I'm not going to say that one of my resolutions is to post more consistently or more often - I'd like to do both (or either) but I know that what always happens is that I get too busy and then I just feel guilty. But what I do resolve to do is at least to try to remember that the whole reason I started this blog was simply as an outlet for me to "think aloud" about my teaching. I think one thing that has stopped me from posting more often is that I've felt a need to 'craft' my posts, to flush out my thoughts into something coherent before sharing them here. The very process of writing often helps me with that flushing out, but there are a lot of times when I don't post stuff because it seems 'incomplete' - the number of unfinished posts I have is really pretty lame. So I've decided that I need to get over that and just use this blog as I originally wanted, as a sort of 'online journal' of thoughts about teaching. I certainly hope those thoughts are interesting to other people, and I love to hear what other people are thinking, but I guess I just wanted to warn everyone that my posts this year may be shorter and/or more disjointed than in the past but hopefully, more plentiful...
By now, you may have heard about the biology professor at Louisiana State (Baton Rouge) who was removed from teaching an intro course where "more than 90 percent of the students... were failing or had dropped the class." The majority of the comments on the Inside Higher Ed story about it are supportive of the professor, particularly given that it seems like the administration did not even talk to her about the situation before acting. I tend to fall in the "there's got to be more to the story so I'll reserve judgment" camp but the story definitely struck a nerve with me, partly because I recently spent 30 minutes "debating" with a student about whether the last midterm was "too hard" and the whole conversation was super-frustrating. To give some background: I give three midterms and a cumulative final, plus have clicker points and Aplia assignments that make up about 20% of the final grade. I do not curve individual exams but will cu
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