Skip to main content

Thinking about the big picture

Ah, it is finally summer! It's been a long, stressful school year and I am really looking forward to having some time to just breathe. One of the things I am really, REALLY looking forward to is having the opportunity to step back and think about my overall plan, both for the CTL and for my life in general (i.e., research and having a life outside school!). I feel like I spent most of this year just trying to keep things afloat while simultaneously figuring out what the hell I'm doing; that, in and of itself, has caused a lot of stress for me. My usual M.O. is to be much more methodical - I plan, I make lists, I develop clear goals before figuring out all the steps I need to take to reach those goals. While some people love to just jump in the car and drive aimlessly, seeing where they end up, I have always been a person who cannot enjoy the journey if I don't know what the destination is. It's OK if the destination changes as things happen along the way, but I'm just not comfortable if I don't have a clear direction to go from the beginning.

It's interesting how often I have found myself drawing parallels between the way I approach the CTL work and the way I approach my classes. In many ways, this year has felt like teaching a course you've never even thought about teaching before, that you were asked to teach the day before the semester started. All you have to go on is the syllabus and materials from the person who taught the class last, and they have a completely different teaching style from you and a totally different idea of what you think the class should actually be about (like teaching a class called "Public Economics" which you think should be about market failure and taxes but the previous instructor made all about political economy and voting theory) (AND they did nothing but lecture!). But since you don't have time to do much prep, you mostly just go with that previous course outline, tweaking where you can and as time allows. If you know what I'm talking about, you can imagine that even if the class goes "well", it probably doesn't feel great, doesn't feel authentic to you.

That's how a lot of this year has felt. I've tried to get a handle on what I want to do with this job but for the most part, I've had to spend all my time just doing stuff. So having the opportunity this summer to step back and think is going to be awesome. And next week, I'm going to the POD Network's Institute for New Faculty Developers - I am so excited to learn from people who are already doing this work. I'm sure I'll have lots to report when I get back...

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Comments that contribute to the discussion are always welcome! Please note that spammy comments whose only purpose seems to be to direct traffic to a commercial site will be deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

THE podcast on Implicit Bias

I keep telling myself I need to get back to blogging but, well, it's been a long pandemic... But I guess this is as good an excuse as any to post something: I am Bonni Stachowiak's guest on the latest episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, talking about implicit bias and how it can impact our teaching.  Doing the interview with Bonni (which was actually recorded a couple months ago) was a lot of fun. Listening to it now, I also realize how far I have come from the instructor I was when I started this blog over a decade ago. I've been away from the blog so long that I should probably spell this out: my current title is Associate Vice President for Faculty and Staff Diversity and I have responsibility for all professional learning and development related to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as inclusive faculty and staff recruitment, and unit-level diversity planning. But I often say that in a lot of ways, I have no business being in this position - I've ne...
Post a Comment
Read more

When is an exam "too hard"?

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...
3 comments
Read more

Designing effective courses means thinking through the WHAT and the HOW (in that order)

I think most folks have heard by now that the California State University system (in which I work) has announced the intention to prepare for fall classes to be primarily online. I have to say, I am sort of confused why everyone is making such a big deal about this - no matter what your own institution is saying, no instructor who cares about their own mental health (let alone their students) should be thinking we are going back to 'business as usual' in the fall. In my mind, the only sane thing to do is at least prepare  for the possibility of still teaching remotely. Fortunately, unlike this spring, we now have a lot more time for that preparation. Faculty developers across the country have been working overtime since March, and they aren't slowing down now; we are all trying to make sure we can offer our faculty the training and resources they will need to redesign fall courses for online or hybrid modalities. But one big difference between the training faculty needed ...
Post a Comment
Read more