Evaluations

This morning I found my student evaluations back from the summer courses I taught in my mailbox.  They are high, my friends.  They are embarrassingly high.  My average score for the Women's Studies course I taught was 6.8 out of 7 points, and the average for the American lit course I taught was 6.6.  The director of Women's Studies stopped me and told me that my average is a full point higher than the department average.  I received similar scores for the writing courses I taught in 2009 and 2010.  And the comments were great too.  One of my lit students wrote, "If she isn't a tenure track faculty member, you need to make her one NOW!" Here's hoping the powers at be at CU are listening!

To the student who addresses emails to Mrs. Archer

Dear Student,

Thank you for the email asking me to read your essay for your political science class.  I'll be sure to get right on that since I don't teach political science.  I'm happy to help you in any way possible.  You'll forgive me if I can't comment on content as I'm not a political scientist, and you'll understand if you don't get it back right away since I have a stack of my own students' papers to grade.

I'd also like to remind you that I introduced myself to class as Dr. M on the first day, and I made it very clear that I prefer to be addressed in that way.  My name is not now nor has it ever been Mrs. Archer.  In fact the only person who uses that name is my mother-in-law, who not only does not know how to use email but is even less likely to be willing to proofread your political science essay for you.  In the future, direct all emails to Dr. M--that is if you want me to respond.

Dr. M

Teaching

I just want to write that I totally love my English class. Given the structure of CU, I've been teaching the same class since September, so I've really gotten to know these students. And these are some bright, considerate, thinking individuals. I was uncertain about teaching a year long course, but now I love it. I think the method has a lot of pedagogical merit, and I can't wait to teach another one.

Leverage?

Last week I posted about an odd conversation I had with the director of the Writing Program, in which she made it clear she'd like to hire me. A day or so after that I met with a former student who is applying to grad school, and she asked me to write her letters. I quickly agreed as she is quite bright, although not the best writer. She then asked if I could supervise her thesis if she is accepted into the MA program in Women's Studies at CU. It seems the Canadian system is quite a bit different than the American one. When students apply to grad programs, they must have a project in mind for either their thesis or their dissertation, and many schools, including CU, require students to specify who they want to work with on their application. This student wants to work with me, which is great but really isn't.

I'm part-time. Sure, I teach in three departments, but I'm still part-time. I don't even have a term-appointment (which is the equivalent of a visiting position), although apparently that's been discussed. I know I can't supervise this student, and that annoys me for a few reasons. First, this is a project that she conceived of in one of my classes. Right now it's a bit big, but it has real potential. Second, this student also has a lot of potential, but she's the sort of student who will need a bit of hand-holding. She needs someone who will push her but who will also give her the room to grow as a scholar. As I said, she isn't a great writer, but she is willing to put the work in to improve. In the two courses I have her in, she's already improved a lot, but she still has a long way to go. I'm worried that no one else in the program will give her the attention she needs.

From a completely selfish standpoint, I want the powers that be to know that there are students who want to work with me. I am managing to carve a niche out for myself within this university. So I have a meeting with Dr. Feminist later today to discuss this student and to let her know that she wants to work with me. I think this gives me some leverage, but who knows?

Holy Crap! Students can be so stupid!

I'm currently sitting in C's office trying to grade, and he keeps interrupting me to ask various questions about Turnitin.com. He's never used it before this semester, so he's a bit confused. He is trying to understand the whole report system. One report indicates that the paper is 60% plagiarized. He asked me to help he decipher the report, which I did (for those of you not familiar with Turnitin.com, it recognizes sources, but it doesn't recognize formatting. Therefore, just b/c Turnitin.com says a paper is plagiarized doesn't necessarily mean it is, as it doesn't recognize quotation marks, footnotes, or parenthetical citations).

I looked at the paper for him and explained the various color coding (each source that the student may have copied from is given its own color). This paper is clearly plagairized, as it contains entire paragraphs copied from other sources. So C started the process of printing stuff off, and then he decided to download the paper as a word document to compare that version to Turnitin.com's report. All of a sudden, I heard C utter a string of four-letter words--some words he hasn't said in a long time. Then he said, through gritted teeth, "You have to look at this." I walked over to his computer and just started laughing. Instead of typing names and words, like Raphael and chiara, the student literally cut and pasted them from Wikipedia and various online dictionaries. When the student did this, he forgot to remove the hyperlinks, so all C had to do was click on the highlighted word (in a Word document) to get to the source where the kid took the word and corresponding passage from. C is pissed, but, frankly, I'm rather amused!

One more thing

I forgot to say this: I taught my first class on Tuesday, and it went really well. The young women (only women!) are really bright and interested in the material. We don't meet again until Tuesday, and two of them have already posted really smart questions on the discussion board. I wanted to add that to remind myself of the things I am enjoying about CU and CU Land.

Dear Ms. M: I can't find any sources

Dear Ms. M:

I've been frantically trying to find sources for my research paper, but so far I can't find any except ones that offer a synopsis of the novel. It seems that no one has anything to say about Charles Chesnutt except Chesnutt himself. The paper is due in a week; what do I do?

Signed, Searching Unsuccessfully

Dear Unsuccessful:

I just wasted 10 minutes of my precious time (time that I'd rather have spent researching my own project) searching for sources on Chesnutt, and lo and behold, after 5 minutes on the MLA database (which, as you'll recall, I introduced you all to in class), I found over 70 sources on Chesnutt written in the last 8 years. I surveyed these quickly and emailed you several citations that I think you'll find helpful. I'm not sure why these were so hard for you to locate--perhaps it was the search term I used. After all one does not normally think to search on the title of the novel one is working on. In the future, I suggest you consult the reference librarians (which I've repeatedly told you to do) as they will be able to help you find a plethora of sources, most of which will be available in our own lovely library.

Signed, an annoyed Ms. M