Lazy professors

The Chronicle writes today about the myth of the lazy professor in an attempt to debunk it, and the responses are interesting in that they tend to simply reinforce it.

Much of the counter arguments against the lazy professor focus on how busy professors feel their jobs to be (not something I'm arguing with, though I find it interesting that this was the dominant form of evidence produced). In response, one commenter suggests that professors feel overworked because they have no idea what life is like in the "real" world. Another suggests that the only way to not feel overwhelmed as a professor is to learn to let unimportant deadlines lapse and to accept doing a "mediocre" job in most things, while yet another suggests that the myth arises because people who have bosses imagine what they would do if their boss wasn't watching all the time and then suppose that professors slack off the same way they would.

The first one, of course, makes me laugh. I've worked in the "real" world at a similarly high-motivation job, and although I always had way too much work to do there, I still felt much less compulsion to work evenings or weekends to compensate. I just prioritized and kept going, which meant that things got done when they got done. As a professor, I am far more invested in the job because I see it as an extension of myself, it's my identity, and so I am far more inclined to put in extra hours because it reflects back on me. (Interestingly, adjusted for inflation between that job and my current one, my compensation was roughly the same...)

The second one about doing a mediocre job is a bit disturbing, but only because it sounds like "mediocre" is less than excellent. When one understands that the "mediocre" mentioned is probably what a perfectionist means by mediocre (since in my experience, as a profession, academics tend toward perfectionism), then a perfectionist's "mediocre" might be pretty damn good. Then again, the writer may be one of those "deadwood" professors we always hear about. But giving the benefit of the doubt, it's possible that the writer feels like his/her output is mediocre, but those looking at the product probably think it's pretty stellar.

The last observation struck home with me though because from an outsider's perspective, the life does look pretty easy. First, there's little direct oversight (or at least very little that's directly observable from outside the institution). What little performance evaluation the public might see is on sites like RMP, in which even professors identified as "bad" by students remain in a job for years. Of course, the evaluations of students on RMP are problematic, which is why they aren't always a good indicator of effectiveness.

Second, even when oversight seems to be in place, the visible portions of a professor's job - the time spent in the classroom - seem minimal. Six hours a week? Doesn't seem like much, does it. Even the 13 hours a week I'm in the classroom sounds pretty small. But of course imagining that's all there is to the job is similar to imagining that the time spent on stage by any performer is all the time spent on the job. So U2 make millions for a few hours work three or four days a week while they're on tour? Not really. Then again, maybe a rock group like U2 isn't a good example since what they make for all they do is proportionally still much larger than a professor. But even an actor in the local playhouse, who makes much less, puts in many, many more hours than those spent on the stage. The job involves much more than just the performance itself.

Third, if indeed the myth is believed by people who imagine what little work they'd be able to get away with doing if they didn't have a boss, then we're talking apples and oranges when it comes to mindset. If you can imagine you'd do much less work without a boss, then you don't have the same mindset as a professor, who tend as a group to be highly self-motivated. In fact, I would suspect that if as professors we had bosses looking over our shoulders every day, we'd actually do less work. The work I do, I do because I'm motivated to do it, not because I know someone else is watching. If someone else was watching, I might not do as much because I'd probably resent the implication that I was not the best judge of what I should be doing with my time. That's what years and years of post-secondary education will do for you. There's so little structure in place to monitor professorial output because they don't need it, not because they are lazy and are avoiding it.

Personally, I don't know that the myth of the lazy professor is that prevalent, though perhaps the people I meet just are too polite to express it to my face. But it nevertheless serves as excellent fodder for Chronicle articles so that those both from within and without can reinforce as well as counter it.

Tech school saves the day!

I keep thinking up blog posts when I'm in no position to blog (driving, walking to class etc.) but they don't get written because my life is pretty full of being a teacher right now.

Those three new preps are keeping me busy, but I'm also keeping on top of them, so it's good. So far.

But since time's the source of non-blogging, it seems appropriate to blog about saving time.

I have a non-credit upgrading course for students who aren't ready to take university level English. Foolishly, I thought something that looked like a grade 12 curriculum would be fairly easy to organize (not to teach mind you, just to put together) because I'd be able to use a lot of material from different periods, genres, and places. I figured I'd then be able to use nothing but texts with which I'm already familiar.

That of course turned out to not be the case since there are some pretty strict requirements for the structure of the course. But I did figure out how to make the prep for that course easier.

I've discovered that the first year writing course I taught at the tech school I was at is actually at the right level for an upgrading class, which means that at least the assignments and exercises we did will be suitable. Hooray! I fairly danced when I figured out I had a set of in-class exercises that would do what we needed to in this class already prepared from the previous one.

Now, it should be obvious at this point that there's something amiss here. Materials that I first developed for students in a post-secondary first year writing class will be useful in teaching students who perhaps have not even finished high school. But yes, the level of preparedness of the students at that tech school and the one I'm at now are radically different. And what I can expect from my students (even the non-credit ones) here is slightly higher than what I could expect from my students at the other school.

In theory, one would hope that an introductory English class at one school is relatively similar to that at another. But in reality, that's not always the case. On that level, this observation is a sad one.

But, boy, am I glad to have found some ready-made materials that just need a little tweaking to help me prep for this class!

De-feet and teaching

I'm looking through my shoes, trying to decide what to wear tomorrow so that I'll survive the day. I have 5 hours solid in the classroom, and that pretty much means 5 hours of standing, so I need something with a bit better support than last week. After the first day of teaching, my legs ached from the unaccustomed standing.

I did walk a lot over the summer, but I also sat a lot. I didn't stand in one place (or relatively one place) much though, and the 3 hours of teaching last week made my legs and hips sore.

I realize you might be thinking, "why don't you just sit down while you teach?" but frankly, that's always struck me as a bit odd. It seems too casual somehow, and I wonder if students at the back of the room might get distracted because they can't see me properly.

I know some of my colleagues regularly sit during lectures, but that just feels too casual. I also move constantly throughout the room during exams. I don't want to catch cheaters - I hope none of my students feel the need to cheat. But I also think that many students cheat because it's an opportunity crime. They see someone else's answer sheet and copy. Or they see that the teacher isn't watching and pull out their phone. I figure if I'm constantly moving through the classroom, varying the pattern of my movement, I keep them on edge and less likely to be tempted.

Besides, I've been in a class as a student where others were blatantly cheating because the prof was seated at the front of the room with his head in a book. That really ticked me off, and there was no way to even catch his eye because he didn't look up at all. I can't help but think that if he had circulated through the room, those students wouldn't have cheated. /rant

I actually had a student comment on my standing last semester. He seemed surprised that I never sat down during class - apparently many of his other profs did.

But I like to move around at least a bit, so I end up standing a lot. I do sometimes sit on top of a desk while we're having a discussion because I often don't need to actively participate in them when the students start talking to each other. But when I'm lecturing or leading the discussion, it seems necessary to be able to maintain eye contact with anyone in the room, and being on the same level as they are would make that hard.

Perhaps it's odd, and maybe at some point I'll find it too hard and have to sit. But right now, I need good shoes to stand in for 5 hours...

I LOVE teaching!

Okay. I have to say it, and I have to say it now, because I know the bloom will be off the rose very shortly.

But I had a *great* first day!

This, despite the fact I have an 8am class (Brit Lit II survey... some strange scheduling there!). I don't like mornings. 9am classes are good. I'm not one of those people who complains if I have to come in before noon. But there's something about getting up that one hour earlier that gets tougher and tougher as the semester progresses.

But today? I had a fabulous day. I met the survey class students bright and early, and all but one were there are ready at 8am. And I had two former (non-major) students signed up. The course is open enrollment as long as you meet the pre-reqs, but I was still a bit surprised to see their names on the roster. I wonder if they realized they got me? As part-time, my name doesn't go into the calendar, so they might not have known originally.

Then again, maybe they knew it was me and came for that reason. Who knows?

My GenEd students in the afternoon looked kinda sullen for much of the class - you know, the syllabus explaining, schedule distributing part - but at least some of them perked up with the brief discussion we had at the end of class. I can see some potential conflicts between strongly held beliefs ahead though.

But I also got some interesting responses when I had them fill out a short questionnaire indicating why they chose this class. I had a few of course who said it was the best of the three horrible options they had, but I also had some who seemed genuinely enthused and thought it would relate back to their majors, which is what GenEd is about after all, so by the end of the class I was pretty excited (but tired!)

I actually had to cut off the discussion to end the class, so we might get some good give and take going, as long as I can keep some of the dominant ones (I can see some of them already) in check to allow other points of view.

But it was a very satisfying day overall.

Only problem is, now I have to get ready for the other two classes. Here's hoping they're as enjoyable (at least in this first week) as this one was!

Bad rhetoric

A recent article at the CHE on teaching got me thinking about rhetoric, so I thought I'd share. From the opening paragraph:

With lavish recreation centers and sophisticated research laboratories, life on college campuses is drastically different from what it was 100 years ago. But one thing has stayed virtually the same: classroom teaching.

In all fairness, the quote does go on to talk about how the work of the professor, to design lessons and evaluate has stayed relatively the same, but the parallelism of the first sentence: "lavish" recreation centers and "sophisticated" research labs implies resources have been poured into these two areas. And by resources one gets the sense that the structures that house recreation and laboratory activities have gotten the latest upgrades, including the latest technologies possible.

Then the third sentence contrasts teaching with recreation and research, which by implication suggests that teaching has not had money lavished upon it or the latest technologies installed in classrooms. That's where I have a problem with this introduction because it sets up a false comparison. It pits recreation and lab equipment against teaching "equipment" and technologies. But most teaching is still the interaction between teacher and student, an embodied, sometimes visceral, most often corporeal interaction. And even in online learning, the use of language by the student and teacher, even when facilitated by electronic rather than face to face means, is still intensely personal.

I don't mean that student and teacher become friends, or even that their language use is colloquial and intimate (though the colloquial does occasionally emerge (and I hope the intimate does not)), but that the process of teaching is one human being sharing knowledge and experience with another. There's little need for fancy doodads and gadgets to make that happen.

And yes, it's not like teaching doesn't need support through resources and technologies. But the crux of the relationship - a mentoring one many times - is still one human being talking to another. And all the bells and whistles in the world won't change that.

That's what annoys me about these kinds of false oppositions. They lose sight of the very different kinds of activities that research (labs), recreation, and teaching/learning encompass.

This is gonna be some ride!

After being yanked rather reluctantly from my own research back into the realization that the semester is soon upon us, I realized that it was high time I started prepping courses since there's lots to do yet. I may be in for quite a ride this semester.

I only have one conference this semester, unlike some when I've had as many as two conference papers to produce, so I've been trying to finish off that paper. It's roughly sketched out, but still needs a really good draft completed before we get to the point where classes start.

Speaking of classes, because I have three new preps in the four courses I'm teaching, I have a lot of new material to develop. I'm teaching the survey class again, which is good and the only thing I changed was the novel. I switched from Doris Lessing's The Antheap to R.L. Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, which I'm much more conversant with, so that's not a big deal. But I also have the poetry course, my gen ed course in "making humans" (which I'm VERY excited about!) and an upgrading course. This means I have to:

• read and develop lectures/discussion activities questions for 4 novels I've read before
• read and develop lecture material/activities for a novel I've never even read before (thank goodness it's a short one)
• read a Shakespeare play - Othello - that I haven't read in years and develop a drama unit for the upgrading class
  
• write 9 new assignments - of these, two will be versions of a research paper, so I only need to tweak existing research assignments, but that still leaves 7 new ones (this doesn't include exams unfortunately)
• prepare about 4 dozen poems for discussion/lecture materials
  
• read and prepare lecture/activities for half a dozen short stories
  

The biggest challenges are actually coming from the upgrading class, which I said I'd take on only in the last couple of weeks. This was before I realized the sometimes strict limitations that the class imposes, like the approved reading list for novels, the required assignments, the Canadian content requirement and the need for a Shakespeare or a 'modern' play (defined pretty much as 20th century). Oh, and a limitation on the cost of the textbook, which meant that my original plan had to be scrapped because I would have gone $5 over the limit.

When I sat down to put together the syllabus for the upgrading class, a lot of the material that I had in front of me from which to fulfill the requirements was material that I haven't taught before, so a lot of the new reading comes from this course alone. I'm still looking forward to most of that reading and the challenge of developing the material, but it will be a lot of work!

The bright spot in all this is that my two lit classes - poetry and the survey - are not full, so I should have fewer papers to mark in those than usual, and the fact that I'm not teaching any composition also means I'll have less marking to do than I usually have. In fact, the upgrading course - which will probably require the most handholding on my part - consists of a number of unit tests as well as a couple of shorter writing pieces, so the marking in it should be fairly light as well.