barely see, standing on our tiptoes and peering through gaps. But we saw Cavendish ride through, arms held high. Unfortunately, I didn't get a photo of the finish, but here's a glimpse of the finish line...

It was fun to spend time with my kiddo. He rode his skateboard, I got out on a fantastic day for a 2.5 mile walk, we met people we see on TV... And the very best part of all - I got a picture of Christian SMILING!!!!!!!