Cinnabar and Alabaster

as for the groups, they seem to be... wildly various, but problem-solving on their own & not crying to me for intervention, which is really all i ask. they're going about it very differently, and i'm trying to be pretty hands-off about it:

eugene & landel & tanard are doing a lot of their work together in athletic tutoring, & always look a little scattered about it, but have astute questions & observations to make when i come around to see how they're doing; tiffanee & casey c. are having a little trouble working around a rush week issue, but seem to be juggling it with aplomb on both sides; george & nicole are so on top of the working-together deal that they're making each other nervous about whether or not they're overlooking something, i think because they both think this should be harder than it is; i'm not sure what john & javier are doing, but every time i check in they have either a question or an answer at the ready; bryce & julianna and the tacie-casey-jon crew are so organized they make my academic work look like a train wreck. jen & ken are kind of a train wreck in their own right, but they're aware of it & taking steps--maybe not the best steps in the best order, but they're learning from the stepping anyway, & that's really what it's all about. i'm a little nervous about scott & jesse only because so very much of what they're up to is going on behind the scenes, but they keep giving me chances to ask one or the other of them alone if it's working, and i'm getting guarded but hopefull yesses from both, so we're just going to keep rolling on.

the big fear with group work is always that someone will disintegrate & take somebody else along, & i think we're in the clear on that; the ones who are a little off-balance seem either to be stablized by who they're working with or working to counter-balance somebody else's "off," so i'm not anticipating any pinpoint-blame-able falls. i do worry that i'm not doing enough... hands-off as a philosophy works for me, but i'm not sure--you're never sure--how much guidance they really need, & how well they really know whether they have it as under control as they seem to or not until the work comes in. we're not spending much class time on the craft readings, because i'm not getting the sense that they need the same babysteps, but i don't want to find out later that i've stepped entirely around anybody who doesn't even know he/she is behind to ask for a hand.

they have a chunk of draft, or most of them did, in class today; they did a global workshop today & have a more specific one monday; monday we start brainstorming for unit 3, close-edit papers, & then they're on their own to finish up for friday while we carry on. we've talked about claims, today they were scrutinizing each others' introductions for background, problem-stating, & responses, describing concluding strategies, & trying to account for main & supporting claims (i should really have them share those findings on monday before we get to the close editing)...

so, yeah, we're rolling, rolling, rolling right along.

listening to: jill scott | honey molasses