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This is a short
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The Fycomp Page Has Moved

I switched the Fycomp blog from blogger over to wordpress. Here is the new address

http://fycomp.wordpress.com/

Hope to see you all there

MF

Week Six Wednesday

I don't know. I felt like I could have done better today.

The assignment was for them to read one of three very short essays (at home), and come to class prepared to discuss them, particularly in terms of the introductions and conclusions.

As is somewhat typical in this kind of situation, my students didn't want to talk much.

I should have anticipated that this was going to happen and come up with some concrete activities or questions to break them out of their apathy, but instead we all pretty much sat around like a bunch of semi-retarded children on a broken down short buss.

Next time, I need to plan on their lethargy and come up with specific strategies to break them out of it.

Week Six Monday

Monday has become fairly routine. I hand students their weekly essays (graded over the weekend) back. Then I tell them what the essay assignment will be for that week (this week its compare and contrast).

After that I ask them if they have any questions and then I usually turn their questions into a session in which we go over some of the ways to organize or come up with ideas for the assignment.

That's about all we did today.

Week Five Friday

The only interesting thing that happened today was an interesting decision I had to make.

I found an online grammar quiz for my students to take. The assignment was simple: click on the link, take the quiz, and print out the sheet that has your results. The problem was I had trouble deciding whether to have them print out the sheet with their mistakes on it (which would give me and idea what they needed to work on) or to have them go back and correct their mistakes (which would help them to learn more).

I decided to have them fix their mistakes online, then print out the results and hand them in. It felt to me that it was more important for them to practice their skills than it was for me to "catch" them making mistakes, but I can see advantages to either way.

Fouts's connection with his students or week five wed.

Last year, when I taught freshmen composition for the first time, I started off as awkward as all of my fellow Teaching Interns. I often became slightly confused (big surprise for those of you who know me) and felt uncomfortable. 

Also last year, there came a specific moment when I knew that myself and my students had made a connection. This was not necessarily an educational or pedagogical connection, but the kind of connection that you could call rapport. Rapport is something that, I am led to believe is not altogether common in the teaching field, although, I imagine that all good teachers develop it to one degree or another. 

Anyway, my "rapport moment" last year, occurred when, through a conversational chain of circumstance that I really don't remember, I attempted to dance the charleston. My students laughed. I laughed. After that, something had changed between us. I have a feeling that the something is the thing that can make the difference between a good teacher and a great teacher. 

This week I had a moment like that when we were talking about how to write an essay around the idea of "definition." I was going over a certain way to define an idea and one of my students said "couldn't we make a venn diagram of that?" 

See the thing is, I have a particular affection for venn diagrams. 

well, we ended up staying late working on our venn diagram (a diagram that depicted the definition of "potato chips." and one student even stayed while I turned off the lights and locked the door to talk about how cool venn diagrams are, how mystical in their simplicity. These are conversations that you can only really have on college campuses with young and hopeful undergraduates. 

so that's it. I feel we have connected on some level that is slightly different than just plain old teacher / student. I should admit here that I have had a couple martinis while writing this so I may be waxing sentimental...but I don't really think I am. I know rapport when I feel it.

Week Four Friday

I suppose the interesting thing that occurred was related to the length of the in class writing assignment. I told the students in my first section that their answer should be "approximately one page double spaced." 

there were two problems with this. In the first place, the Blackboard system that I have them write their responses on doesn't do double spacing and also doesn't do "pages." In the second place, I realized, after I said this, that the assignment didn't really warrant a one page answer. Not that it was impossible mind you. Well, I told them to do their best.

For my second section, I tried something a little different. I told them that there was not length requirement. I said. "there is no length requirement. If you think you have said all there is to say on the subject, you're done. But, if you think that any of your ideas can be unpacked a little more, I urge you to take the time to do it." 

well, the result is fairly inconclusive. Both classes wrote about the same amount of actual text. It would take me some time to decide if one class was more thoughtful than the other, but I don't really think this is very likely.