Parent or Teacher

To be or not to be their substitute parent, that is the question. This certainly must be a question that every teacher asks themselves at least occasionally. However, is this something a university instructor should have to wrestle with?

I have the same group for multiple classes: Introduction to Journalism, Race and Ethnicity in Journalism I, Academic Writing, and Critical Thinking. Let it be known that I have other classes where these darlings are not in attendance, so I am not limited to their lives only. Add to the list the BA and MA students for whom I am the thesis adviser. Hence, I have a full plate.

To make everyone's life easier, I put all of the syllabi, readings, and attendance records into Dropbox, an online storage shed. Every student had to install the program and then I share the folders I want them to access. During my first classes of the semester, I give a thorough demonstration of everything there and how to access it. There is a stern warning about missing more than 3 classes a semester; our longest semester is only 14 classes for 1 1/2 hours as it is, but less if there are too many holidays. As I am a bit atypical, I bring their attention to the fact that my home and mobile numbers are on the syllabi in addition to my office and upon request, they can have my address where they are welcome.

Each fall semester, we go through this honeymoon period where everything is glorious. We are communicating, there is give and take, everything is sickening sweet.  By October, the frosting on the wedding cake is turning sour. By November the signs of further deterioration become apparent as the cake crumbles.

There is a fine line between being a cheerleader and their boss. Everyone needs to feel validated; I try pouring on the gratuitous remarks as they are earned. However, this has a nasty way of turning into childlike, parent me behavior. "I didn't realize there was a quiz today"; "I didn't know this was my third absence"; "I didn't know you meant it when you said the essay was due on November 1st at 8pm sharp and no excuses." Apparently, these are only comprehended as suggestions and not mandates.

A week ago, one of my students came to the Critical Thinking class where he was to lead the class in a discussion of a reading. After we finish the textbook, I end the semester with mystery novel. I find mystery novels excellent ways to practice critical thinking and reasoning. This particular book used is The Magyar Venus by Lyn Hamilton, a Canadian author who I greatly admired, corresponded with, and was greatly saddened to find she passed away. So, this student comes into class and immediately announces that he has not prepared a thing since he had no clue what was expected of him, being this was a novel.

This ignited the internal flares, but I was able to keep them under control for a good thirty minutes. However, when it became apparent that not only had he not prepared, but had not reached out to me for clarification, my temper approached the surface. When it became equally apparent that none of his classmates had even read, I blew like Mount St. Helens.

What students do not realize and I had to make it clear is that university is like job training. You must go to work, be there on time and be prepared to work. No employer is going to tell you what to do every day. Responsibility, responsibility, responsibility! I had to dismiss them early; I was bordering on being livid.

An hour after the class, four of them came to my office to apologize "for the entire class". Two days later, one of the group did this video. I wish I could say things have changed this last week, but they haven't. Two more weeks and we'll have a break from each other for over a month. Maybe absence will make the heart grow fonder once again. If nothing else, the video gave me a chuckle, but Hitler?

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In Loving Memory of Lyn Hamilton

There is hardly a memory lurking in the recesses of my mind as to how I discovered the Canadian author Lyn Hamilton, though I know it was while we were living here in Budapest. Surely, it was some guest who knowing our love of travel, knew we would be a perfect match. After reading one of her mystery novels with Lara McClintoch, the Toronto based antiques dealer who globe trots archeological sites, I was hooked. My search through the used book stores here were not fruitful in producing her titles fast enough, so my book lust demanded placing an order from the US.

One of her books is The Magyar Venus, which has a great deal of Budapest interwoven into the story. After reading and admiring the story, I incorporated it into my Critical Thinking as an end of the semester fun read. Mystery novels require critical thinking skills. When I taught the course on US Contemporary Mystery Novels, I cheated by including Lyn. Well, she was an American, a North American after all.

One thing students repeated loved about the book was the authenticity of the Budapest landscape. She named real streets, real antique stores, real places you can still visit today. With this enthusiasm, there was a prompting followed by a push to writer to her to tell her how much she was appreciated over here in Hungary. She kindly wrote me back offering to write to any student who dropped her a note. A few did.

Being taken in by her warmth as well as her stories, I was devastated when I had read she was retiring after eleven books. More than once I had offered her hospitality if she should return to Budapest. If she would speak to a group, all the better, but not a contingency. When my first book came out, I wrote her to say that I was now part of the published club. Her letter of congrats included her thoughts that writing a travel guide must be harrowing work. By contrast, I think it is easier than writing a mystery novel. 

Over time, I felt we had a slight connection, but I had high hopes of one day her taking me up on the offer of  our home. Today in class, when the student leading the class was prompting a discussion of the novel, she happened to mention that Lyn had died. I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. Of all of the times I was thankful for the Internet in that classroom, this reached the apex of appreciative times. No, I could not believe it. My occasional pen-pal had died at the horrendously early age of 65 in September of 2009. I don't want to go into more deals here, but if interested, there is more here.

Lyn, you stimulated my imagination, pushed some of my creative moments to the surface when I needed them most, and proved me with hours of pleasure traveling the world with you and Lara. I will miss you both a tremendously.

 

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Technology, Where Nothing Can Go Wrong, Go Wrong, Go Wrong

When someone sends me one of those annoying please delete my comments and fill in your own choice lists to "Get to Know You Better" one is always "What is your favorite movie?" I hate that question. I am always at a loss unless I have seen one in the last 36 hours, and then that is it. However, when a movie is a metaphor for living, the title, actors, and story line spring to the forefront of my brain.


That happened just yesterday.My common practice is to scan all of the readings for my classes and put them on CDs. Also on the CD are the syllabus, class schedule and any other pertinent information I want the class to be privy to from the first day of classes. The readings are scanned into a PDF format. Although all of the other documents are in Word. This can create a problem since not all students have Word. If I don't remember to make the files Word 2003 format, if they are using OpenOffice or other tools, they sometimes have difficulty opening them. 


I am teaching a new Social Problems class this semester. I scanned for hours and hours on multiple days. It is a cumbersome project when a book is too large to fit two pages on the scanner at one time. Besides using a textbook, I am using a study guide, making me a scanner prisoner for another 8 hours. 


After it was all completed, I meticulously put each chapter in its own folder along with the chapter study guide. Each was labeled with the chapter title, the book title and authors' names. Opps! File names were too long for the PDF program. Shorten them or the program will kill off the files. Okay. Done!

Now it is time to burn baby, burn...Burn all of this course work onto CDs. Twenty CDs later, I am feeling good. I had all of this done at the beginning of August, so there was no pressure at the beginning of the semester. 

Now a movie flashback to 1973; the movie is Westworld. Westworld was an adventure park for adults where you could live out your fantasy as human-like robots were the actors. As the advertising proclaimed Westworld where nothing could go wrong, go wrong, go wrong..


Tuesday, students started arriving in my office for their CD for the Social Problems class. Eight were distributed that day. Friday morning, I was up early; there was an e-mail from one of the students. "Dear Dr. James, I hate to bother you with this, but I cannot open chapters 2, 3, 5, 7, 8..." basically the whole book. Strangely, the study guide opened fine. 


I tried it on my computer. No problem. I burned a new disc, tried it on the kitchen computer. ERROR message. I thought perhaps the chapters were too large, so I used PDFSAM to break them up into bite sized chunks, burned a CD. No go! ERROR again. What to do, what to do? I have Google sites for different classes, but the maximum size for an upload is 20MB. I would have upload each chapter in 3-5 files one by one. After getting chapter 2 uploaded and starting on chapter 3, Google announced I had reached my quota. What the... I had paid for extra storage where according to my settings, I still had 101GB of storage. After trying different browsers, cleaning the cache, cookies, cupboards, closets, and the bathroom while was at it, still nothing.


If I had to get twenty plus students to bring in a USB stick, it would take forever and they would never catch up on the readings. Brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm. I use Google Docs for tons of my own things, but have yet been successful with getting it to share. It does not play nicely with others. After a Google search, reading some reviews, I found Dropbox. It took me about twenty-five minutes to upload all of the chapters into individual folders. Students have a choice of downloading the chapter in parts or the whole chapter, depending on their Internet connection. Another nightmare averted thanks to my having taught critical thinking classes.

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The Wild West Reruns

Jumping out of the news headlines yesterday was this article and others similar, all in regard to Arizona: Arizona's Immigration Law May Spur a Showdown. Talk about a return to the wild and woolly days of the ole fierce and free shoot'um up Western style of law and order. Well pard'ner if that there fella in the Oval office cannot get this here bit done, we renegades out here in the boonies of ArI-zona will show ya how it is done right and good. Next thing we will wanna be do'in is branding a big "I" on each and every imm-E-grunt we catch being e-legal like, so we can save time later identifying them when they try sneaking in again. Somebody said some guy Nat Hawthorne had this same idear with the letter "A" for those dang woman who could not keep their britches up where they belong.

As an outraged citizen, I believe that if they want to snub the federal laws by imposing these inane state laws, they should also be barred from receiving federal funding. It does not take intensive critical thinking or scrutiny when reading comments from Arizona politicos to recognize the inherent racism, not only with the immigrant issue, but also in regard to our president. It is events such as these that make me loathe being a US American. 

What they are establishing is first a vigilante system, which is going to (pardon the pun) rapidly migrate into a racial profiling situation where anyone of color is stopped and investigated to determine their legal status. Is the Arizona State budget so prosperous that they can afford to waste the resources of their state and local law enforcement officers to deter them from more serious crime prevention? Does the irony escape anyone that the state receives federal funds and then spends state funds in lawsuits fighting the federal government?

Even former Gov. Mike Huckabee said in an interview (link to interview) that he is concerned about the number of lawsuits that this will instigate on a federal level, by civil groups, and individuals that are profiled.

If anyone would bother to check, they would find out that the Mafia originally started as a positive group of Sicilian men who were out to curb injustices. 

The suggestions I would like to promulgate are the following:

1. Tourists both national and international should avoid Arizona.Hurt the economy, wake up the politicians.

2. Don't buy any product, fruit or vegetable that was planted, cared for, or harvested by migrant workers. After all, if you don't like illegal immigrants, you should be willing to pay the price of not having them.

3. Write to the State of Arizona to tell them to get all of those lazy white people off of state benefit programs and put them in the fields to harvest the produce. 

4. US American should write to their own state and federal representatives telling them that they abhor what Arizona has done and will not tolerate replication in their own state.

5. Unless you are 100% Native American, US Americans should look in their own ethnic closets to see what skeletons are hidden in there. How legal were your ancestors?

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So Proud

I remember reading years ago that teachers should keep a journal of their accomplishments, compliments from staff and students, and their successes and their failures. The point of it being that beyond degrees, diplomas, training, passing exams, the real proof of what makes a good teacher is in the daily doing. I had attempted this type of journal a few times, but then get too busy to keep it up. What I do instead is include these kinds of things in the blog, so they don't get lost. Every once in a while, I need a mood refresher, so I know where to come look. Yes, I put the screw ups in here also, so I can either go back and shake my head or have a good chuckle.

This was a response from one of my MA thesis students. I was honored to have had Anna in the classroom for more than 6 different classes. When she asked me to be her adviser, I had no qualms at all. She just recently defended her thesis and I sms'ed her asking how it went.

Dear Dr. James,
Thank you for sending the sms! I thought I would respond in an email, because it might be long...:)
I got a 5 for both my thesis and my state exam. YEEAAHH! I was very happy about it!

When I defended it, I got very good questions from Stanley, and some less relevant ones from Prof. F. She made a comment about the sources I used. She felt that I could have used other libraries than the ones available in Budapest. I didn't really understand what libraries she thought of. When I asked, she said that I should have registered in on-line libraries. I responded that I did not have the financial resources:) Anyway, they gave me a five.
I want to thank you again for all your help! Not just with my thesis! Your courses were the most helpful ones during my university career. I made good use of everything you taught us about writing or critical thinking in my other major as well. I'm sure that without those classes I would not be able to write my Italian thesis (for which I also got a five:)). It was an honor to be your student. Thank you again!!!
Anna

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Bragging Time

I have used blogs with students for a few years now with great results. This semester, I am teaching a new program within the department that I created. It is Journalism, Creative Writing, and Academic Writing. For three classes, I am using blogs. Students have to post weekly. For the Introduction to Journalism class, I handed out a list of twenty questions. They had to find someone they did not know and interview the person using at least six of the questions. My Critical Thinking and Analysis class had to read the full book Ella Minnow Peas by Mark Dunn. It is a fantastic book that is adaptable to many classroom situations stimulating metaphoric thinking. After they finished the book, they had to write a letter to the author sharing their thoughts and feelings. The Race and Ethnicity in the US class had read three articles of White Privilege. For their first blog assignment, they had to take one article and compare it to the class discussion. Now I may be prejudiced, but I think that for new university students whose native tongue is not English, they did an exceptional job. I am very proud of them. Each class can post until the Monday at 5:00 pm after their last class. The hourglass in each signifies that they missed their deadline. If you would like to check out their blogs they are here. Journalism - http://elteintrojournalism.blogspot.com Critical Thinking - http://criticalthinkinganalysis.blogspot.com Race and Ethnicity - http://raceethnicityjourmalism.blogspot.com Any comments will be posted on the respective blog for students to view.

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