The Unexpected.

Tonight I went to the banquet for an award that I did not win. I knew that I had been nominated and that someone else had won and that's fine, the individual who won is wonderful. It is an important night on my campus for many reasons and I was happy to go. I scored some earrings in the silent auction and had a pleasant dinner with some colleagues. I was also delighted to be there to honor a former student (and now a representative in the state House) who had won the other major award of the evening for her work in the community. This wonderful student, someone I have written about before, could not actually be there to accept as she is with a bipartisan commission of state legislators visiting Turkey at the moment. Instead, she taped her acceptance speech, which she opened by thanking the key professors, administrators, students, and fellow legislators who had helped her in all she has achieved. From there, she gracefully moved into discussing the guiding principles of her work as an advocate for women, for workers, etc., etc.... and then she thanked me. She thanked me big time -- singled me out from all the amazing people she had met as a student at our institution -- and credited me with challenging her, inspiring her, and introducing her to her role model for creating change: Ella Baker. I am so stinkin' proud of this woman and that she would share some of her accomplishments with me...in this setting...on this night. Well, I'm damn near overwhelmed. And yes, it kind of feels like I won the award after all.

Gems from the draft box...

On the theory that it is better to laugh then cry, I share with you these gems from the most recent midterm season...

"I'm sorry I missed the exam, my liver hurt."

On the Identification section (what was it and what was its significance to American history?):

The Spanish America war was a war with Spain to win Texas and California.

A good day to be a professor...

Friday was a strange day, the kind I usually have to fight to not see as a "waste" because none of "my" work could be done...

In the morning I drove to Dearborn to meet up with my Women in Learning and Leadership (WILL) students and the girls they mentor at school in SW Detroit. I wasn't actually supposed to do anything other than be there when the girls came on this field trip to the university, but I enjoyed meeting the girls and had a lovely chat with them as I tagged along with to the Environmental Interpretative Center on the grounds of the old Henry Ford Estate. Only two of the nine girls who were supposed to come had made it -- sickness and a lack of permission slips kept the others away. This was a great disappointment to my students, but they powered through (the only option!). They had arranged a great day for the girls and obviously had put much effort into making the program work over the last term. I had a great time doing the pond study (cool critters living in there!) and I was mighty proud of my people!

Task number two was to hop in the car and drive to UM-Flint in time to see a student from my Urban and Regional Studies seminar this fall present the work her team had done with the Fair Housing Center of Metro Detroit. Even though this was just an undergraduate research conference, she was beyond nervous. I'd tried to talk her down via e-mail in the days leading up to it, but she called me an hour before the presentation in a full-on panic. For half an hour, I went through it with her again and reminded her that she knew her material, that she had the presentation, that she could do this. She was with another student of mine who is in WILL and was also in the seminar, so I knew she had some immediate moral support, but that support was coming from a woman who is, herself, terrified of public speaking (I learned this two weeks ago when she melted down at the Women and Gender Studies luncheon -- we'll be working on that next year...). Anyway, I got there, walked her around, helped her load her powerpoint, and tried to keep her calm. When it was her turn to talk, I was the nervous one. I really didn't know if she would be able to pull it off or if her nerves would get the better of her.

Once up there, she fluffed for a moment, then looked at the audience, smiled genuinely, introduced herself... and then talked (not read!) a wonderful presentation. She paused in a couple of places as she processed where to go next, but always came back quickly and on target. It was wonderful. Her passion on the issue (that only really developed through her research) came through and she won over some key audience members... including the dean of our college. She did a great job with the questions too and I managed to hold my tongue other than to offer her one prompt (she seemed greatly relieved). I'm proud of her and, more importantly, she was proud of herself. See that smile on her face as she gets a certificate from the panel moderator?

Oh yes, it was a good day that made the stress of two particularly stressful parts of my job from the last year (teaching a community-based research seminar for the first time and directing the WILL program) very much worth it.

Go Team

Teaching a seminar with six students who are doing group-based research projects for community partners is pretty damn fun. Okay, there was a heapin' helpin' of anxiety-inducing work to set it up, but now that it is underway, I'm just having a blast. I've decided that this is because my relationship to them is markedly different than in most classes. I'm not there to present material. I'm not making up the assignments (well, I sort of did, but that was based on the needs of the community partners), and it doesn't even really look like I'm responsible for the deadlines (though I mostly am).

Rather than the "teacher," I am a resource. I am a mentor. I should be that for all my classes, but I'm not. I think the difference is partly that there is someone bigger and scarier than me or their grades out there - the community partners. The goal is also bigger -- it is not just about them as individuals and their grade. It is about the projects, projects that have a purpose in the real world. Whatever its source, there is a real "team" feeling to our meetings. They ask my advice, they share their anxieties, they offer to help, they get excited... and they think I'm on their side. And I am.

Not you again!

As I was headed from one side of campus to the other yesterday, I passed a student I'd had in class several years ago. My first thought was "jeez, is he STILL here?"

You see, he had not been a particularly pleasant student to have. He had something to say about everything -- and his not having done the reading, his comments not being connected to the time or topic we were talking about, did not slow him down in the least. My lecturing did not slow him down either. He would raise his hand over and over again, but if not recognized within ten seconds, he would jump in and just start talking. I fell into the habit of lecturing with my hand up (in a "talk to the hand" sort of way) in order to let him know that I saw him but that I was not giving up the floor.

As you can imagine, the other students came to despise him. They were wonderful about it though, they learned to call him out for not having read (I'm so proud!) asking where he saw that (silly)idea in the reading and showing him where in the reading there was evidence that totally contradicted the idiotic thing he had just said. Anyway, we all muddled through and I heard tales of him going on to torture my colleagues in a similar manner and then I went on sabbatical and stories about him faded... but there he was yesterday. And I successfully dodged him. Whew.

But later it occurred to me that it doesn't really matter. I can avoid him on campus and hope he doesn't show up in any more of my classes, but there will be others. He is a type... and just like I have the sardonic student, the charming smart student who doesn't do work up to their potential, the jesus-loving student who wants to convert me, the diligent but shy student almost every term, the student with no sense of humor, etc., etc., I will have this student -- the one who talks too much but has nothing to say and is completely socially clueless again. The super annoying student from my class last fall, the one who I thought for sure would have flunked out by now, even showed up in my on-line class this term and has already asked for an extension. When I saw him on the class list, I wished him gone, but it's same deal. If it not him, there would be someone else to fill this slot. There must be one student in every class who begs for extensions and never actually does the work. Sigh. Remind me again that I am supposed to see each of my students as a unique and beautiful snowflake...

The Term that Would Not End...

Officially, the Winter 2009 term ended at 5:00pm on Tuesday. Yet I am not done. Sigh. Grumble. I still have journals from two students waiting for me to grade at my office today. I still have two students with substantial amounts of outstanding work that they will have to complete in the coming weeks. I still have forms to fill out for three X's I submitted instead of real grades -- because I couldn't get through the forest of late papers submitted less than 24 hours before the final grade deadline. Then there are more forms for the two Incompletes. Finally, I opened my work e-mail this morning to find a couple of to-be-expected requests to clarify grade details and comments. Those are fine, but the real kicker was the e-mail from the student (more than a full day after the official end of the term) asking if he could please have a D so that he could pass the class... a class he has not attended or turned in any work for since -- wait for it -- February. Well, at least that last one is easy. Now off to campus I go to do the real work that remains.

Social Engineering

As a historian, I am not particularly well-versed in the ways of doing collaborative work. It is not common practice in my field -- for teaching or research -- but I've been dabbling in the world of other disciplines and pedagogies of late and for a few very specific things, group work makes sense.

The project on my mind this afternoon is for a women's and gender studies course. I've done some version of this project twice before and had some great projects and some disasters. In most cases, the disasters came from the composition of the group. So, in a bold and unprecedented move on my part, I am assigning my 24 students to groups with no input from them.

On the one hand, this runs completely counter the values of the social movements and leaders we are studying in this course (on women leaders in 20th century social movements). On the other hand, I think I have the knowledge to build better groups than they do. I know more of the whole group and I have the experience of working with two other classes.

I suppose that I could work to build concensus for me to choose the groups... get the students to buy into this vision... help them to see why this will work for them.... but really? This isn't a social movement where the price of me not building concensus would be my constituents leaving the movement. Nope, this is a class and I'm the prof and I give/assign their grades. Instead of this being a lesson in organizing around a concensus model, this will be a lesson in recognizing power relationships.

So I set to work: boldest students into different groups, but each of those also has someone there who will not let them run away with the show (no two confrontational people together, though, otherwise they'll just argue while the others do the real work); students who've had me in more traditional courses and are better trained up on historical research and citiations are distributed across the groups; most groups get a quiet but studious student (not enough to go around); workhorses go in with "medium" talkers-doers.... I'm going for no one either running away with the group or having to do all the work themselves. I did break up several friend pairs so new social dynamics would have to be built amongst all the members. Damn, this was fun! I can't believe I waited this long to try. These are good, good groups. And yes, you can come back in March and ask me if I still think this!

Damn Proud

When I think too much about it, the concept of "feeling proud" of someone else's accomplishments is baffling to me (isn't it like taking credit for what they did?), but I have no other way to describe how I feel right now.

One of my students, a woman I had in my U.S. survey course the very first term I was in Michigan and then had in two other courses in years following, won a seat in the state house.

Like many of our students, she was not a traditional student. She was older. She was a nurse. She wanted so much from college. She was always one of my most enthusiastic students, intensely following every discussion and lecture, but also one of the most tentative, at least at first. I pushed her and pushed her in her writing and discussions to take a stand, defend her points, make an argument and it has been a joy to see her lose that tentativeness, a process that has resulted in her election to the house.

I wrote her a few lines of congratulations and she responded with the most generous e-mail. It made me cry. She told me not only how she felt inspired by my classes but played back through the various topics we had covered and how they had helped her stay motivated and talk to her now-constituents during the campaign. And then she closed with this:

You made a huge difference in my life and I hope to do the same for other women.

Today is a good day to be a professor. Lesia, you rock! Do good things!

A Day for Me

Being department chair means that my days at work are filled with doing things for other people -- administrators, faculty, students -- and doing tasks that with which I have little familiarity -- budgets, strategic planning, scheduling.

But today I am not going to campus. Nope. Once I get the kids off to school, it's all about me and things I do know how to do. On today's agenda: editing the galley's of my article on challenging gender segregation in bars that is coming out in Feminist Studies this fall, reviewing an edition of Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives (a book I teach with frequently) that is being revised for a second edition (and I particularly like that I get paid $225 for doing this task!), and attending a workshop in AA on teaching about conflict.

And to top it all off, I get to ride my bike (a rare opportunity these days) to that workshop on what promises to be a lovely, crisp, and sunny fall day.

Back in the Saddle

After fifteen, er... maybe closer to sixteen, months of not teaching, I gathered up my books and papers and headed into a classroom today. My voice is certainly not in condition, especially for a three hour class, and I only made it through 45 minutes before the scratching at the back of my throat began. Other than that, I seemed to remember what I was doing. I learned a few names (that I will forget again before next week), got them to talk, made a few laugh, and none of them (yet) took me to task for the outrageous cost of the books I asked them to buy.

I'm thinking that my six hours in the classroom each week this term may very well become my refuge from being department chair. Here's why...

Tally from the first two days in the big corner office:

memos with incorrect information distributed: 1 out of 1
poorly worded e-mails: 2 out of 5
icky political situations I'll need to dodge: 2
complaints about my colleagues that I need to deal with: 3