Morning in the Big Easy

Cafe au lait & beignets by the river this morning followed by a walk around the area to get my bearings. Convention Center is a few blocks from my hotel; CSCC conference starts later today at the Center. Not a long walk from here, but I'm already wondering about the comfort index of the shoes I brought along.

Life is a mix of things here -- tourists, convention goers (all so very conspicuous with their name badges!), locals, and people wanting to make some money. I'd prefer a quieter look at NOLA -- off the beaten path. But today has been a good introduction. Even though I don't have my camera I've looked at things through a photographer's eye & have enjoyed the beauty of the architecture, the kaleidescope of people, the street artists & tarot card readers, and even the guy trying to make a buck hustling tourists for a shoe shine.

As I looked at the river today, I tried to imagine what it must have been like as Katrina approached, followed by the levee failure ... hard to see evidence of the devestation, but this is my first visit to NOLA and I don't have a sense of the before/after.

I'll be blogging about the conference(s) & conference sessions over the next few days. Hope you join the conversation ... You can also find me on Twitter (@dmcnair) where I'll be microblogging ;-)

Progess: Time Management Tip

I talked with colleagues the other day about ways they manage their time. Each of my colleagues had a slightly different approach, but the common theme was a real commitment to scheduling specific time for specific projects. For example, one said, "On Monday, I prep for class; on Tuesday, I write; on Wednesday, etc." The benefits were obvious: schedule a project and it's likely to be completed. Not exactly a new revelation, but for some of us who are less structured, the idea may be novel. As I continued investigating this, I read Julie Morgenstern's Time Management From the Inside Out while traveling. The ideas were great and seemed very do-able. I had the opportunity to try out one of the ideas last week after students submitted case study analyses. Following Julie's guidelines, I timed myself to see how long it took me to review a paper and provide feedback. I made sure to include all of the steps involved: download the document, review the document, add the rubric to the end of the document, type narrative comments, complete the rubric, and upload the document back to our course site. I allowed myself 40 minutes for each paper. I further divided the task by determining the number of papers I'd review each day. I planned to complete 3 - 4 reviews per day. By having this goal in mind, I could complete a review, move on to other projects, and later come back to another review. I also set a timer for myself using an on-line stopwatch. This kept me on track throughout the week. By the end of the week, I was completing the reviews in much less time than I had allocated. The feedback was substantial and focused on "big picture" issues (i.e., the overall analysis and conclusions). I kept track of some common areas that need attention, such as APA formatting, and will provide general comments to the entire class regarding these issues. I finished the reviews a day earlier than I had expected, which means students received timely feedback that will help them as they work on their next paper. The success of this effort is, of course, self-reinforcing! I feel great, the project wasn't nearly as daunting as it has felt in the past, and I have a much better sense of how to manage similar projects. Next up: scheduling different types of projects & adding them to my planner!

The Magic of Teaching

I was reviewing students' papers tonight -- an analysis of an educational current event -- and noticed the analyses weren't coming out quite as I had expected. It was clear that there's some confusion about the assignment as well as the theoretical frameworks being used for the analysis. I started to see some patterns and realized the potential for some really great teaching & learning here. So tomorrow we'll talk about theoretical frameworks and how they affect our interpretation of an event. What happens when we apply a positivist/rationalistic framework? How does the analysis change when we apply a critical theorist perspective? What impact does a postmodern framework have on our understanding? I have to say that I like being able to take something and identify where more teaching & learning can occur. This is really the magic of teaching, I think ... noticing patterns of understanding or not-quite-understanding then building on that to help develop new insights. It's late and I'm not as insightful about this as I might otherwise be ... but I'm feeling this. It's like ... "Hey, I can make a difference here in helping others understand these concepts." That's a nice place to be.

They say it gets easier...

In the university's Faculty Center today I overheard two people talking about the pace of teaching. One mentioned she thought things were supposed to be easier in the spring semester because you had some time before you had to start planning & developing courses for the next semester. Both noticed they were already planning for their fall classes and were voicing the common concern: How can I get everything I need to do done? How do I prep for class, read papers, stay current for this course, engage in university service, and become a productive scholar? In an odd way, I was relieved to overhear their conversation -- they confirmed that what I so often experience is a common experience. It doesn't make it any easier, but it does help to know I'm not the only one who hasn't figured things out.
One thing that causes me a lot of extra work is that I often make changes to a course after I meet the students and we get underway. Many students have said they appreciate this flexibility, while others say it makes them a bit crazy. I do think we need to be flexible and that doctoral students who plan to become high level administrators need to develop a disposition for change & ambiguity. When I make changes, I try to make them in the students' favor -- that is, I prefer to extend a deadline rather than to move it up; I'll reduce, rather than increase, reading assignments. But what I've realized is something so elementary, so essential to good teaching I'm really embarassed to admit it ... I need to do a better job planning the course up front. But I don't want to develop such a rigid plan that we have no flexibility in the schedule. I think there's room for both of these values -- structure & flexibility. A flexible structure.
So today I've been very intentional as I think about our class session. I identified a learning outcome for the day, identified how I could assess the learning, and then developed specific activities that will get us to that learning outcome. Okay -- not a new revelation for some of you, but yesterday in our First Annual Symposium on Celebrating Teaching & Learning at Pacific, something clicked for me. The concepts connected for me in a way they hadn't before. I recall working through similar exercises in a class on curriculum development in my doctoral program, but at that time I wasn't planning on a career as a faculty member, so perhaps the assignment didn't have much relevance for me. In yesterday's session, though, it was like I really got it. So today, in painstaking detail, I've mapped out our session ... and I can see the pieces connecting together like a well-designed puzzle.
It's a bit awkward to publicly describe my learning, but I suppose even this is part of the process. Earlier this week I read an autoethnography of a new faculty member -- someone who, like me, moved from an administrative position in student affairs to a full-time faculty position. Her narrative, published in the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching (Vol 21, 1, 2010), was so honest that it inspired me to risk the same level of honesty here.