Sunday, May 18, 2008

E-mail to Self

Over the past couple of weeks I have been e-mailing notes to myself.  At odd times, I come up with ideas about how I want to change my teaching, a reading I want to add to a class, or a question I’d like to put on a quiz.  The questions usually show up in the middle of a completely different task—say, researching PhD programs.  Rather than write the idea down and lose the sheet of paper or have another loose sheet around, I e-mail myself a brief note.

Once I open my e-mail again, I tag it as Teaching Tip (TchTip) and file it away.  That way, in another month or week or hour, the next time I sit down to revise my class design, assignments, or plans, I have a collection of notes to read through.  Instead of forgetting great ideas, this process has encouraged me to record them and actually use them.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Rate My Professor

Now that the term is over, part of me wants to go check out my rankings at Grade My Professor at MySpace and Rate My Professor.com.  But I know better than to do that—at least at this point.

Currently, I feel pretty content with the term, my students, what was learned, and how things went.  I know of multiple areas where I can improve, and I also have a sense of where I was strong.  So, I have a solid and constructive sense of where and how the term went.  I want to make use of this information, but I want to wait until next week.  Right now, my brain just needs a pause.

In order to make the best use of that self-reflection, I do not need the emotional jacks and dives of reading students’ reviews.  Regardless of what I tell myself, the student rankings do have an impact on me.  Even when I know they may be biased, baseless, or angry, I still take it personally—at least initially.  As such, I know that now is not the time to take a look at the ratings—good or bad.  The better time is later—after I have engaged in productive use of my critical self-reflection.  With some more space and time, I think I will be in a better place to make …

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Friday, May 16, 2008

When You Are Done, What Do You Do?

Yesterday I turned in my grades.
Today I filed for unemployment.

Now that I do not have any teaching to do, all the things I like to do in my spare time—reading, running, training, writing, and research—suddenly seem less important.  Since I can now give them my full attention, they somehow feel less meaningful than when I was teaching and trying to get all those things done at once.

Even though I am glad to be finished with this term, I almost miss teaching because of the passion it gave me in my other pursuits.  I’ll see how this plays out.

Regardless of how I feel at the moment, I know that reading non-compositional texts and going to the river to sit in the sun can only do me good.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Open Office Project Management Tool: DIY Gantt Charts

The longer I teach, the more projects I get involved with.  My attention wants to shatter like a dropped glass.  In order to keep things glued together, I try to stay organized.  So far, Google Calendars has done well by me.  But, I can tell the edges are starting to warp a bit.  In my search for project management software—preferably open-source and web-based—I came across this.  It’s an open office document that explains how to set up your own Gantt chart.  I’m not sure if I’ll use it, but it appears to be a very useful tool.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Blog of the Week, May 6, 2008: Adjunct Blogs

Just in case you wanted to read some other adjunct-authored blogs, here are some links:

Academic Cog
Adjunct Lifeline
Adjunct Professoring
Burnt Out Adjunct
The Mis-Education of Sebastian Wolfe
Professing Narratives
Teach Online

If you know of any other adjuncts’ blogs, please drop me a link.

Friday, May 02, 2008

Contingent Academic Labor Resource Lists

Contingent academic labor can be challenging at times.  So, here are a few quick tips. 

Source 1: Joe Berry’s 2004 list of articles that are about contingent academic laborers.

Source 2: Karen Stanley’s 2003 pdf list of various adjunct resources.

Source 3: Moving a Mountain (Eds. Schell & Stock). Look in the back of the book.

As is the nature of internet-based resources, some of the links will be dead.  That’s a given.  Still, the collections are useful.

If you have other useful resources, please share them.

Adjunct Survey Times Two

Michael Slebodnick is conducting two different surveys of adjuncts.  The first one is a collection of fifty quantitative questions and answers.  The second is a collection of twenty-six qualitative questions.

Please take a moment and respond to the surveys!  The more adjuncts research and respond to research, the more data we will have about who we are, what we do, and what our collective identity is like.

Thanks in advance!