Wear sunscreen

My advice?...wear sunscreen. “The long-term benefits of sunscreen have long been proven by scientists; whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience…” Don’t worry about the future—Dr. Rogers will take care of it. Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts—students are sensitive about their work: be kind. Don’t put up with other people who are reckless with your heart—some students will not like you and nothing you do will change that. Let it go. Remember compliments—they will be few. But more importantly, remember that students will love you one day and despise you the next. Compliments are more about the mood of the giver than the state-of-being of the receiver. Be careful with advice—it’s recycled experience that is cheaply dispensed in faculty break rooms. A soda isn’t cheaper, but a soda is probably healthier. Skip the break room conversations and drink your beverage alone with your thoughts. The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself. Most importantly: during the first fall semester, sit in on every 1010 class you possibly can. Baz Luhrman, “Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen.”

Lessons from the First Review

My first reaction while grading the literature review was, "This is taking way too long." I could feel myself getting so tired that the quality of my grading was slipping.  I found myself writing "akw" next to sentences simply because I was too tired to explain what was actually wrong with them.  

For next time, I will start with a more concrete rubric. Hopefully if the students know exactly what I want and I know exactly what I am looking for, I will spend less time digging for it. I will also be able to give feedback simply by checking a box that already explains the problem.  

The peer editing will also help me in my grading.  The students have already checked each others' papers for technical items and formatting, so I should be able to get through that part more quickly. 

I also need to preplan my grading schedule.  I graded the summaries in three hour blocks on Sunday and Monday nights. This worked well for me when I was grading shorter papers because I could switch papers every few minutes, but when I was reading larger papers, it was too hard to go for three hours.  Next time I will divide my time based on the number of papers I am grading instead of the time I am spending. 

Prompt: Looking Back / Looking Forward

Now that we're getting to the end of the term, I'd like to see you all both reflect back on the semester and offer up a little advice for the TAs coming in next year.

So. How was the experience? What have you learned? What advice do you have?

I had a hard time with sloppy papers from students I like and well-written papers from students I don’t like. Along with that, I struggled with students who are in class and participate but haven’t turned anything in so their grade is terrible—I had to fight the desire to give them a grade they didn’t deserve because they are helpful in class or because they are among the smarter students in class. While I was writing my tip write-up I toyed with the idea of trying a blind grading system. Maybe for the final lit review I’ll take the papers from one of my classes, take their names off of them, and try grading them that way. It will be cumbersome to organize them so I can connect the papers with the names again when I’m done, but I think it will be a very different grading experience and I’m curious to see how it goes. In grading the midterm, I learned that I should not decide on a grade for any students until I have read through all of the papers. I tend to get too excited about small successes in the early papers and too critical of small errors when I get to the end of the stack. For the final, I’d like to read through, mark them, make a note to myself about what sort of score a paper might receive, and then after I’ve read them all I’ll go back through and decide on a grade. Hopefully that will even out the difference between papers I read at the top of the stack and papers I read at the bottom of the stack.

Prompt 6: Lessons Learned?

What have you learned from grading the literature reviews? What problems did you encounter? How do you think you'll try to solve them in the next one?

I had a student email me to tell me how much she liked workshopping because it had given her a chance to see what others were doing and she got some good ideas from others’ papers. Also, a had a few students come up to me after class and ask questions about things they’d seen in other papers or things that had been written on theirs…I like that this made them question and showed them what their peers are doing (and what level their peers are at). I think I need to focus the tasks a little more. As I mentioned n class, I gave them three tasks: find places that needs to be cut, find places that need to be expanded, find cool ideas. I think they talked about everything but those tasks. I’ll see how my first class seems to do with the workshopping tasks for Thursday. I wrote my own question/prompts for Tuesday and I’m going to stick with the very simple for Thursday: What needs to be cut? What needs to be moved? What needs to be expanded? Also since we’ve talked a lot about “quote sandwiches” (46) in my classes (my students love that it takes up space without looking like you’re taking up space), I’m considering asking them to look at each others quotes and comment on whether the quote is introduced, then explained (and if the explanation matches what is said in the quote). That will be too much to ask, I realize, but I’m musing over ideas for doing something to that effect. Inspiration usually hits between 2 and 3 a.m., so we’ll see… I had some doubts about workshopping. As a student, I rarely had helpful comments during workshopping (until I got into the graduate program). I was hesitant to put my students through the exercise. However, it seems that some students have had a good experience. I think I like having them read at least 3 papers per class—for the final, I may try to stretch it to 4, then hopefully it will balance out with some helpful comments and some unhelpful ones. I’ve also considered trying to group students—perhaps 4 in a group and then just pass the papers left/right in the group until everyone has read everyone elses’ (or something like that). That will also help manipulate the groups, which I like doing. Looking ahead, I’d like to have students workshop one of their summaries in the next part of the semester—perhaps bring 3-4 copies of the article and their summary, then have students read it as a group and discuss the main idea and supporting points. I’m wondering if this might help students as they are trying to analysis the sources they find.

Prompt: Workshopping

What's your experience with workshopping/peer review? What did you like?  What did you not like?  How do you hope make it as useful as possible for your students?