April 18, 2005

tj 205: week 13 1/2

12 papers out of 18 in within 12 minutes of the due-date--and when "date" is calculated in minutes, i don't mind being a little liberal with them. 2 i expect in by midnight; they're in the hands of last-minute busy-bees who got permission ahead of time to have the extra three hours, one in my good graces and one grudgingly, since she neglected to tell me there was a problem until after the paper was due. my general policy on that sort of thing sounds something like "NO!" she's a good kid, though, with a good track record, & it seems like a mean thing--and not enough of a writing thing--it's a writing class, they need to be graded for writing or not writing, not for proper excuse-making behavior--to hobble her for.

the other 4? no excuses, no sob-stories in my e-mailbox, no last-minute phone calls... so as far as i'm concerned they don't exist. maybe they'll exist in automatically-reduced form tomorrow, & maybe they won't. either way, i'm going to bed rather than sitting up to wait for either the papers or their excuses.

good news is: i graded the first one before the due-date even rolled around, because it was submitted a few hours early, and it was awesome. A for i'm-not-telling-who-yet.

Posted by ttobryan at 09:54 PM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2005

tj 205: week 13

papers are due monday.

monday night, after we do some last-minute editing work in the computer lab monday morning, but monday nonetheless. my sense is that very few of them have actually planned out the things they need to have all in order for this to work out well, and i'm terrified at the prospect of them turning in 12-15 pages each of crappy last-minute work, but they haven't asked for an extension, & i wasn't going to be the one to propose it. i might do it anyway, giving them 'til wednesday come monday, as an 11th-hour bonus, but i wasn't fool enough to offer today: nothing would get done all weekend!

the other thing i'm terrified about: i've completely not planned for the reality of having 12-15 pages each of paper--crappy or brilliant--to grade in addition to everything else i'm supposed to be doing next week. i've spent more time this semester in downright denial than probably combined throughout the rest of my life.

we spent the week doing small doses of sentence-level work: how (again) to introduce sources, nate's generic these-words-must-be-included thesis formula, prepositional phrases & "tion"-words as indicators that you're making an awful lot of things--probably too many--into abstractions, abstract phrases as less effective (especially when they're endemic) sentence-subjects than more direct "characters" (i hate that term, but so long as i'm using this book--and i like most of the rest of it--i'm stuck w/their word-choice) as acting agents.

we spent the last 2/3 of the week workshopping drafts, too. i gave them lists of things to accomplish, but i didn't do a lot of fierce enforcing. i'm always afraid i'm going to impose too much of my structure on their projects--they have their own needs & worries & agendas. i don't want to waste their time with lists of questions to answer that work well for some of them & totally aren't relevant to where they are for others. but i think i need to do a better job teaching them how to be readers & listeners & suggest-ers. i think i give them too much credit, not for being more capable than they are, but for being more knowledgeable and confident.

Posted by ttobryan at 06:50 PM | Comments (0)

April 07, 2005

tj 205: week 11

conferencing is (feels like?) a weakness of mine.

i don't know if my students know this. i try to be friendly and accessible, and from their responses i think i succeed at that. what i'm less sure of is whether or not i succeed at actually doing or saying anything truly valuable while they're here.

this round wasn't my favorite kind, at least in terms of being able to point to having accomplished anything, although it's much less work: they came in for each a required conference to talk over their research paper plans at the point in the process where they'd done a lot of research, gathered sources, started annotating them for a bibliography due tomorrow, but hadn't really started writing yet. the point was to talk through what was working, what trouble they were running into, what concerns they had about what might be going to work or not work.

when they bring texts, especially when they send me texts to look at beforehand, i have concrete things to talk about. this way i was mostly just listening, identifying potential problems, giving advice about outlining, getting them to talk through potential organizational plans... which, in retrospect, doesn't actually sound bad at all.

but i know there are people out there who are really organized about it, who have scripts & questions to ask everybody, have a list of things to make sure they do, have detailed plans & cover o-so-much-ground... whereas i'm basically chit-chatting.

fortunately, i happen to be a firm believer in the virtue of social interaction as an element of invention. chit-chatting is officially (as of right this minute) part of my pedagogy!

tomorrow i'll go observe a few of dave's conferences & see how he does it differently.

Posted by ttobryan at 07:22 PM | Comments (1)

April 02, 2005

tj 205: week 10

despite the fact that doing so runs entirely contrary to my understanding of blog-ethics, i'm fully intending to go back and fill in a few of these missing weeks. i have my doubts about blog-ethics anyway, to be truly honest, and the point of having a record rather exceeds trying to live up to them anyway.

this week we're at the "have started doing lots of research, have gone through a few rounds of proposals, are thoroughly committed to topics, and are out in the world gathering & starting to write" stage of unit 3; next week we're meeting in individual conferences monday & wednesday & then getting together friday to collect annotated bibs & start talking about drafting & style.

we've actually been writing in this writing class, which i'm quite pleased with. i don't feel like they're doing enough... stuff sometimes--i have a hard time coming up with heuristics when anne asks. but although i'm still talking too much--they're not really discussers, & i have to figure out how to engineer that differently next time i teach this class--i'm often standing by not saying anything at all, because they're writing. and about that part i feel pretty good.

friday it was summaries--i asked them to read part of the first chapter of a sequence for academic writing, & bring in a source they'd found for their papers, & then after we talked about the chapter (including their technical difficulties (a) with getting the pdf to open read-ably (3 of them) & (b) with remembering to do the reading (3 others)) they each wrote both a 2-3 sentence annotation-sized summary of a 3-4 page chunk of one of their sources & a 3/4 page elaborated summary wherein they were supposed to take the book's advice & break their readings into small summarizeable chunks, to make sure that what they ended up with accurately represented the author's distribution of & emphasis on different ideas.

then, almost out of time already, we spent 7 or 8 minutes reviewing wednesday's work with warrants (from chapter 11 in the craft of research)--i couldn't put our nice board-diagram back up because yesterday, inexplicably, the room had a blackboard eraser but no chalk--and had them take whatever they said in their 2-3 sentence summary was the main claim+reason in their piece and find & write out its overarching warrant.

the book does a not-terrible job with warrants, although the chart they use as an example has to be built exactly backwards every time you draw it. working just with the book, it's not very intuitive. once we got it on the board, it made a lot more sense... at least to me. some of the people who most would have benefitted from the demonstration, though, were the ones not there. too often that seems to be the way. tiffanee, for example, who's making a good effort but is easily frustrated & seems to feel like she's just missing a few things everyone else takes (or seems to take) as already-obvious--i try to set up these lessons & activities to build some of those conceptual bridges, & she always seems to miss the days i do it. or casey, who picks these things up really quickly if he's here for them. neither one of them is chronically absent, either; it would bug me less if they were. they're usually there, just not usually on the days it would probably be most beneficial for them if they were.

& that's at least a lead-in to the thing that's been starting to worry at my mind a lot lately about my teaching (& everybody's): to what degree do we design classes--individual lessons more than entire courses, for me, but i've heard other people say they do the opposite--around one student, or around 2 or 3, when there are 20 of them there who may or may not have the same or even similar needs & interests? do we always do that? (& only notice when that one student isn't there the day the lesson's just for him or her?) do we have any choice but to do that? we couldn't teach 20 lessons per class even if we could know exactly where they're each at & what they most need to hear.

Posted by ttobryan at 01:55 PM | Comments (0)

March 04, 2005

tj 205: week 7

today was the final (extended) deadline for the pairs/groups paper we've been working on, and i only had 4 out of 8 groups tell me that for some reason or another someone who wasn't there was responsible for materials that should have been in the folders of work that i collected.

i suppose this is why some people micro-manage. i can't bring myself to do it. a) i really do believe they need to learn on their own to manage their time, to plan for their contingencies, to be accountable to me & one another, & b) i really don't care. i care about my students. i care about their writing. there's plenty to care about in those things--there's far too much, in fact, if i'm really doing it honestly & completely--for me to siphon off some of that energy for caring about whether the folder's in my hand on tuesday or not until wednesday.

so the folders--group folders, with group work, but with today's individually-written reflection-statements--are in, with a few pieces still trickling down the stream, and we've started brainstorming--today we made little charts transforming broad and more narrow topics into claims to look at their research-potential, which activity i need to come back to once they're solid with what they want to do--research topics for paper 3.

they're less than thrilled that the two run right together, but we don't have time after break to start then and finish, so we need to get this going now; i explained that and i think they're with me on the logic. beyond that, it doesn't matter: i do still get to set the schedule, even if i also have to let them flex it a little to make gaps to fit their own lives into.

the people who weren't there today i'm genuinely disappointed in, both because of the missing pieces in others' folders & b/c coming in once in a while for a deadline really shouldn't be that hard. but i guess if i don't act like the enforcer, occasional disappointment is a price i'm going to pay. it's like i know all of these things--i did take many years worth of education classes, after all--but until i try each one of them--and i think i'm different about late work every time--to see how i respond, how students+i respond, how much stress it generates in return for the other kinds it alleviates, it doesn't matter what i've been told; i have to do it.

i'm excited about unit 3. i hope they are too. i'm worried about my no-shows, b/c at least one of them seems to be losing his grip at the moment. i also--and i've never seen this happen in other places the way it happens in syracuse--still have on my roster a student who hasn't been to class in a good two months now, who can't help but fail & yet can't, apparently, be bothered (or else she's in denial) to complete the paperwork to drop.

last random detail to remember: i've misplaced or forgotten to read casey's re-write 3 different times; he should not have to keep reminding me to fetch it off of blackboard; i look like a disorganized mess when people have to keep asking over & over for things they should have had long ago; i need some more reliable way of keeping track of the notes to myself i make in class when we have these little reminding-chats so that they don't end up buried in a folder i don't remember to open, where they do nobody any good at all. the good news is that i have found, downloaded, & printed it now, & should be able to give it back to him on monday! maybe he'll forget the old requests in light of me being so on top of the most recent one?

listening to: kenny larkin | tedra

Posted by ttobryan at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)

February 25, 2005

tj 205 week 6

we're teetering on the edge of being finished w/unit 2 & sliding into 3, & i let myself be bullied into extending the deadline of the one into the gearing-up period of the other... although i recognize that that's really just linguistic dodge-ball: they weren't actually bullies, & i didn't decide anything that didn't make sense; it would have been more arbitrary to keep the date just because it was decided-on than to change it based on polite requests for a little more time to coordinate around group members' schedules.

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

Posted by ttobryan at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2005

tj 205: week 5

(no, i don't know exactly what happened to week 3--it must have been swallowed in that kennedy reflection.)

unit 2 is pretty much running itself, & i'm delighted. we've been lucky enough to get lots of chances to be in the cluster--teaching at 9:30 means that not many people are meeting then, & so the competition for the space isn't fierce at all--so they've gotten to do some unstructured initial-research browsing, & then to walk away from it to read a few chapters of the craft of research to talk about & do mini-activities from, supplemented by improv debate, of course, & then monday we're back in for them to get serious now that they've had a chance to reflect on both their processes & the specific projects they want to undertake.

nagging (although ostensibly already either solved or solveable--look, resident anxiousness, refusing to be logically quelled!) concerns:

Posted by ttobryan at 08:38 AM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2005

on observing, & being observed (p.1)

i prepped for class today more than i usually do, because i knew in advance an observation was happening... or at least because that knowing coincided with my plans to do something i wasn't entirely familiar with already. usually i don't plan much at all; i sketch out intentions, & then i go w/the flow. & i think it was prepping that made me a little nervous, because usually i'm also not nervous at all about being observed. the little disappeared once i got going, of course, b/c i was responsible to 16 people who had something to learn from what i had to say, & 1 there (ostensibly) to critique, & critical mass of interest/purpose triumphs really easily in that direction for me. & then my usual approach takes back over--i didn't do half of what i planned to, but elaborated on what was working well to let it keep on doing so.

anne came to be my stealth-observer, but she wasn't very stealthy, mostly b/c i gave her no opportunity to be--fortunately, she didn't want to be, & responded beautifully to me throwing her into a demonstrative skit with no warning whatsoever (i picked an easy question). & the class was terrific.

"housekeeping" first, of course; here's something to keep in mind about blackboard, who else has responses to hand in, here's a re-cap of why you're revising summaries (i should e-mail a reminder just to make sure we've all got it all straight, b/c i keep adding tiny things to make sure that they end up w/a paper trail to refer back to come write-up time) & by when & what "summary" really means anyway.

then i read them a passage of burke on the "parlor model" for visualizing the researcher's job/positionality, having them close their eyes & visualize the actions he described, & from there took them to thorley's key verbs that encapsulate the same idea: there are ongoing conversations out there about whatever you want to learn about. your job is to 1) locate those conversations, 2) listen in to what's being said by whom, 3) report back on what you've heard (geniuses, they got right away that "summarize" was another verb for that step) & THEN & ONLY then "weigh in" with your own ideas, interpretations, questions, responses.

we talked a little about that, in terms of the work they've started doing as conversation-locators & listen-in-on-ers w/their projects so far, & that seemed to clear up too a little of the confusion about how summarizing isn't responding, b/c they're distinct steps in the model, & the i asked them "so let's say you've been kicking around this question about why you're here--why this is a required course in the first place. where might you locate conversations about that to listen in on?" & they had a few good ideas, & then eugene pointed at me, & then i said "oh, look, & there happen to be two of us here!" & threw the question at anne.

& we went back & forth for a few points talking about some pros & cons to the requirement, & she brought in some scholarship on both sides (crowley & i can't remember who in opposition), & they listened. & then i had them summarize/"report back," sharing what they wrote down around the circle, & then i had them "weigh in" first on paper & then sharing those contributions too, & then anne & i decided we needed them on the next decision-making board, because they brought really thoughtful & good considerations to the table. (& obviously i'd completely forgotten about any baggage related to "observation" i might have wandered in carrying by then, b/c we conducted this conversation w/me sitting cross-legged on the table between tacie & julianna, b/c i wanted to be closer to the rest of them & not just standing at the board-end far away.)

& then i asked them & their partners to start "reporting back" a little on paper about the conversations they'd started listening in on so far in their research, & we spent the last 15 minutes of the period on that, with me wandering around to listen in & contribute & ask questions.

it was great. seamless. building from one idea to another. they started out w/slightly dubious faces, got into it in the middle, & i had to interrupt their busy working to dismiss them at the period's end.

as anne noticed, as we walked chattily back across the snowy, sunny campus, they're a great group. far-ranging in opinion, background, experience, interests... but all with interests in putting something into this, & getting something out. i may be totally faking my way through this course, but i'm not in any danger of drowning at all. because they're great. and this really is--more than it's ever been in courses i've taught, although i've often idealized about it being (& said it was to try to nudge it there) a collaborative project. i told them this course would only be good if they made it good. they're making it good.

Posted by ttobryan at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)

February 07, 2005

tj 205: kennedy in retrospect

i'm a little behind, as you can tell, although since i wasn't actually here friday to finish out the week, i suppose being off-rhythm isn't entirely inappropriate. it's the first day of week 4, and we're at the end of our requisite "researched text," which i'd be remiss if i didn't mention i've had plenty of hesitation regarding teaching and talking about. i tried not to show that. i tried to act confident, act relaxed about the potentials for disagreement, & to channel that into the discussion-forum--which was amazing, and i need to figure out how to get it into a format i can post ethically.

we had a fantastic discussion today about people's reactions to kennedy's book as a whole. most of them said they'd recommend it to others, that they were glad they'd read it, that there was a lot in there that either they hadn't known, or they thought others needed to know, or both. stepping up to be particularly articulate about it, george said "i would definitely recommend it. because i think a lot of people--especially a lot of black people--don't know nearly enough about the word, about its history, about what it means." jesse added: "we think about a lot of this as being history, things that happened a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago. but a lot of the examples he's talking about happened just a few years ago. this is still relevant--it's still going on today."

they were also observant about its rhetorical properties; john said he'd reccommend the content but only moderately recommend the book itself, because the abrupt ending frustrated him. he was looking for more of a conclusion, more guidance as to what to do. even as he said this, though, he started making room for qualification; as others immediately stepped in to point out, there are no answers. kennedy knows, just like they know, that exposing the complexity of the issue doesn't solve the tension underlying it. "you can't just tell people 'don't say nigger,'" george said. "they won't do it."

but it's still a book, as several people noted, and we have expectations about books. "we expect conclusions," casey said. "this looks like he just... quit. his whole conclusion is four pages long & doesn't say anything." i brought up authorial choices & the tension between form & content--they agreed that the content required leaving the discussion open-ended, but most of them thought the form demanded something else, & that put us in a great place to start talking about the choices they'd soon be having to make regarding their own projects. they'll have to choose voices as well, and consider the audience they want those voices to reach. landel spoke approvingly of kennedy's stylistic decision to be straightforward, using plain language and putting aggressive ideas right out there, rather than circumlocuting using the legalese that as a harvard law professor we can only assume he has at his ready disposal. "he was writing to everybody. regular people," eugene summarized.

the best part was their comfort level. george and eugene let the word fall un-self-consciously, nobody else flinched, they contributed ideas that didn't entirely agree without frowning at one another, people who hadn't been saying much spoke up (maybe feeling particularly qualified by the subject matter?)... it was a good class. i don't want to say "i did that," because i didn't. they did. if i'm lucky, if i'm good, decisions i made helped enable more than restrict the possibility from forming, but that's all.

Posted by ttobryan at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2005

tj 205: week 2

so far, so good.

monday, we played around with handbooks, doing a little scavenger-hunt activity to get them acclimated to whichever text they'd chosen, & then did really useful* mock-ups of an annotated bibliography for them to emulate for wednesday.

wednesday, they turned in bibs, we worked together to get a list of paper 1 criteria on the board as a collective rubric, and then they looked over & made suggestions on each others' initial (2pg-ish) drafts.

today, we met in the cluster, they turned in papers, i introduced the kennedy text (there was much silence. we'll work on that. they don't (get to?) talk enough yet) & an idea of what paper 2's assignment is going to look like, then we walked through blackboard's features together, then they uploaded to the dropbox word files w/their preferences for project-types, & lastly & most importantly, we got into the discussion forum as a class to have a chat about saying/using nigger in class.

*monday, i felt like a supergenius. this mock-bib activity? 3 goals, 1 game. it was terrific. what i asked them to do: 1) think up a few good questions about research & writing work habits to ask their classmates. 2) interview 3 classmates about their work habits & preferences. 3) look up proper citation format for personal interviews. 4) imitating the example i handed out & using that citation information, summarize what they learned from each interview into an annotated entry in a short (3-4 item) bibliography. end result? they got to know each other better, they had to be reflective/reflexive about their own research/writing skills/habits, & they got some practice using the form before having to duplicate it based on their outside research for wednesday.

wednesday 3 new students joined the class. on the last working-day of the unit. i'm not supposed to complain about registration policies & the like at this point, because it's like this everywhere, and there's nothing to be done about it, and if i were smart i'd just plan to waste the first week of class so that all the late-adds didn't start out behind & thereby tangled in my hair, but i refuse. i only have 15 weeks; i'm using them. even if i always have to double-back.

today only one of those new students showed. i haven't re-checked the roster. maybe i scared the others off. maybe they couldn't find the cluster. maybe they just didn't feel like coming in, and will show up monday all blinky-eyed and further behind than ever. can't cross the bridge until i arrive at the river.

the forum is... i don't know yet. people put some good stuff out there. they got right to the crux of several issues we're going to have to take up, and they didn't all agree--right off the bat, there's some difference of opinion concerning the gravity of the word, the propriety of its use, the designations of people who are and aren't (or should and shouldn't be) "allowed" to use it, the way we should handle it in class, the difference, if there is one, between hearing it and only seeing it written. i'm not sure whether i should take all of that input in and do something to summarize or respond to it, or if i should turn that task over to them. my inclination is towards the latter--but am i going to stir up trouble by doing so? and, more importantly, will it be productive trouble, or the kind that creates mistrust and division & will screw up our subsequent collective work?

Posted by ttobryan at 03:22 PM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2005

tj 205: plansketch

here's what it looks like at the moment:

details forthcoming, i can only hope...

but that way i mix it up--they work sometimes collaboratively, sometimes w/partners, sometimes alone (or at least w/others' help on individually-defined projects); they have short, quick assignments and longer ones w/more development allowed/required; they have opportunities to do both guided and unguided topic-selecting: lots of room here for a wide range of learning experiences & for them to do a LOT of the work of defining & guiding our foci--my favorite! now i need to figure out a) a timeline for all of this, b) when & on what schedule to assign the craft of research (we'll do kennedy the 1st week of unit 2), c) how & where i'm working presentations in, since i'm sure they're required, d) what role blackboard is going to play, & e) what i'm going to expect/demand in terms of portfolios of informal work. i want to see some of it and interact with them about it, but do i need to grade it? is it enough to give them some feedback (maybe verbal) about what they're doing? can i handle that entirely in conference conversations and/or in the classroom while groups are working on other things, and never take huge stacks of their process-work away with them & home with me?

this is me, giving uncertainty a a GREAT BIG HUG.

Posted by ttobryan at 05:33 PM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2005

tj 205: week 1

brilliant decision #1: have the 2nd day of class in the cluster (especially nice when the cluster's next door to my office instead of across campus and it's -12 degrees outside), to 1) let students "get their hands dirty" doing something instead of spending the whole 1st week listening to me talk b/c they aren't ready to speak up yet, 2) give them an easy cooperative project to encourage conversation--again that i'm outside of, b/c i'm stationed at the front or pacing around and they're sitting facing each other in small groups--something our classroom simply won't physically allow, 3) introduce them to some resources, to the building where the clusters live, & most importantly the building where my office lives (they'll need that)*, & 4) put off starting out in a groove of any kind.

what we did:

on day 1: "went over" the syllabus (i still need to get better at that, but it's so boring. and i feel like dwelling over-much is insulting, like it implies they can't read. it's much more my style to give them plenty of time to read & then take questions. except that then a) the room is silent, & b) they don't ask many questions. i wish there were talking instead of silence; i'm not naive enough about this, though, to think that me talking (especially when i'm just reading what's already in front of them at them with periodic embellishments) is actually an improvement over silence), introduced/talked about (got a few more questions here, which was good) their 1st writing assignment & the night's homework to get it rolling, played the name-game, & had everyone write names on the board for the visual learners. yes, there will be a quiz.

for HW they called someone who knew how they had been named to do some relatively informal interviewing & searched online for general information about 1) their own name(s) & 2) naming practices in general and/or for specific cultures.

on day 2: in groups they shared sites they had found, did more searching, & then collectively created & e-mailed to me a list of sites their tables had found helpful or informative either about just their own names or about naming more generally. we did a too-fast once-over of resources on the library's homepage (i promised to come back to it in more detail when their next projects call for more detailed research), & then pulled chairs to the center table to share anecdotes about interviewing, what people had found, & the stories of their own naming.

my HW was to compile their lists of suggested web resources & send it to the class (done); theirs is to physically go to the library & get their hands on some other types of sources for these papers.

reflective moment: they seemed busy, curious, a little unfocused but in an exploratory, not-bored way. a good beginning. i'm thinking this is working--starting with a really simple, very personal project to get them to play a little with research tools before we focus in on more ostensibly school-related topics. they all seemed to enjoy telling their own stories. i need to make time for more of that next week--we didn't hear from everyone, it'll help us get acquainted, & discussing research out loud is a habit i want us to get & stay into.

*i saw someone's class come trooping through the building on day 1 having an orientation "field trip." don't know if i think that's a good use of 1st-day time or not--i like & don't like the idea. hm.

Posted by ttobryan at 01:23 PM | Comments (0)