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I caught up on the deficit from yesterday’s word count and met my target for today, bringing the manuscript total to 4000 words. If you add the word count yield prior to 1 November, I have a manuscript that is 10K words long.
It has been rough going due to everything else which is taking place in my life. I have exams to grade, a Spanish class to stay current in an the usual sundry distractions which everyone struggles with. Chuck in fatigue and the fact that I can never find a quiet place to write and it is a small wonder I have anything to report at all.
Still, I’m pushing forward.
Tomorrow I’ll try for 2500 words. Friday’s goal is 3000 words. By next week, I hope that my daily yield is in the 4K to 5K range.
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
The Writing Front
At midnight, I punched in the first three hundred words for National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. It seemed like a good idea to get a symbolic word count onto the scoreboard before I went to bed last night. This morning, the Woman I Love has been supportive enough to shut off the television in order to let me get some more writing in before I head to campus today.
Thus the present word count for Day One as of 0640 hours is 1100 words. The goal for the day is to reach a modest 2000 words. Hopefully I can push to a larger 5000 words if I play my cards right.
These words are for Coming to Terms, a Tearing Down Tuesday sequel set twenty years later. I’ve already got 6000 words down prior to this morning for the project. So I’ll be keeping two word count tallies over the next thirty days.
The first will be an actual project word count signifying overall work. The second will be the NaNoWriMo word count. In my mind, it seems patently dishonest to count the first six thousand words written prior to this morning.
So it goes. Now it is time for a nap.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
The Teaching Front
We’re midway through the French-Indian War in my American History 120s, having blasted through Early Colonialism as rapidly as possible. There are important components which I will pick up later, namely triangular trade, mercantilism and the like when we approach the American Revolution. I didn’t waste any time on the Salem Witch Trials (I never do). On the other hand, I spent a significant amount of time laying down the foundation of slavery in America.
At our present pace, we should arrive at the first exam dates by the end of week five, start of week six. This is later than my peers, probably because I spend a lecture day or two talking about the nature of history in general. On the other hand, I’m further along on the timeline than many of them.
Not that it is a competition. Each teaches there own way. Fortunately for me, the majority of my peers recognize and respect this concept.
In American History 121 I’ve got a split between my two evening classes. One of them is about to fight the Spanish-American War after we spent time on the concept of Imperialism. Prior to that we used Andrew Carnegie as our focal point for the Second Industrial Revolution. And of course, we covered Reconstruction. In the other class we are just about to emerge from Reconstruction. Hopefully we’ll pick up speed over the next two weeks.
I’m building new exams for all classes this semester, generating new essay questions as we move along. I’ve been using the same essays for a couple of years now and it seems to be long past time to switch things up.
Once we clear the first exams I’ll proceed forward to the Pre-Revolutionary Era and Theodore Roosevelt respectively. I think I’ve got at least two to three good classes with the potential for a fourth if I can weed out the dead weight or get them to see the light. The first exam almost always serves as a wake up call for many of them. They’ll make a decision to double down or bail out based upon what happens in the next couple of weeks.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this period is that I provide ample warning for what is coming down the pike. It isn’t an ambush by any means, instead it is perhaps more akin to a carefully scripted training exercise. They are given metrics by which I will grade the exam in the form of commonly made mistakes. In many ways, it is another history lecture for the students, a history of their predecessors and how they tend to react to the first exams in my classes.
Sadly, they frequently ignore these warnings and advance to contact expecting to get through without too much trouble.
They are often sorely mistaken.
Lastly, I had a guest visit my classroom to see how I did business. She was there on the day we killed General Edward Braddock, a bastard in need of frequent killing if you ask me. Later when I talked with my guest, she said if she had more history instructors like me, she might have chosen a different discipline. She gave me high marks for getting my students to class on time, keeping their attention and moving forward at a brisk pace.
I’ve got to say, I always appreciate positive feedback concerning my teaching. Thanks!
The Writing Front
I was able to get fiction writing done on three separate instances this week. Next week, the plan is to increase that to four days a week, Monday through Friday, probably around the two pm time frame. That isn’t my strongest time creatively but it is open and the campus is relatively quiet.
I also transcribed some of the longhand material, tweaking and refining as I went. I’m pretty happy with the results so far.
The goal is to have a finished product ready by semester’s end. Perhaps I might sign up for the National Novel Writing Month competition. This is slated to become a novella sized project and I think the subject matter I’ll address warrants that much coverage.
It feels good to be back in the saddle again. This wouldn’t be possible without the support of the Woman I Love, Trinity, who got her vehicle back to operational status, freeing me from transport duties.
Thank you very much.
The Fitness Front
The transportation freedom mentioned above has given me the flexibility to focus on my efforts in the swimming pool. This week the goal was to complete 4000 yards by today. I fell short by a 1000 yards since I didn’t go today.
On the other hand, my weight is now down to 190.5 pounds, more than twenty pounds less than my January 2012 high of 212 pounds.
My energy levels are good on a relatively consistent basis. On the rare instance when I am late to class and I have to drop for push ups (I believe in paying for breaking my own syllabus rules, believe it or not) I can easily pump out more push ups than are actually required. In fact, I got applause in one class for pumping out twenty without too much effort.
Not bad, given that I had swam a thousand yards with a 25 push up warm up a mere thirty minutes earlier.
The only downside of the renewed fitness condition is that I often underestimate how much projection power I have.
I’ve become known as “The Loud One.”
Other Fronts
The new glasses came in to replace the pair I busted last week. Now all we need to do is just count the days down to the next two pay days on the 22nd and the 1st respectively. Those resources should, finally, after ten months of economic misery, lost sleep and bubbling anger, allow us to patch the last of the major holes in the budget. Barring anymore disasters, we can move forward with getting our fiscal house in order.
I continue to read Dario Cirello’s Aegean Dream, a memoir of the time Dario and his wife spent in Greece. It is strange to be reading this while I am taking Spanish. The commentary on language troubles matches my own efforts at trying to speak Spanish intelligently.
Finally, the new Kindle arrived to replaced the dead one. I’ll pick it up from the landlord’s office tomorrow before I head off to training with the Lifeguard Company I work for.
So it goes. Things are getting better by the day, barring an exception or two. May the upward climb continue.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
The Teaching Front: Pondering Points
I teach history, not math. We should get this off the deck immediately. My math skills are, to be honest, atrocious. So when I sat down to figure out how to build my first batch of tests four years ago, it seemed to me that the best solution was to build a 100 point test. There would be four such tests in a semester, which matched my own experiences as a student. Issuing the grade the student earned would be a simple matter. Deduct points based upon errors, mistakes and wrong answers, subtract from 100 and there you have it, a grade to issue. If they lost 3 points, they got a 97 percent which would be an A. If they lost 65 points, that would be a 45 percent, which would be an F.
The thing is this. Just what, exactly should something be worth?
I’m not the first person to wrestle with this and there are all sorts of philosophies on what assessment should be used for, how many points to issue, should it be high stakes or low stakes and so on and so forth. An instructor’s assessment methodology, or lack thereof, is probably one indicator of their overall teaching philosophy.
I started with first principles.
First, I always hated homework in high school. To me, it was not much more than paperwork which had to be mindlessly completely. When I did it, which was not always the case, I ground through it reluctantly and turned it in. As soon as it was turned in, I forgot about everything except what the item was worth. If I really hated the class, and I hated half of them in any given year, I probably forgot the point value as well.
One pleasant aspect of college is that in many classes, you do not have homework. This often comes as a culture shock to freshman students, who are used to grinding out the assignments. You still have to do the assigned work, such as reading and study guides, but in most traditional college classes in the social sciences, homework isn’t issued.
It is worth pointing out that once someone pulled the gun away from my head per homework, which were now called study guides and reading assignments, I popped through them pretty quickly. I also retained the information for much longer than I might have otherwise. Not issuing homework also cut down on a number of other issues, such as allocating time to grade the assignments and the fact that most students probably cheat on the homework assignments. My summer working as a lifeguard around a bunch of high school students served only to reinforce that latter notion.
That leaves me with tests, quizzes and essays.
My first year exams were modeled on those issued by Larry Cox for American History at Maple Woods Community College. They were multiple choice exams only, 100 points, each question is worth one point each. It was the type of test I took and I remembered happily blasting through them without any real effort, though I messed up the scantron on the very first test which gave me a fright. Fortunately, we fixed the error and I got a solid A on my first exam.
The problem? Students were having trouble finishing the test. This is something I still struggle with, most people read v-e-r-y . . . s-l-o-w-l-y. The more important the item, the slower they go. They more nervous they are, they go even slower still. If they are prone to test anxiety, more on that in a bit, they tend to freeze up completely.
Another problem is the fact that other students who put in a minimal amount of time memorizing bits of data simply regurgitated the data onto the test, earned an A, just like I did, and moved on without really learning much. Given that survey classes are supposed to be preparing the students for advancement to higher levels and remembering my own troubles in that transition, this didn’t sit easily with me.
A final problem is that I was advised to issue some portion of the test with a writing component. Over the semesters I experimented with short answers, which are maddening to grade and issue points to. Just how much should a short answer be worth? Five points or ten? Twenty or two? It also seemed to me that the short answer wasn’t much better than the multiple choice in terms of assessing their understanding of the material. It was just another version of the multiple choice only I had to suffer through their bad handwriting.
There is cheating on tests as well, I might add.
So I pulled a page from the Western Civ classes I took years ago. On those exams the Instructor used a fifty-five point essay question. There were three per exam, he would pick one at random. Then you’d write. It was a harder test, to be certain, but it did force you to memorize the facts, think critically about the question at hand, organize a response and economize your words plus your time in order to complete the exam before the end of class.
I generated my first essay based exams with a point value of fifty points and issued them to my classes with fear in my heart. There was a lot of nay saying about the average student’s ability to write an essay, some of it well founded I might add. I’d still have the problem of bad handwriting and poor organization to deal with.
But why fifty points? Here is my reasoning.
First, if the point value is too low, like say 25 points, then the student will wargame the exam and figure they can skimp on the effort. At best you’ll get what is basically a short answer paragraph of maybe three to eight sentences which fails to answer the question on any level.
Second, if the point value is too high, then the student worries too much about the essay question, focusing on it to the exclusion of the rest of the exam.
Third, if they blow the essay, that is over half of the exam. Fifty points out of a hundred is a nice, round number to work with. They can’t blow it off, but they can’t blow off the other part of the test either. If they at least put some effort into it, they can get a passing score.
How do I grade the essays? On that matter, it becomes rather subjective and it is often a point of contention.
For one thing, I actually READ each essay. Students frequently assume that what I will do is skim their essay, looking for key terms. I do skim the essays the first time just to see how long it is, how it is organized, what I am dealing with over all. Then I read them.
I look for the following things when reading.
1. Is the essay well organized? Does it have a beginning, a middle and an ending which makes sense? Did the student accurately lay down the historical sequence of events in order to build their answer properly?
Often a badly organized essay is very much akin to a three year old with a box of crayons. It is all over the place and when I talk about essays I actually take a marker and scribble a line that goes in loops all over the board. This graphic representation sinks in for many of them.
2. Did you indent your paragraphs?
Some students do not know how to indent for some reason. When I get their essay, it is a solid block of text which is virtually unreadable. I warn them in advance to indent their essays, tell them how to do it if they have a doubt (place your index finger on the page and start writing from there) and I tell them that if they have a new idea, it probably needs a new paragraph. After all, Thomas Jefferson probably doesn’t want to share his paragraph with Alexander Hamilton.
Failure to indent costs a student one point per each offense to a maximum of five points. Five points is enough to hammer the point through to them without actually failing them if they executed everything else properly.
3. Factual errors.
Telling me that George Washington was at the Battles of Saratoga (for the record, he wasn’t) constitutes a factual error. I can’t brush it off as an opinion or an argument. When a student makes a factual mistake it shows me that they have not mastered the basic details required by the question. Thus I deduct points, anywhere from one to five, depending on the severity of the error.
These errors can and do add up very quickly. I also think this separates the adults from the kids in that someone who is good at memorizing bits of data often lacks the practice and experience of putting the puzzle together. It also serves as a pretty good indicator of what is going on in their headspace.
The complaint, often leveled by students against this element of the grading is that they have no real way of knowing EXACTLY what to put on the test. This type of student is one who still thinks, in spite of everything I have taught them, that history is merely about memorization.
“If only I can memorize the RIGHT details, I can ace Mr. Murphy’s test,” they must say to themselves.
The funny thing is, I do tell them EXACTLY what they need to know. It is called lecture and part of what I am looking for is their ability to summarize their understanding effectively.
4. Lack of details.
This is perhaps the most maddening aside from poor organization. Here is an example.
These guys were mad about taxes so they started a revolution. They fought against those other guys, I can’t remember who they are. It was a long fight with a lot of dead people in it but when it was over, our country was born. I’m sure glad they fought for us because I wouldn’t have my freedom without them.
A student will often say, “This is right, isn’t it?”
Yes.
And no.
Yes, it is a description of something I cover in class. It is right, vaguely. It also lacks nearly every detail one would need in order to figure out exactly what the student was talking about. If the student were to give an informative speech on a lecture in my class using the above paragraph, they would probably fail the assignment. It lacks the standard who, what, where, when, how and why that one needs in order to flesh this out.
Lack of detail will cost a student one to five points per instance.
5. Insufficient length.
This usually goes hand in hand with the above. If I get a blank essay, I’ll issue zero points. If I get a paragraph like the one I mentioned in italics, I’ll be charitable and issue ten points for effort. If the student nails the multiple choice then they’ve got a 60 percent, which is just barely passing.
While disappointing in many respects, these are the easiest to grade. You put ten points on them and move on.
The essay questions themselves are challenging yet if you read them and answer every component of them, it is possible to build a framework from the question itself.
Here is a question from my Western Civ One class.
Describe the causes and motivations of the Peloponnesian War. Identify the major combatants of the war and provide details on the nature of this conflict. Furthermore, was the war inevitable? Did the major combatants want a war and could it have been avoided? Provide your opinion supported by sufficient historical evidence and reasoning.
Students often ask, “Why is this one single block of text?”
I tell them, “I want you to get into the habit of taking blocks of text like this and breaking them down into component parts. When you reach upper level courses, you’ll look back on this question and see it as pretty clear cut in what I’m looking for.”
During the same semester that I issued this question, I brought a 300 level essay question from Trinity’s classes in to read to my students. Even with a Master’s level education, it took me a lot of effort to pull apart exactly what that instructor was looking for. My question simply asks you to tell me what you know about the period in question, lay down the causes and motivations, and provide evidence for your opinion.
The evidence, in this case, was to be pulled from a survey of the historigraphic (a history of history) lecture which detailed what previous historians had said about the war. It was probably one of the most complex lectures I’d ever given a college level course and perhaps a bit too hard at the 100 level. On the other hand, my Western Civ students beat the living daylights out of the question in spite of the difficulty.
In an opinion based question like this one, opinion counts for ten points. If you give only an opinion not supported by knowledge of the facts, you’ll be lucky to get any points at all.
So, to rift off of something Terri Lowry once said, what are my objectives?
1. I want to impart to the student that the study of history is more than mere memorization. They must be able to think critically about the information in order to, at later stages of the game, have a defensible opinion based upon the evidence at hand.
2. I want the student to gain the ability to write a critical essay outside of the core composition courses in preparation for advancement to higher level college classes.
3. I want the student to develop the ability to summarize their argument effectively, balancing the need for time conservation in class against the need to provide as much detail as possible.
4. Finally, I want the student to actually REMEMBER something from my class for longer than sixteen weeks.
In this bit of pondering I’ve only covered the essay portion. I still issue a multiple choice component which is worth two points a piece for a subtotal of 50 points.
Why two points per question? Again, it gets down to time. I think, even though the essay is worth half of the exam, that it is the more important component of the exam. I have to balance that view against the fact that not all students are good essay writers and they have a limited amount of time to complete the exam. If I issued one point per question for a maximum of 50 questions, they would be back to lack of time, which would affect the quality of their essay.
I could simply make the exam a 75 point exam but then we’re back to the problem of a student worrying more about the essay than the multiple choice. I want to get them into the habit of taking both sections seriously.
I didn’t get to test anxiety on this run. Maybe I will later, but this particular essay is long enough already.
Oh, what would I give this entry if I were grading it?
To be honest, it does wander around a fair amount and it does lack detail in places. In other places, it is vague.
I’d give it an 80 percent. Barely a B.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
I’ve had a blog of one form or another since 2003. There was the first Pondering Tree at Journalspace, which blew up and sucked most of the material down a wormhole back in 2008. And of course there is this one.
In the Fall of 2007 I started teaching at roughly the same time I started publishing fiction. I never expected to teach given the screwball interpretation of the hiring policies at a sister campus. The change in jobs meant a change in what I could and could not post about. Obviously I could not talk in great detail about what happened in the classroom, my own scruples would prevent that if the law didn’t. Nor could I post on certain topics which might be seen as unprofessional.
The entries changed and so did the readership. In many respects it seems to have fallen off since 2007. Part of that is due to the ongoing stall in my writing career, which seems to be holding steady at two story publications. It would help if I would write fiction, send it to market and revise older projects. However, as I type this blog I have the earphones in because the television is going.
I simply can not write any fiction with any verbal audio input. I’ve tried over and over again with the results of staring at a blank screen in total frustration. That frustration bleeds into the relationship I have with the Woman I Love and causes endless havoc. As it stands, writing a blog entry or doing non-fiction with the earphones in, tuned to instrumental music, is borderline difficult.
In any case, the solution to that problem is a writing space where I am alone and it is quiet. I’ve blogged about that before so I won’t beat that horse again.
I find it unwise to blog about the relationship I’m in, or other relationships, which also causes grief from time to time. There is an ongoing feeling that the blog should be a couples blog, which it is not. It is a writer’s blog. Maybe it might be worth the time to create a stand alone couples blog but then it wouldn’t really be mine, it would be OURS.
There is also the feeling on my part that some things truly should be private. The world doesn’t need to know every detail about my relationship with Trinity. Even the Facebook feed doesn’t feature every aspect of our love affair for each other.
Further, writing anything that even feels remotely critical runs the risk of starting a problem. Such comments are often taken as a sign of unhappiness on my part and that the relationship is in trouble.
Which it isn’t. I can’t write fiction when ANY other human being is around. I had a bitch of a time doing it when I lived with my parents as a kid and again in my adult years. I can’t seem to get it done in a coffee house or any place else where humans are talking.
It is what it is.
As for blogging about my summer job, as with my teaching, there are things I can talk about and things I can not. I love the job but I have had my frustrations, the sort of frustrations that would bleed out there in years past. To be candid, I think my greatest frustration comes from enabling parents who put their children at risk with their own behavior. That said, I can’t really go into detail about that either.
Thus, I’m left with little to say most days. If I do have something to say, it is something that can usually be conveyed in less than 420 characters at Facebook.
At Facebook I’ve had some pretty lively discussions over one thing or another, the sort of thing which used to happen here at the Tree. I also use Facebook for many of the admin functions this blog used to serve, such as an online post it note, a record of things accomplished and yes, the things we ate for dinner. Sometimes I vent my spleen there, as I have done here.
Thus I find myself wondering about the future. Perhaps a day will come when the bare dirt around the Pondering Tree becomes overrun with the pixelated weeds and creeper vines of the internet. Should another server crash take place, perhaps it won’t even be that, nothing more than digital oblivion thrown to the four winds of words written and lost forever.
Who knows?
Year 2011 – Fall Semester Prep
We went to breakfast this morning at Corner Cafe in Liberty, the last hurrah for Summer 2011. Below is a shot of the place.
After a Wal-Mart run for some last minute items, I dropped Trinity off at the Pod in order to get some work done on the car. It took longer than I thought it would to clean the windows, wash the car and organize the trunk.
On the Guy Front per the car, the plan is to organize a maintenance kit for each vehicle. Once upon a time in the Army, I had such a kit for my privately owned piece of shit S-10 that my Father fucked me over with after I got back from the Gulf.
Desert tan, folks. Not only had it been through three engine blocks by time I got it, but it was desert tan.
I really, truly, deeply wonder sometimes what that man was thinking. I should spend my independent study session with Terri Lowry writing up some material pondering that particular question.
In any case, the plan is to have a basic kit in both cars by October. Contrary to popular belief among my extended family, thanks again to my Father, I am capable of rudimentary maintenance work on the vehicles. By rudimentary I mean that I can change a battery, change the oil (not that there is a place to do that here at the Pod), check fluids, change tires . . . you get the idea.
I also need to get a full sized spare rim for the ZX-2. It makes me nervous, driving around on the pathetic sort of donut that they give you these days.
Lastly, I’ve all but decided to get a new keyboard, one of the old school clickety-clack Model M keyboards. At the beginning I can hook it up to my laptop and possible make some headway on various tasks which need doing. Later on, perhaps when I convert a space at my Mom’s into a true writer’s space, I can get a writing only computer to go with it.
Then we can see about getting this writing career of mine back on track!
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
The Manual Typewriter is Dead! Long Live the Manual Typewriter!
When I was a kid, my mom had one of those traveling style manual typewriters which was kept in a carrying case much like a suitcase. I used to open it up and play with the keys, imagining that I was actually using a computer with the lid of the case serving as my screen. The funny thing is that this make believe computer didn’t have a mouse. It is probably best to remember that the apex of technology at the time was the Atari 2600 and the Apple IIe’s that our schools had. We used them to make simple programs that would draw pictures and play Lemonade Stand.
The Manual always frustrated me, even after I learned how to type in high school. I could never build up any real speed because the keys would lock up with each other. Of course, the machine is specifically designed to slow you down for just that reason.
As for automatic typewriters, I learned to type on IBM Selectrics. For the record, I actually failed the second half of Typing One in High School. Once I learned the basics I found that I wasn’t terribly interested in the other aspects of the course, such as how to type a myriad of business letters. I suspect that I sensed that the need to know precisely how to craft such things would soon fade.
When I joined the Army, I allowed myself to be talked into MOS 31C, Single Channel Radio Operator. It was also known as radio teletypist. No recruiter ever used the second term because I suspect they knew that it wouldn’t appeal to 17 year old recruits. Instead, they showed laserdisc videos of soldiers assembling satellite dishes and fiddling with digital readouts. In my mind, that looked pretty cool. They also showed soldiers carrying radios on their backs with combat teams, a dangerous job but not the one I actually got.
Instead, when I got to Fort Gordon, Georgia in October of 1989, I found a piece of equipment that more closely resembled the props needed for a 1950s science fiction movie than a one set in the 21st Century. Depressed and missing my girlfriend of the time, I signed up for an accelerated typing class in an effort to cut two weeks off my training and get out of there early.
I passed the training with no real trouble. The downside is that the Army kept me for the additional two weeks where I got to pick up trash, move pile A over the pile B and the like.
Fast forward to my year in Korea. I used my paycheck to buy the first and last typewriter I would ever own. I used that Panasonic to keep a detailed journal of my experiences in Korea. In actuality, I used it to vent my spleen about my growing frustrations with the unit I was assigned to. However, even though I have since destroyed the inch and a half thick journal, I did gain from the experience by practicing my typing and my composition skills.
I do not miss typewriters. I don’t miss the need to properly align the page in the machine. I don’t miss losing a page of work because of a series of typos. I definitely do not miss correction tape.
When I got home, I purchased my first desktop computer, a Dell 386 33 mHz computer with WordPerfect 5.1 installed onboard. I hooked an HP 500 inkjet printer (the best thing HP ever made) and saw miraculously clear, clean print materialize with the click of that mouse button I had forgot to imagine as a kid.
I was hooked.
There is a fair amount of modern technology which I find irritating, cellphones, texting, and PowerPoints are three good examples. There is also a fair amount of old, reliable technology which I admire, such as bicycles, horse and buggies, and the landline telephone. That said, I won’t miss the typewriter.
Not one bit.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
It has been a busy week for yours truly. So busy that my fitness program, which had been running pretty consistent since the start of the new year, got a bit derailed as I dealt with one issue or another.
Let’s get to it.
The Teaching Front
We’re advancing to our first exam, which is far later than normal due to the snow days we’ve had. I’m behind in all of my classes as well, which is yet another struggle. Further, due to the disruptions, it has been difficult to build up momentum and bond with the students. As a result, things are not working quite as smoothly as I’d like. Fortunately, I have no real disciplinary issues on the table.
On the other hand, I see a lot of my students using their textbook and their study guide during the lecture to hunt down terms. On the surface this might seem like a good thing, right? At least they are paying attention to something.
Well, actually, it is a bad thing. It is a sign of a time crunched student, or worse, a bored student, who is attempting to work through the study guide while I lecture. More often than not students believe that the lecture material is not important for the test. I often get students who ask how much of what I lecture on is in the textbook.
Less than you’d think. The lectures are often specifically designed to go deeper into the topics at hand or they are designed to operate hand in glove with the textbook.
So an example would be the lecture on the Pre-Revolutionary Era of American History. The traditional way of teaching this is to start with the Stamp Act, the Sugar Act, the This Act and the That Act and rest assured that is exactly how it sounds to the student. They are merely memorizing bits of info for regurgitation and that is the last thing you want them to do. Memorization is just an early step towards true understanding.
Rather than lecture on those acts, I make the student responsible for reading the textbook’s coverage of those acts. What I do instead is lay out the case for why the Colonials believed that their only recourse was to declare independence from Great Britain. I lay down the grievances and I fill in the background for the Colonial’s historical understanding and perception of events.
How does that work out? Well, I’m two semesters into using that method and if you are a student who does what I told you to do, take notes on the lecture, tie it to your reading and form a synthesis of the two, then they do fine.
Test results aren’t much different between one strategy of coverage or the other, I might add.
In any event, they are doing their homework while I lecture. I think I’m going to put that on the Why Did I Fail The Test? section of my syllabus for next semester.
The Student Front
I’ve not had a chance to update either the Pondering Tree or Playing with Genesis.
We’ve moved into the actual writing of the novel. The group I am in wrote a combined first chapter this last week.
We’re in a computer lab and to be honest, I am growing to believe that this was not the best choice for the class. It is hard to get into an effective group in order to get any work done. The computers serve as a frequent distraction. Given that I was using my laptop on Tuesday, even I am guilty of this, though I had a reason (which is not the same as an excuse) for having that computer out. If nothing else, the clickety-click-click-click of the keys on my laptop are relatively quiet.
In fact, in terms of technology in the classroom, I think it ought to be banned. No videos, no slides, no powerpoints, none of it. Just a board to write on and comfortable chairs for the students to sit in with a large desk to spread out their things. On C-Span this morning (and what a wonderful discovery that is, a place where people discuss without drama or shouting or Jerry Springer like behavior) an education pundit was talking about a high tech public school on the East Coast which cost a pretty penny to equip with the latest and greatest in technology.
The performance at that school? In the toilet. Students surf the net, IM each other or spend their time trying to get the tech to work in the first place.
Banish to the Computer Science Department and leave it there.
I’ll provide a proper update to Playing with Genesis that covers the actual course material and progress later this weekend.
Research Project Number – 05
The Client was on deadline this week, which was something of a surprise to me. I wasn’t aware of the deadline. No matter. I sat down with the backlog I could most effectively contribute to and worked over the material. By deadline time, I had most of the storyline components covered. There are a few lingering errors in the manuscript but I will catch them later.
It is going to be a pretty big novel, folks. I’m looking forward to seeing how the trilogy ends.
The Writing Front
In the Early Morning Rain by Berry Henderson and myself is currently out to market. We haven’t heard anything back yet so we’re hopeful. It is a new market open to e-subs so I’ll be looking over my inventory to see what can be polished up and put into the wind. Many of the valuable things I have learned in World Building will be helpful in that respect.
On the novel front I was able to drag out the manuscript for the first time in a couple of weeks to give it a going over. What I have right now are a bunch of cobbled together, pasted together scenes which are loosely linked together. In looking over the manuscript I think some major work is needed to better define the roles of the various characters.
There is also one glaring problem, the same one I noticed with my previous novel effort, Convergence Point.
When I have the space to spread out and more specifically, work on a military topic, I tend to let the action and strategy dominate the narrative. It is a natural strength of mine as a storyteller and an historian. Unfortunately, without significant character depth and development, no one is going to care about that action. It will be nothing more than a series of cardboard targets getting cut down on the battlefield.
So that part of it needs significant work. It is the sort of thing I can probably hammer out in a week of concentrated effort.
As for the World Building in the novel, I think some refinement of various structures and institutions are necessary. I definitely want to redefine the family structure of this society based upon what I have learned in Melissa Eaton’s Cultural Anthropology side of the course.
If things go according to plan, I’ll use my time during Spring Break in tandem with Trinity’s Spring Break (which is at the end of the month) to get the project ready for submission to market.
Other Fronts
Over the next few days the Great Summer Job Hunt will commence. Now that I am lifeguard qualified I should be able to, hopefully, get a decent job at around 25 to 30 hours a week maximum. Even more ideally, it will be a posting to an outdoor pool.
Trinity is making plans to travel to California to see her eldest son and wife for a week during her Spring Break. I should be able to polish up the novel while she is out there. I’ve got to say that I am glad to see that fences have been mended with that particular component of her family.
Lastly, March 10th is my father’s birthday. He’ll be sixty-nine years old if my math is correct. No one thought he’d get this far given that he has prostate cancer, multiple myeloma, stage three lung cancer and a heart muscle that more closely resembles a chunk of hamburger than a heart.
I chalk it up to sheer cussed stubborness myself.
Trinity and I are going to see about getting some barbecue for tomorrow night so we can celebrate a bit early. Both of us will be tied up during the week with our respective college obligations.
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
The Writing Front
A Forlorn Harvest
WC: 23,000 first draft
After a few days away from the manuscript I came back today and put in 2200 words, bringing the total to what you see above. I won’t claim that this isn’t a problem riddled document or that it reads terribly well. Right now I am just trying to get words onto the page.
Even though I am 2K short of the minimum 25K goal I do believe that I’ll try and print this manuscript out tomorrow. Then I can sit down and see what is going on with it. It has always been difficult for me to edit on the computer screen. I find I do a lot better if I have the document right there on paper where I can see it all at once.
In somewhat related news, I spent part of last night working on a creation story for the Limb Knitters. I’ve always had a vague idea about their origins but nothing firmly set in stone. It turns out that the exercise was useful even though I am not sure that the Limb Knitters will make a major appearance in A Forlorn Harvest.
We’ll see.
As for other writing efforts, once can peek in on some of my homework for the World Building class over at Playing with Genesis.
Other Fronts
So far the main effort has been devoted to housework and writing for the novel. Here in a bit I’ll hit the gym for the first workout of the week followed by lunch. For some reason I feel a bit weak and punchy today, not sure what is causing that.
Aside from that, not much else to report.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
American History II
Back in the Winter Semester of 1994 I took American History II with Larry Cox at Maple Woods Community College. I had taken him during my first semester for American History I and unlike many of my students, I truly enjoyed the experience. It was a lecture based course with weekly quizzes, reading assignments and four exams. It was not difficult to earn an A during the Fall 1993 Semester and it was not difficult to earn an A during the Winter Semester either.
In fact, I earned an A on every class I took at Maple Woods in the History Department, which pretty much set my course for my current career.
Years later, in the Fall Semester of 2007 I’d finally get a chance to teach a college level history course. In addition to brushing up on my recent American History, I scoured my brain for memories of that class with Larry Cox and modeled my course accordingly. For my assessment I decided to go with multiple choice exams which were balanced out by true false and short answer. This seemed reasonable enough to me. I also decided to follow the example of another peer who manually graded their exams.
Today? I use a much different test. With each passing semester I utilize more writing for the exams based on the realization that it was not terribly challenging or useful for a student to memorize bits of data only to forget them later. Further, I wasn’t convinced that they were learning anything by using a multiple choice exam. Granted, the exams have their appeal in that you can run them through a scantron reader, which makes grading easy.
Assessment: Writing
So, why writing? I have to admit, I was leery about transitioning over to writing at first. English proficiency isn’t necessarily a requirement for taking American History. We often receive students who struggle to read and write at a functional level. Some might argue that it is patently unfair to expect more of them even though it is a 100 level college course. There is also the fact that if I assign essays for my exams, I have to devote more time to preparing them for that portion of the exam which in turn means I am not concentrating on the material.
Yet I’ve grown to accept that a writing element should be included in the exam. I typically use an essay which is worth anywhere from 50 to 60 points depending on which semester the course is offered. The students receive the essay questions ahead of time on their study guides, usually three questions per exam.
The best strategy for doing well on my essays is to keep decent lecture notes. It helps if a student breaks the essay question down into the component parts as a note taking guide. As they move through the lecture notes and the reading assignment, a good student should be able to figure out which components go where in the question.
In other words, I am asking them to reconstruct the narrative. To me, this seems more challenging than merely expecting them to memorize that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. They have to remember who, what, where, when, how and why. They have to remember the sequence of events and finally, in many cases, they have to remember the motivations and causes of various events in history. They get a bit of help in that I provide a batch of terms to know for each section of the quarter on the study guide.
This, I tell them, is their meat and potatoes for the essay.
Finally, I advise them to write an outline of each essay question as a study method. They are not allowed to use this outline during the exam, which many consider to be harsh. Frankly, using the outline is a little too much like cheating to me.
What are the results? For students who want to learn, I continue to hear nothing but positive feedback on the method. It pushes them to write more. It pushes them to reason with the material far more actively than they would if they simply memorized the data and regurgitated it back onto the exam. It requires higher order thinking to figure out what came before what, who or what motivated a person or nation to take a course of action, and figure out what the consequences were.
Early in the semester we focus mainly on narrative based questions. As the semester progresses I try to transition to questions which require an opinion from the student. I prefer to do this later because many students figured out in previous classes, both high school and college, that a well written opinion which is deficient in fact based evidence was sufficient to get a passing grade. I want to break them of that habit by forcing them to build up their evidence based reasoning first before asking them for an opinion.
Some students do complain about the writing load.
“I didn’t sign up for an English class.”
To which I normally respond that any good college course should feature a heavy writing requirement. Further, writing forces you to think. It is good for you, whether you realize it or not.
“I can never figure out EXACTLY what it is that you want me to know.”
In my more jaded and cynical moments I feel that these are students who try to get through the course while learning as little as possible. If I gave a multiple choice exam worth 100 points, they’d be happy with that. Just memorize that data points, pump them back onto the exam and move on. There is the issue of data selection or filtration, trying to figure out what is a higher priority bit of data from a lower bit. Some students, if you gave them all the time in the world, would respond to the essay questions by regurgitating the lecture notes word for word.
Which is impossible, I might add. The time limitation makes it impossible. A student has anywhere from fifty minutes to seventy-five minutes to complete the essay. They have to make a choice about what is more important in a cloud of data where, to some, everything seems important.
The questions I issue are designed to provide them with some guidance on what I am looking for.
The rest of the exam used to be devoted to multiple choice questions. This semester I am moving away from that toward short term identification. That increases my grading load but I think this will help some students who see a name like Alexander Hamilton and wonder just what, exactly, is important about him. It may also help them put together part of their essay question in a rough draft form on the short identification before moving onto the main event.
Writing, Stephen King once wrote, is the closest thing we have to mind reading. I also think it is the best method of student assessment available in an environment where interviewing the individual students about their knowledge content is not a viable option.
Content
Now, the other issue is just what, exactly, should one cover. Historians and politicians spend a lot of time debating what should be covered in a college history course. We are fortunate in that we are allowed to make up our own mind what is important. Further, just as my students are forced to make choices about what to emphasize in their essays, the time constraints of the semester force me to make choices about what I will emphasize.
The 100 level courses I took focused on what used to be a standard political historical narrative of leaders who made decisions and how those decisions shaped society. The lectures often focused on foreign policy, domestic policy, the advance of technology, and to a limited degree, warfare. The evolution of various political philosophies and shifting social attitudes were also covered in the lectures.
As I marched on into 200 to 400 level history courses, the instruction shifted radically, as did the assessment methods. The emphasis moved toward a heavy emphasis in social history, which is basically the history of the everyday person in a given time period.
To be perfectly honest, and I’m bucking the trend here, I am not sure I understand the value of social history. The theory is that students will find resonance in the narrative if they read about people like themselves in a given historical time period. Another aspect of social history deemphasizes the focus on leaders with the notion that people of the society pretty much shape the decisions any given leader will make.
To sum it up, social history is history with “the people” put back into the narrative.
I take issue with this because I do not think one can readily compare the existence of a Roman slave during the Fall of the Roman Republic with a Dustbowl Farmer trying to get to California during the Great Depression. The Marxist Historian would tell you that both are lower class in the society and they would be correct. They would also be correct in telling you that an apple and an orange both belong in the fruit section of your supermarket.
There was also a studied deemphasis (contempt is probably more accurate) toward covering the topic of warfare. My instructors covered this point by stating, “The wars aren’t terribly important.” There is also a prevalent attitude that it is better to teach peace rather than war. Thus if I do not focus on it and the rest of my peers avoid it as well, we which reach a point where war fades away from the society.
Perhaps an oversimplification but I think it is an accurate assessment.
Finally, there was an attitude, fueled in part by James Loewen’s book Lies My Teacher Told Me whereby we pull down various leaders and figures in American History and replace them with figures who have been ignored. He has a valid point when he discusses the concept of “heroification” in American History. Consider that for quite some time it was inappropriate to discuss the historical record concerning Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with his slaves. I freely discuss the Sally Hemmings controversy when I get to Jefferson partly because I think students should understand that historical figures were often a collection of contradictory attitudes and behaviors. This provides some depth to figures who might otherwise come off as paragons of virtue, indistinct from the other paragons of virtue.
My only criticism of the concept of heroification is that the profession seems hellbent on removing someone like Jefferson and replacing him with another paragon of virtue.
Consider Martin Luther King Junior, leader of the American Civil Rights movement. He is considered a hero in the eyes of many and rightfully so. When I lecture, do I discuss the FBI records which detail his extramarital affairs?
There are some who would say I am attacking Martin Luther King Junior by doing so, seeking to undermine his important contributions to our society.
I’ll leave that question unanswered for now.
So, what do I focus on?
To be honest, I tend to focus on the standard political historical narrative. While focusing on this narrative I try to breathe life into a sampling of historical figures who I believe can serve as focal points for a number of different issues during a given period of history. The course is currently weighted toward foreign affairs partly because I feel that students simply do not understand is going on in American Foreign Policy. I try to outline the rise of American Power and how we found ourselves at the top of the international hierarchy at the end of World War II. I also try to outline the political philosophies which drive our foreign policy.
And yes, I spend time on the wars. Some students complain that I glorify the wars, which isn’t quite accurate. I preface the lectures on warfare by covering the very real personal cost my own family has paid for these wars. It is my hope, when I cover such topics, that they will come away with a greater depth of understanding with regard to human conflict.
“War is bad,” isn’t enough if you ask me. We all know it is bad just as most smokers know that smoking is bad. It is right there on the package from the Surgeon General yet they do it anyway, just as humans continue to use war as a means of resolving their differences. When I cover warfare I try to impart to them the cost of war and why the wars happens anyway.
Maybe, I tell them, you’ll be able to stop the next one if the reasons for going to war do not add up. You’ll be able to come to your own conclusion based on your education, not on some talking points someone hammered into your head.
I also try to cover the evolution of rights in American History II as they spread from white male voters to the rest of the citizenry with an emphasis on gender and race based discrimination. This topic alone is worthy of a stand alone course and I do not claim to cover it with the full justice it deserves. In general I tend to conclude that aspect of the course with an optimistic note that the society is an experiment in progress and we tend to expand the recognition of rights overtime as opposed to curtailing them.
Social history? I do not spend much time on it. At the 100 level, frankly, I can’t see where any of it would apply. The students often come to me with a very deficient baseline of information, one I have to spend a lot of time filling in. It seems to me that if it is going to be taught at all that it should be relegated to higher level courses.
To be honest, I wish my instructors had spent more time on historiography with concentrated readings assigned from notable historians in any given field. That would have been far more valuable to me than learning about the lives of lower class people in any given moment of history.
To conclude, I never feel like I have enough time to get to everything. Some students leave the class a bit disgruntled that their favorite topic wasn’t covered. They seem to have a fixation on the history of crime in this country, one which I find rather mind numbing and dull.
I think in a future entry I’ll discuss why I focus on specific people as focal points in the historical narrative.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
This semester I am establishing a stand alone blog called Playing with Genesis which will detail my experiences in Terri Lowry and Melissa Eaton’s Create Your Own World Learning Community Course at Longview Community College.
This first official entry is here.
This blog will continue to operate as normal. If you are interested in the topic of World Building and wish you were sitting in the classroom beside me then feel free to follow Playing with Genesis. It will be the next best thing, I assure you.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Those that done said stuff