Category: Teaching

The Motivation of Failure

Last week, I was passed over on a job opportunity for a more qualified candidate.  Such is life, and I don’t bear any ill-thoughts for the results of the job search.  I’m disappointed, but not soured by the experience.  It’s an opportunity to learn and grow, and I find that more important to focus on than to give in to a fixed mindset of self-pity.

After the feelings of sadness ebbed, I found myself experiencing a different feeling – motivation.  This has happened a few times in my life, and it was strange to be reaquainted with it.  There have been a few critical moments in my life where I failed at something important, and that failure created a fire within that motivated me.

It happened when I climbed Mount Kenya in 2007 after I failed my summit in the summer of 2003 of a mountain in Alberta whose name I’ve forgotten.

It happened when I joined the Campus Response Team and became a Coordinator after I failed twice to be a residence don.

And it happened again last week when I wasn’t selected for the job.  The self-critical sadness was overtaken by a motivation to go to the gym.

As I’ve written previously, It’s been a while since I’ve visited the gym.  According to my fitness journal, the last time I was in the gym was around Hallowe’en.  I’ve been rowing this last month a few times a week in the mornings, but I haven’t lifted iron in around five months.

Initially, I stopped going to the gym after my routine was disrupted by travelling to Scotland.  Then I didn’t go out of laziness, and then I didn’t go because I didn’t feel like I could justify going to the gym when I was supposed to be marking assignments and prepping my lectures.  By the time December rolled around I had regained my weight, but I also proposed to my fiancee, and started the planning process for moving out of my apartment.  Along the way, I was tired from a lack of sleep and dissatisfied with what I saw in the mirror.  Yet, it was never enough to overcome my inertia.

Failing to get the job was the final push I needed to hit the gym.  Maybe I needed a physical outlet to vent some frustration.  Maybe it was a form of punishment.  I’d like to think it was something more constructive – I accepted that I failed but I also saw that I could do better next time.  It is within my power to learn from the experience and grow.  The failures seemed to stack until it hit a critical mass; a line was crossed that set off the warning bells that I was heading in a direction I didn’t want to go.

It was time to make the first step and correct my course.

 

I vlog occasionally for my buddy’s YouTube channel, Artpress, and posted this immediately after I got out of the gym.

So, I hit the gym and pumped some iron.  I was nervous to go back as a beginner again, and overcoming inertia was incredibly uncomfortable, but I did it.

Now the trick is to keep it up.  That’s, perhaps, the greater challenge I face.

 

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Blog – The Rewards of Grading

I spent a fair amount of time this weekend grading papers from my class.  It was their first foray into writing a philosophical essay for me, so it was an interesting indictment on whether I was effective in teaching for the first half of the course.  There were the natural ups and downs, but I suspect my grade curve falls in line with what is expected (I have two late papers yet to grade, so the jury is still out).

I jokingly grumbled about the extra work it takes to grade poor performances for me.

This isn’t to say that I look down on students who do poorly, nor do I want to make light of their performance.  For me, marking is an opportunity to help the student learn and develop.  When a student does well, I often feel less compelled to give a lot of feedback because there is little they could have done to do better.  I praise where it’s merited, but I don’t think the students are helped if I don’t offer something constructive to mull over.

Marking poor performance, on the other hand, takes significantly longer to finish for three reasons. First, as in the tweet above, when I’m dealing with plagiarism, I need to do more research to ensure it’s genuine cases of plagiarism versus sloppy citation practices.  I use the TurnItIn service to give a “sniff test” for the paper, but the majority of the cases of flagged plagiarism are merely properly cited references to the text.  Otherwise, I use context clues to determine where students might have plagiarized, such as changes in font, and changes in voice or phrasing the student uses in their writing.

The second biggest reason why it takes me so much longer to grade poor papers (and this will relate partially to my next point) is that I have to sufficiently document my reasons for awarding a poor mark.  This is to not only justify my decision to the student (and avoid seeming arbitrary), but it’s also to protect future me.  My annotations and comments help me in the potential case where a student wishes to talk to me about their mark.  After time has elapsed, I need memory aids to help me understand why I made the decisions I made while grading.

Finally, the most important reason why it takes me so much longer is that I have to identify instances where the student could have done better, and give them direction on how to improve.  It’s not enough to rely on quick notations to tell the student the problem (i.e. Awk or awkward phrasing, SP or spelling error, Citation Needed, Does not follow, etc.).  I have to take the next step to identify the problems and provide guidance for improvement.  This is why the process is so time consuming.  It’s an important process.  I remember how important that direction was when I was in school.  Without the time my profs took to help me through my papers, I doubt I would have won an essay prize in grad school.

Grading has its rewards, though.  Sometimes, you are amazed at the quality of the work that gets turned in, as happened in this tweet below.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

 

 

 

Blog – Break Week

I’ve finally hit week 8 for the course I’m teaching!  At the college I work at, many of the schools have adopted a 7:1:7 model of course delivery, including the School of Liberal Studies.  This means that the 15-week term is broken down into two seven week blocks and a break week in the middle.  It’s like a traditional reading week, except it’s a free pass for students.  They get a week to recharge, catch up, or enjoy a lull in their workload.  While this usually elicits a “kids these days” shake of the fist from people, I fully support the break week.  Many students are first-generation college kids, meaning they are coming from families that may or may not have had the academic support to help them through school.  The transition to college is a big leap, so a break week helps ensure the students have the support they need to succeed.  I prefer to set my students up for success, than to wear them down through a war of attrition.

This also means that I don’t teach this week, and *I* get a break, too!  As you’ve been reading the last few weeks, a break is exactly what I need.  This will give me a chance to prep, mark and feel slightly less pressure during the week.  This also means that I might *gasp* actually get out to the gym this week.  No promises, though.  But, here’s hoping…

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

 

Blog – Week Two of Teaching

I’ve received some feedback that my readers like my posts on teaching and want more updates on how I’ve been progressing.  Since this blog doubles as a record of experiences and things I learn, I’m more than happy to share more of my thoughts on teaching (so far).

General Reflection

Week two ran a lot better in my mind than week one.  I felt more prepared and more excited for the lecture material, which I think translated into a better experience for my class.  There were some concrete steps I took to make things better this time too:

  1. I practiced better self-care.  I slept a little better, ate lunch before teaching, was better hydrated, in more comfortable clothes, etc.
  2. I had a guest speaker, which changed up the pacing a bit.
  3. I showed clips from YouTube to make my points, rather than using lecturing alone.
  4. I had a better sense of the lecture flow I wanted to achieve.

There were, of course, elements that I want to improve on, such as practicing my transitions in speech a few more times, or being ahead of the game in terms of my preparation.  However, I think I am overall doing well.

Shadow Work

I also graded my first round of assignments this past weekend.  I have to be mindful of how much non-teaching time I devote to the course because I’m only, technically, paid for the 3-hours of teaching I do per week.  The rest of the work is factored into my wages, but not actually paid out as hours logged.  I’m not overly worried at the moment because the items I’m marking took me around 2-hours to complete Sunday morning, so it’s not a huge burden at present.  It will, however, become a concern when I have to mark essays and the final exam.

Connecting with Students

I’m receiving positive feedback from students that they are enjoying the class so far.  I’m hoping to gather more formal feedback in an upcoming poll/questionnaire.  As a person who values real-time feedback for self-improvement, I feel waiting until the end of the term to get feedback is a missed opportunity.

Lecture Material

I was super jazzed about my lecture content last week.  I challenged the students’ conceptions concerning health and disease/disability.  I wanted to open their minds to the idea that health and disease are not mutually exclusive.  Disease gets cached out as a deviation from “normal,” but normal is fairly hard to pin down outside of fuzzy concepts like “statistical normality” aka, bell curves.

I opened the chain of thought by discussing how our biases of viewing the world will often distort our thinking, whether we are aware of it or not.  As a fan of The West Wing, I showed the class this clip as a fun but straightforward example of how we react and value parts of our reality without consciously thinking about it.

 

I then moved into real world examples of how biases in our thinking affect how we interact with other people, and how it can have devastating consequences.

 

 

Then, because I thought the clip above brought the mood down a bit, I ended with a fantastic video that challenges our ideas of ability and disability.

 

 

I was pretty happy with how this section of the lecture seemed to land with the students, and I hope it had the intended effect – that our approaches to problems are often bound up in unconscious biases that can limit our thinking.

Anyway, I should get back to prepping for this week’s lecture.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Blog – Reflections on my First Day (Teaching)

Last week, I taught my first class at college.  It was quite the experience to say the least.  Even now, I’m split between knowing that I did somewhere between “adequate” and “well,” and allowing the super self-critical side of me to autopsy the wreckage.

Wreckage is a gross overstatement because things weren’t *that* bad.  I’m mostly critical over some common themes.  First, I feel that the transitions between ideas could have used more intentional thought to make things smoother.  Second, the second half of my presentation was fairly slap-dash in construction and could have spent less time buried under procrastination as I prepped.  Finally, that my oration could have been better performed (read: slow down!).

The biggest observation was on just how exhausted I was when I finished.  There are a number of reasons why I was so drained by the end, all of them preventable in hindsight: I didn’t sleep well the night before, I hadn’t eaten food all day prior to starting class, I hadn’t consumed any caffeine like I normally would have, I wore a moderately heavy sport coat for the first half of the class on an already humid day, I’m very animated when I speak, and teaching just takes a lot out of you.  Only the last thing, I would say, is something I can’t control and will need to learn to manage.  Everything else, yup, that was my fault.  Next time, I’ll bring a lunch.

Those were the “bad” things.  Almost everything else about the experience was great.  I seemed to connect with the students.  I felt that I was able to convincingly show that the students should take these issues in philosophy seriously.  I feel like I earned their attention, despite it being a class from 1-4pm on a Friday.

Of the feedback I’ve received, students enjoyed my class and are looking forward to the rest of the term.  That may be because I did my job well, or it could be because they feel less pressured by the work of the course.  Time will tell on that front.

My final verdict for my first day of teaching is probably a B-.  I made a fair number of points and supported my claims with evidence.  The flow and presentation kept the audience entertained while sticking to a path that was clear to follow.  There is room to improve, in that this felt like a first draft and could use a few more rounds of editing for coherence and to remove repetition, but otherwise a solid entry into the gradebook.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Power Imbalance and Pedagogy

I had an idea for my class that online discussion postings that might be construed as uncivil could serve as a teachable moment in class to discuss and elaborate on.  My plan was not to shame or rebuke the students in front of the class, but to take it as a chance to reflect on the content of the idea and why it might be disrespectful to others.  I ran the idea by a colleague and she cautioned against it.  She pointed out that you never want to be seen as “picking on” a student or singling them out in front of their peers.

Then, I realized that I forgot about the power imbalance that exists between the student, the collection of students, and I when I stand at the head of the class.  Despite how I feel about whether I am truly a teacher, or if I’m closer to being their peer (compared to other teachers they encounter), I must remember that I am still their teacher.  I institutionally have more power; I stand in front of them as an authority.  I have power, whether I realize it or not.

Somewhere along the line, it was pointed out that picking on students picks them out from the amorphous mass that is your class and distances them from their peers.  They are free to stand themselves apart, but I cannot force them for the sake of a teachable moment.

My Post at “The Financial Diet”

A post I wrote for a financial website I follow, The Financial Diet, was published today.  You can find the article here.  I give a brief recap of how I secured my job as a college lecturer (my first class is tomorrow!), and some important takeaways I have from the experience.

Even if you don’t read my post, I still recommend checking TFD out.  They post a lot of great articles and tips for living more frugally, which is what drew me to their site in the first place.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan