Not the Macarena
Sep. 11th, 2005 09:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jdblWell! (That's a deep subject, as my father is wont to say.)
I've had one day of class so far, just lecture. I don't actually start teaching my seminar sections until week after next. It's very weird to be teaching and yet subject to someone else's pedagogic decisions, but I think I'm adapting okay. The seminars for one of the courses will consist primarily of watching and marking seminar presentations - not much time left for discussion of anything. The other two courses will be considerably more participatory, and I'm starting to gather up "active learning" techniques to use so that not every single class will be just yak, yak, yak. I'm also in the process of working out a spreadsheet to use in keeping track of their participation in class, which is 30% of the grade in one of the courses. And then I'm gathering up "icebreaker" activity ideas, ways for the students to introduce themselves to each other. All this will be considerably less work next year, because I'll have done all this stuff already, but it's a fair bit of work to get all my ducks in a row at this point.
The annual TA training was yesterday, and it was quite good for as far as it went, but I pity the kids who are being thrown into teaching for the first time with that as their only training. However, there is an ongoing series of training workshops, one pretty much every Saturday morning, which they can do as well. I plan on doing a bunch of those, because if you do enough of them, you get to attend the faculty trainings, which I would like the option to do. And I actually tend to like these training thingies. There's no such thing as too much information, as far as I'm concerned. Even when they're boring, there's usually at least one or two little tidbits or exercises you pick up. I doubt I'll attend as many next semester, but I'll be spending most of my Saturday mornings at the Uni for the next couple of months.
The Cartier project has been only creeping along as I'm focusing on the teaching stuff right now, but I anticipate getting into that in earnest in the middle of the week.
Blackheart Fleet languishes, waiting for me to finish with Cartier. I have been thinking about it, though, off and on. I choreographed an Okari dance in my head the other day. Step for step. Yes, I am a total freak, thanks for asking. However, I know many of you have done weirder things in the name of writing, so I'm not the lone ranger on that one. (No, the dance doesn't look like the Macarena.) (It's got a lot of hula-esque figure-eight hip movement, some hopping, and some other specific step sequences, but paired off, standing generally about as close as you would for a formal waltz, with some occasional forays closer into personal space when there is sexy hula-ing back-to-front. Just in case you were wondering. And I'd bet that Heather was.)
And that's about it. I've been very busy but it's all stuff that distills down to nearly nothing in print. Today's tasks are: grocery shopping, purchase of a sling-type backpack, purchase of watches/watch batteries for both himself and myself, cooking dinner, maybe watching Casanova tonight. Casanova is a BBC period tv series starring David Tennant, best known currently as the Tenth Doctor, and written by Russell T. Davies, best known currently for being a genius, creator of UK Queer as Folk, and revivor of Doctor Who. Because it's supposed to be my day off, dammit.
I've had one day of class so far, just lecture. I don't actually start teaching my seminar sections until week after next. It's very weird to be teaching and yet subject to someone else's pedagogic decisions, but I think I'm adapting okay. The seminars for one of the courses will consist primarily of watching and marking seminar presentations - not much time left for discussion of anything. The other two courses will be considerably more participatory, and I'm starting to gather up "active learning" techniques to use so that not every single class will be just yak, yak, yak. I'm also in the process of working out a spreadsheet to use in keeping track of their participation in class, which is 30% of the grade in one of the courses. And then I'm gathering up "icebreaker" activity ideas, ways for the students to introduce themselves to each other. All this will be considerably less work next year, because I'll have done all this stuff already, but it's a fair bit of work to get all my ducks in a row at this point.
The annual TA training was yesterday, and it was quite good for as far as it went, but I pity the kids who are being thrown into teaching for the first time with that as their only training. However, there is an ongoing series of training workshops, one pretty much every Saturday morning, which they can do as well. I plan on doing a bunch of those, because if you do enough of them, you get to attend the faculty trainings, which I would like the option to do. And I actually tend to like these training thingies. There's no such thing as too much information, as far as I'm concerned. Even when they're boring, there's usually at least one or two little tidbits or exercises you pick up. I doubt I'll attend as many next semester, but I'll be spending most of my Saturday mornings at the Uni for the next couple of months.
The Cartier project has been only creeping along as I'm focusing on the teaching stuff right now, but I anticipate getting into that in earnest in the middle of the week.
Blackheart Fleet languishes, waiting for me to finish with Cartier. I have been thinking about it, though, off and on. I choreographed an Okari dance in my head the other day. Step for step. Yes, I am a total freak, thanks for asking. However, I know many of you have done weirder things in the name of writing, so I'm not the lone ranger on that one. (No, the dance doesn't look like the Macarena.) (It's got a lot of hula-esque figure-eight hip movement, some hopping, and some other specific step sequences, but paired off, standing generally about as close as you would for a formal waltz, with some occasional forays closer into personal space when there is sexy hula-ing back-to-front. Just in case you were wondering. And I'd bet that Heather was.)
And that's about it. I've been very busy but it's all stuff that distills down to nearly nothing in print. Today's tasks are: grocery shopping, purchase of a sling-type backpack, purchase of watches/watch batteries for both himself and myself, cooking dinner, maybe watching Casanova tonight. Casanova is a BBC period tv series starring David Tennant, best known currently as the Tenth Doctor, and written by Russell T. Davies, best known currently for being a genius, creator of UK Queer as Folk, and revivor of Doctor Who. Because it's supposed to be my day off, dammit.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 02:24 pm (UTC)Uggh! I tell students that all the time about library sessions. If they come in with a closed mind and think they know everything, they won't learn anything! Unfortunately, they all don't have your attitude.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 03:57 pm (UTC)Isn't it? After TAing survey literature courses for a year, I'm now TAing creative writing, and our professor has planned out the entire course in extreme detail. I'm busy enough already that it's nice not to have spend time planning classes, but it also feels kind of restrictive and strange.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 04:04 pm (UTC)Good for you for checking out all these sessions when you are so busy.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 04:56 pm (UTC)