Technology: A double-edged sword

Well, I now have a half dozen places in cyberspace I have to check, upload to, or otherwise keep track of - this is nuts! I went to the Pearson MyEdLab site and took a look at the students' [ok, two students'] responses to the video for chapter 3 - they were good! But now I want everyone to be able to see what their peers say - so I think I'll have them view the video at the MyEdLab site but post their comments on the Ning.

That means I'll need to set up some discussion boards on the Ning [or does Ning call them Forums?] and remember that they appear in the reverse order [which means you have to enter them backwards - all very confusing]. That way, all of us can see posts made related to the videos connected to the various chapters. My only misgiving is the possibility that some students might shortcut the assignments and merely read their peers' comments, then bs their way through the assignments. But I am not a policewoman - and the only person who loses in that sort of scenario is the person who is copying others' ideas. It might not make a difference in the immediate context, but if students have not had practice drawing inferences, making connections, and thinking through the videos when they get to student teaching, they will be less well prepared than if they had done the thinking necessary to process the videos.

Meanwhile, I'm anxious to see how Twitter would work for exit slips - the math section is using them, and I think they would work for us in science. We'll see - time to get some sleep. Tomorrow is another day . . .

Forty-one years and counting

I am beginning my 41st year teaching this semester, and you'd think I'd get tired of this. Fortunately, I am still excited about teaching [which is a good thing since I'll probably never be able to retire due to the recession/depression we are in now].

I've been so absorbed in trying to get ready for the new doctoral class that I've sort of put READ 498 on autopilot - after teaching the class regularly since 1974 [whoa - that's scary] I ought to be able to do that. Of course, I arrived in class today sans folder for the class -- good thing I had done this so many times -- and as usual I didn't get finished with everything. I really need 90 minutes for class . . . but students reading this right now are probably freaking out at the thought.

I want to remember to do less this semester, but in more depth - I always begin with that in mind, and then I don't know what happens - I sort of morph into this fire-hose wielding lunatic with all the information. It's just that I know how much they will need to know in student teaching and in that first year - but I have to remember that I didn't know any of it when I began so maybe it's enough to do a less is more kind of semester. Maybe.

Well, I just remembered I need to upload some stuff to Blackboard and then figure out this Ning - why do I always think I need to learn something new each semester? I must be nuts.

Next time . . .

May 1st - May Day. I feel as thought I've been set free - everything is graded, grades are posted. An admission here: I sent out the message to my middle school reading class that I had completed logging in all the Diligence and Responsibility points and that grades posted to Blackboard were final. I've given them a day to get back to me about any discrepancies . . . except that today I realized I had not penalized students for absences. Oh well, I just didn't have to energy to go back and do the grades again, and when I played around with them, it was apparent that very few would have been affected. So, next time - maybe I'll remember. But this time, well, I am ready to get on with the next thing - and ready to be finished with spring classes.

When students "get it" -- fabulous!

I have been grading non stop for hours. The great thing about this is that I've been grading Book Club papers. Students self-selected into "book clubs" to read professional books and discuss them in small groups. I suggested about four to five titles for students to choose from; they discussed the book on their own schedule, group members posted reflections of the discussions during the semester, then everyone wrote a reflective paper on the experience. This is the pay off - students are making connections between class activities and discussions and the books they read; they are making connections to their own student teaching experiences. These have been the best papers I've gotten on this assignment in a number of semesters.

I don't know whether students are just giving me what they think I want or whether their connections, inferences, and assertions truly represent their views. The optimist in me chooses to believe that they do - that the assignment has made a difference for them. I hope so. We need every good teacher we can get in middle school classrooms.

Truly, it was a pleasure to read the papers I graded tonight - makes grading them easy!

Dreams

I watched a video on YouTube today - I've watched it five times and am still hitting replay - the URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_xFNa7YKDw -- it is the most inspiring performance I've ever heard. I just wish I could download the audio to my iPod.

Here is this dowdy, older, graying woman - unemployed 47, and never been kissed -- everyone was judging her by her appearance, expecting little. She began to sing and the audience [and the judges] were on their feet, applauding. How unbelievable that someone so unassuming could take that song - I Dreamed a Dream - and knock everybody's socks off!

It makes me think of all the students that are judged unfairly because they are unkept, unwashed and/or untutored. We overlook their needs and we overlook them, sitting in our classes among smartly dressed, smartly turned out kids who have had all the advantages. So often all it would take is a kind word, a little positive attention. What is it about human beings that makes us overlook what people have inside them and focus only on the surface?

I remember a student I taught 25 years ago. She was a student in what was then [and remains] perhaps the worst class I've ever had to teach - mostly kids from the "wrong side of the tracks" - many could barely read, and they had been passed on from grade to grade up through the years with little expected from them, until they landed in my 9th grade "basic physical science" class. I kept Chris after school during the first week of class because she had not done her homework. Immediately, she had a hundred reasons including that she had 13 sibblings that she had to take care of when she got home from school - getting supper for them, getting them ready for bed [which they all shared] - it was intolerable that children should live in those conditions, and unimaginable that a 14 year old would have those responsibilities. But I made her stay until her bus came - that day and every day after. She stayed in my room instead of going to her "bus room" and did her homework, not only mine but for all her classes.

Fast forward five or six years. One day I got a letter with a return address that said "from the last person on earth you ever thought you'd hear from." In the enclosed letter, Chris apologized for the class - she knew they had really tried my patience -- but she also said thanks; I was the first teacher who had ever made her do her homework, the first teacher who believed she could do her homework. Because I believed in her, she said, she could believe in herself. She went on to say that she had gotten involved in the Salvation Army and had continued to do her homework and study - and that she was at Belmont Abbey College on a Salvation Army scholarship, studying to be a psychologist. Had I not paid attention to her, and made her do her homework, she might well have simply slipped through the cracks as so many students do.

And I wonder how many other students didn't make my radar - that I didn't do what was needed for them. What happened to them?

In spite of the regrets for students I perhaps did not reach, I have to say - this is the paycheck, folks - one letter in 40 years of teaching. But it is worth it.

Life in a movie

I watched a movie the other day – Lions for Lambs – a film by Robert Redford with three story lines that were connected, but in the beginning you couldn’t tell how. Essentially, the movie was about engagement. It was one of those movies that, after it was over, you wanted to discuss with someone – it left so many ideas swimming around in your head – the movie itself was engaging.

And I started thinking about what passes for education in so many of our classrooms today and the most common complaint I hear from teachers: apathetic students – students who are not engaged, who are physically present but mentally absent without leave. Students who complain about mindless “busy work” assignments that are unrelated to anything they know about [or so they think]. Students who are bored and restless. Teachers who are tired and frustrated. And who can blame either students or teachers? Teachers who feel they are at the mercy of the almighty End of Course tests, High School Assessment Program, and the PASS [replacement for the PACT]. Students served a steady diet of worksheets, “answer the questions at the end of the section,” or “look up the words and write a definition” – and the miracle is that anyone ever does any of that mind-scalding stuff.  Sometimes I wonder – if the tables were turned, and teachers had to complete the homework they assigned, would they?

How is it that we have so many interesting things going on in the world – and all those interesting things are at our fingertips via the Internet – and yet so little of it makes its way into a classroom? 

And the mistakes just keep on coming

Spring break is over. What a depressing thought! Now, we all just have to endure until the end of the semester – and these MAT students are weeks away from graduation, so I suppose its natural for them to have “senioritis” of a sorts. They are exhausted from student teaching and to make matters worse, I’ve pushed them ever closer to the proverbial edge in READ 867. I sure hope they learn from my mistakes, because I’ve made a ton of them this semester, each one seems to be worse than the first.

During spring break, I got several e-mails from students asking about what was a rather vexing assignment they had been given in the last class. In addition to preparing for the struggling learner jigsaw, I had directed them to read Chapter 10 and to choose two strategies they might use instructionally: one informal grouping strategy and one for cooperative learning groups. Sounds simple enough, right? Except that in my haste to get the assignment pulled together, I had a typo – it was chapter 9 that focused on grouping strategies. Chapter 10 focused on struggling learners. I don’t know whether it was fortunate that the two topics are so interrelated in my Jigsaw or whether that just confused students more. My intention had been to prepare them to read chapter 10 through the struggling adolescent learner Jigsaw. Oh well, the best laid plans of mice and men as they say. What a mess!

So I’ll have to somehow use this mistake to their advantage – and fortunately, after teaching a hundred years, I can figure out a way to do that. Students will share whatever strategies they chose from each of the chapters – then read the alternate chapter for next class. Seems easy, but I feel an ambush coming on. Discussions are richer when students have read different articles or information on similar topics, and that’s what I’m counting on . . . but it feels a bit uneasy to have this almost too-easy solution pop up so quickly, and seem so perfect. Nothing is, of course – but we’ll see.

Irony at work

The other day, I was checking the page proofs of a chapter I wrote with four of our Teaching Consultants from the Center of Excellence - the chapter is to be published soon and I have to get the page proofs back to the publisher asap. Anyway, the chapter focuses on assessment for and as learning - assessment that helps students grow as independent learners.

While I was proofing the chapter, I kept getting e-mails from graduate students in my middle school reading class - with questions about the assessment project that they are currently working on. I had intended to create the scoring guides with the students but decided to ditch that when I ran out of time during two consecutive classes. Looking back, perhaps I should have eliminated something else. In any case, the irony of my authoring a chapter that addressed creating scoring guides with students and simultaneously handling so many questions about an assignment because I had chosen not to involve students in creating the scoring guide for the assignment was not lost on me. Once again, I have not modeled behaviors I want to promote in my own students.

The least I could have done was to have the scoring guides ready at the beginning of the semester, but I didn't even have my act that together! I'm hoping that students in class will see how frustrating this has been for them and intuit that creating criteria with students or providing the criteria when an assignment is made will save their own students from just such frustration. Wish I could say I had done it on purpose to make a point with them - but I just goofed!

ADEPT Police????

Several students have used the term "ADEPT Police" either in class or in replies to this Blog - and it brings to light something I believe in: by changing our attitudes, we can change how things affect us. Looking at ADEPT [the assessment system for teachers in South Carolina] as something enforced by "police" it makes the program into an enemy, which casts the assessment into a role it was truly not intended to have. ADEPT replaced the APT [assessment of professional teaching, I think] which was much more formulaic in approach - I remember using the APT assessment instrument where you had to have humor in your lesson. Now, that's not a bad thing, but it can be misused. Imagine that a teacher is conducting a lesson on the Civil Rights movement - does the teacher tell a joke about THAT?? Clearly not. When I used the APT instrument, I gave credit if the teacher smiled! But I know that others interpreted that item differently. I also remember sitting through lessons that scored very high on the APT scale, but that were really really boring. 

At least with ADEPT three lessons are observed and de-briefed - in the old APT days it was just the observation, a number score and out the door. With the de-briefing, teachers can provide a rationale for any changes made in the lessons, or reflect on something that didn't quite work the way it might have worked earlier in the day or perhaps reflect on something that worked much better than expected. There is a conversation about the lesson -- and the standards for ADEPT are nothing more than just good teaching. The crux of the problem is how ADEPT is used, and how observers use the guidelines. As usual, the devil is in the details.

On another note, I'm planning class for next Tuesday evening and hoping that I can provide an experience in which students grow as professionals and leave class refreshed and inspired rather than more tired than they arrived. We'll see . . .

Drinking from a Firehose

I guess sometimes I forget that as hard as teaching every day is for me, it is also hard on students, who are on information overload. I could see it today - that sort of glazed look. We need to stop for a minute and take stock of everything we've experienced - in content focused parlance everything I've "covered" -- and I need to stop pushing so hard!

I wonder how many times in this Blog I've mentioned covering less information in more time . . . hmmmmm

How lucky can I get??

Every now and again, I get lucky with little or no effort on my part. Tonight as I was planning for tomorrow's class, I was getting ready to save the power point file as a PDF handout . . . and remembered I had assigned students to create a personal Biopoem as a get-to-know-you activity but had not planned to use it in class -- big mistake [lucky I caught it]. At almost the same time, I remembered the Book Clubs. I need to get students together in their book clubs for at least a few minutes - students need to know which book to order and they need to decide how they will "meet" for their discussions. Voila! I can have students get into Book Club groups and share their Biopoems. Then it occurred to me that it would be great to have them create a coat of arms for their book club groups because it would provide a venue through which students can get to know each other and at the same time will show MAT students yet another way to begin to create a  supportive classroom environment. Of course, this will take time - so I had to carve off a couple of topics I had planned to discuss in class - but the trade off is worth it, I think. I sure have a packed three hours planned for tomorrow. Here's hoping it all works!

Ready, Set, GO!

The beginning of another semester - and for once, I think I'm organized and ready. I say I think because there is always something that crops up unexpectedly. Like today -- I forgot to make sure my USB gadget that advances my power point slides was packed, likewise my timer. I never realized how much I relied on the USB gadget or that timer! I’ll not forget them for the next class, that’s for sure.

Students are taking a Strategic Content Literacy Assessment right now, so I have some time to do this - I'm hoping that by taking the assessment themselves, they will better understand the assignment they are required to complete - assess one class, analyze the data, and reflect on what this tells them with respect to learners in that particular class. Anyway, as I listen to the rain pounding on the roof of the University Center [or is that the air conditioner?], and watch these students concentrate on their reading and responding to the text, I realize just how much I love teaching this course. This group of students seems far different from the last group, which was sort of a mixed bag. With three or four exceptions, students last spring were serious about teaching and will be excellent additions to any middle school; but those three or four . . . well, I hope they either learn fast and become good teachers or move on to another career. I’m looking forward to a semester in which we all become a community of learners. Last spring, a small group of math students formed a Wiki and it’s still going strong – so maybe we’ll do something like that this go ‘round.

This morning, I got a late start from home and therefore did not have enough time to go by Starbucks, which I greatly regret right now; I could use a shot of caffeine – better yet, an intravenous shot of the legal addictive stimulant. I grabbed a regular cup of coffee at the little café here at the University Center, but it just isn’t the same. Oh well, tomorrow is another day!

Once again, I’ve over planned – I have about 4 hours worth of stuff I’d like to get done, and less than an hour left in the three hour class period and haven't gotten to everything [big surprise]. I’ve never tried this – having students complete an SCLA themselves, and I’m not sure whether this will work or not – but they’ll learn something, I hope. The reading I'm using is one I want them to read anyway, so at least that's a positive outcome. I should walk around and see how far they’ve gotten with the SCLA, maybe we can squeeze in just one more thing into this class . . . but then again, I often make the mistake of trying to do too much in one class period. We’ll see . . .

LATER- after walking around and collecting a few of the papers

Reading through a few of the initial responses [quite a few students have finished already – in only 20 minutes when I allotted 30 minutes for the task – a conundrum all teachers face – what to do with “early finishers”] will help me see their initial ideas about literacy, which will be a good thing to know, but I’m realizing now that this also means that I will have to actually grade all these things now, too. There’s always a down side, isn’t there? I’ve inadvertently given myself homework on the very first day of class – was I completely insane???

STILL LATER

Home again, home again – after a stop to get a Starbucks [I feel alive again] and a trip to the bookstore. I should be shot – I picked up Twilight [I dare not begin reading it until after next week is over] AND found another historical novel on the sixth wife of Henry VIII – which I could not resist and now can see a whole lot of procrastination coming on. Will I ever learn??? I have four books going now – I’m listening to a non-fiction book about the US and the Middle East [Power, Faith, and Fantasy] as I drive back and forth to Greenville, reading Thomas Jefferson: American Sphinx, and listening to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for the sixth time as I get read for work each morning, plus the additional book about Katherine Parr I bought today and couldn’t resist beginning. I’m in some serious trouble here.

After Fall Break . . . and the beat goes on

After Fall Break things might get easier? Was I nuts???? Yesterday, I was working with a middle school faculty participating in a project that emphasizes interdisciplinary teaching. Faculty members are mostly high school teachers who are very content focused - merely held captive in the purgatory of middle school. Just ask any high school teacher what s/he teaches and the answer is almost always framed in terms of the courses taught -- 19th century British Literature, or Anatomy and Physiology, or US History to 1850. The inservice workshop was scheduled at the worst time - 3:30-5:30, after a full day of school and bus duty. I had driven 2.5 hours to deliver a 2 hour workshop - and I'm thinking as I watch them set up the library, "I came here for this??" Chairs were set up close together, like an auditorium - no tables, no place to write; the library had a large supporting column that obstructed the view of about 3-4 of the teachers [those fast enough to get to the venue early and sit where they could not be seen]. As they came in, teachers kept alluding to the "presentation" or the "lecture" -- and were quite surprised when I began by telling them they would be working and needed several sheets of paper and something to write with. But as we worked through the lesson in which I had embedded some useful strategies, then discussed adaptations for core content areas, I could feel them begin to loosen up a bit and at least ask questions about using some of the strategies: Paired Structured Brainstorming; Structured Notes / Response Heuristic; Forced Choice; Cinquain. I hope they will try at least one of the strategies, and that the grade level teachers will at least talk with each other about what they are doing - but I'm not holding my breath. I so hate to do a one-shot deal sort of workshop, but perhaps there will be sufficient follow-up that the teachers will have enough support to take the risk of doing something different in their classrooms. And it is a risk - for "old" teachers and for "new" teachers - because most of us were never taught as we are asking teachers to teach, and therein lies the rub. I look at international comparison data and fear that nothing we do will get us out of the quagmire we have put ourselves in - and coupled with the economic down turn I see a long slog against odds that have rarely been greater. We have more dropouts, apathy is rampant, and still we persist in "telling and spelling" our way through a curriculum that is a  mile wide and an inch deep when it should really be the other way round. 

Man, this is depressing - I've got to get my attitude corrected before I go to class -- YIKES! I'm late for setting up for class - stay tuned.

Walking on broken glass . . .

It's that time of semester when everything feels like too much: classes, grading, committees, advising. I'm sure students feel the same way.  I'm sitting here, listening to Annie Lennox and wondering if what I do makes any difference at all. 

I was reading the wiki postings of students from one of the sections of content area reading that I teach. For the entire semester I have pushed the idea of a Learning Cycle - a three-part way to plan lessons that is congruent with workshop-style classes, inquiry and discovery lessons, and direct instruction. Every lesson I have taught has been organized according to this three-part pattern. A requirement of my course is that my students review and comment on lesson plans created by students from another university and posted on a shared Wiki. One of my students posted a comment about another students' lesson, one that was crafted according to this three part learning cycle [although it was described using the terminology from Laura Robb's book, before-during-after, terminology I have used as well]. My student was impressed by the lesson because she claimed never to have seen this three-part way to plan a lesson. How can this be? I felt like screaming. 

What scares me is that if pre-service teachers cannot make connections between what they have experienced, been taught, and read about and the same concept couched in other terms, how are they going to make connections between student responses to what they are doing instructionally and their own teaching decisions made on the fly when data from 20-30 students is coming at them at the speed of light?

Well, I've whined enough - maybe after fall break things will look up. So many of these students show such potential - I know that they will go out and truly change their students' lives. Their analyses of student responses to their strategic content area literacy assessment were thoughtful - and many were at a level I would have expected only from practicing teachers with several years of experience. Their assessments were so well done, I should probably think about those students who are already showing insight beyond their own experience and realize that what I've told my own students is true: you won't ever stop trying to reach all your students, but you can't beat yourself up if you don't reach all of them.

The deer in the headlights is me!

Well, I'm probably officially about to go 'round the bend. On Thursday, I set off the the office with hopes of putting the final touches on the power point for class and making sure I had the power point for the Ordeal lesson for our CEALL workshop read [the workshop is this weekend]. Enter chaos. I needed to take one all purpose power point and produce two very different ones, eliminating all references to any content area other than math for the math section, and making sure the links worked for the science/social studies section [which they did not] and eliminate some of the content because students are finding it difficult to keep up in the class. Between questions from staff that needed to be handled, urgent family queries about Thanksgiving plans that necessitated several phone calls, no time for lunch, not enough caffeine, and time that moves at the speed of light when you most need it to move at the speed of molasses, I arrived at my 2 PM class just a bit unfocused. And that's all it took . . . because when I looked at my watch and saw a quarter till the hour, I panicked in my confusion and fast-forwarded my mind to my 3:30 class [wishful thinking?], which does end at quarter till the hour. The 2PM class ends at quarter past the hour, however, and I would have dismissed the first section 30 minutes early were it not for one brave [and probably hated, now] soul who corrected me.

Student body language was loud and clear -- it would have been better for my student evaluations had I just let them go. But no, I had to regroup and forge ahead -- and with most of them now fully tuned out. Good thing that this group of students does not have the power to commit me to an institution, because I'd be packing right now!

Well, Tuesday's class has to be better - as they create their own vocabulary activities I hope that students will see how relevant the vocabulary strategies really are. If it isn't, maybe I should just look for a job at Wal Mart.

Like deer in the headlights . . .

Well, today's first class went OK - but I know that students feel as though they have been drinking from a fire hose today. A few students viewed the class as "scattered" - and I guess in the beginning it seems that way but I want students to see how everything comes together - oh well, all in good time, I guess.

In retrospect, maybe I should deep-six the learning styles thing. I really like doing it, but students were bleary-eyed today as they left class. They don't expect a college class to take so much time outside of class, but if that is a problem for them then they are really in the wrong profession. If they think this semester is bad, just wait until student teaching when they have to arrive at school a the crack of dawn, work all day with few to no breaks and drag home with a stack of paper to grade that defies gravity.

Well, I need to think about this - and probably ask students in a few weeks about it; once they have their feet wet I can get more honest and realistic responses.

I was pleased with the class today, though. Students seemed eager for the semester to begin [if not the homework] and I can tell we will have a good time together.

Decisions, decisions

Once again, its time to gear up for fall semester and undergraduate classes -- I'm trying to get the READ 498 syllabus ready before I take off for a few days, but haven't been able to spend the time I need to in thinking through the assignments. Every time I go into the office, I get way laid by some task or another. I'm trying to decide just what assignments we will have in the class. Although I like the Blog idea,  it's just too much to keep up with all those Blogs - and students who are not tech savy set up a new blog for every posting, or forget their passwords, or otherwise get caught up in the technology of the thing, and that's not what I'm after, really. I need to change the reflective thinking assignment to something students are more familiar with, and accommodate my wish to have the students in contact with other science and math pre-service teachers so they can think together about teaching science and math. The professor at Arizona State and I spoke today, and we talked about setting up a wiki so they can communicate outside of Blackboard - much easier that way. And I have a YouTube video that can help students understand what a wiki is and how it works -- more like a Discussion Board. 

So, the Blog will become a limited number of posts and responses -- probably 4 -- on the discussion board of a Wiki. The other two assignments will be the same: assess a class and teach a class. But I'm going to specify the assessment to be used. I now have really good examples of the Strategic Content Literacy Assessment in all content areas, and that will help. Otherwise, things are pretty much the same in terms of assignments.

I will need to post the piece I wrote for the revisions in chapter 1 of our new edition so students can have background reading for disciplinary literacy, and maybe the one for the vocabulary chapter. But perhaps students will be better off reading the articles [at least some of them] and coming up with their own summary of differences in disciplinary literacy among the content areas.

Well, I think I've made at least the decision about the reflective piece on the Internship - so maybe I can get this syllabus finished in the morning!

Can you hear me now?

Wow! The little snit I pitched in my last posting certainly got some attention. I probably shouldn't have done it, but I was so frustrated - still am, but at least now I recognize [admit?] that I'm frustrated with myself. If I had been more rigid about the file names and due dates earlier in the semester, I wouldn't be in this mess right now. But I knew the students were under such pressure in student teaching -- and I can't imagine anyone taking another course in addition to READ 867 and student teaching - insane! So I let the file names go without deducting points immediately. That will teach me. I won't make that mistake again. But I stand by the fluid due dates for the lesson plans - that, I think, although confusing and tempting to those who [like me] are procrastinators, was needed for this class.

I wonder sometimes if any of this makes a bit of difference. If these students actually use the ideas we've discussed in class. I wonder if I have thrown too much at them - but every semester, I trim it down. This semester I really cut back, and many still seem overwhelmed. I guess it's like this for all students, now matter what level. Students just don't remember everything teachers say -- DUH! I hope that my students will think a bit about how much I've thrown at them, how much stuck, and how much just couldn't be retained at the time and realize that truly less is more. I look back on all these years in a classroom and wonder sometimes what it all adds up to. I think about my own learning and realize that I learn best that which I most need to know - what I am interested in and motivated to learn [and, unfortunately what I have to learn about like NCATE]. Learning is just not a passive verb.

Well, this probably won't make much sense, so late at night. And I've got to be up at dawn and at it again tomorrow.

Griping about students, griping about grading

I have spent three afternoon and evenings grading lesson plans/reflections for Middle School reading -- and getting more and more frustrated because students don't follow directions to append the scoring guide or upload three to seven separate files, which I then take the time to put into one file so that I can return it to them in blackboard . . . when will I ever learn?

Well this semester, I've about had it. I'm going to go back through and deduct points from diligence and responsibility for those who have not followed directions - wish I had noted this on their scoring guides, but I didn't and I didn't make notes about it [I just got more and more frustrated], so I'll maybe get my GA to go through the files to see who actually followed directions [easier to do this way because fewer than 1/3 did so].

Maybe this is just the end of a semester and I'm really really tired, but most of all I'm frustrated that students don't seem to take the time to learn the technology they need to survive in a class that has blended delivery - some delivered online. The good news was that we met fewer times over the bulk of the semester; they were supposed to be using that time as class preparation, completing their work, turning it in appropriately. Aren't teachers supposed to be life-long learners? Why do so many of them seem not to care about their work? I've resisted going through their reflections and correcting grammar, too, and these are pre-service teachers who are the first to say the kids can't write or spell or use proper grammar. AUGGGH! But I didn't put that on the scoring guide -- well, enough griping for one very early morning. I'm really worried that these students will try to turn all this work that is left to be done at the last minute, and I'll be in a frenzy of grading at the same time I'm getting ready for IRA. Well, if that happens, those who turn it all in at the last minute will lose points in D & R -

Enough!

I have been reading postings on the Discussion Board for my class. Students are required to read articles and then discuss them asynchronously. Embedded in several of the postings are hints about what goes on in the classroom where the students are student teaching. I came across a heart stopping [for me] comment that referred to "pop corn reading" [a new name for round robin reading] and one that alluded to the practice of having students read text "cold" - without any preparation - with the goal to prepare students for a lecture to come. Things like this make me want to go running screaming into the night. Was I not clear about NOT having students read aloud? I've tried to be clear about the issue: if you have students read aloud, there should be a purpose for doing so -- for example, having students read text aloud to support an inference [or refute an inference made by someone else]. Likewise with the "cold reading" issue. This one comes up in both the graduate class and my undergraduate class - students just don't get that readers have to be prepared to read a text - particularly students who are learning to read history or math or science or more difficult literature. I don't know - maybe if I give them a taste of their own medicine. Hmmmmm - I'm planning class for next week and perhaps that's what I'll do. Have them read some esoteric text before a "lecture" and then debrief the students. I've got a lovely text to use!