Teaching and Learning at Daily Kos
I can generally count on being physically run down at the end of every semester, but as I have mentioned previously, this year I have spread myself so thin that I've become mentally exhausted as well. I find myself thinking about critical thinking (and lack thereof) in AAUP meetings, Women's Studies at Gay/Non-Gay Alliance meetings and vice-versa, and assessment is always lurking in the background. As if I didn't have too much of a load already, I've agreed to teach a beginning Introduction to Blackboard for new faculty and staff on January 16 and have to present a workshop on critical thinking in March for my college's Habits of Mind series. I'll probably first air part of the CT workshop here at DKos. And I have begun writing the next part of Gender Workshop. Oh...and I wrote three new poems last week, such as they are, but at least it's starting the creative process...maybe.
But I'm sick. This is whack, as my students say. Two days before Xmas and I'm barely chugging along. The house needs cleaning so that we can put up a few decorations, we have no clean clothes left, I'm still supposed to think of one more thing for my own holiday gift, (something not necessary, but fun) one of my students wants to argue about his grade, and I'm just going from minute to minute hoping I can breathe without wheezing or coughing. I think I'm getting better because sneezing has commenced. On the other hand, my sinuses seem to be clamping shut again, meaning I'm starting to feel a massive headache comming on. I'm sure if I asked someone on campus, I would be told that this was "going around". This part of being a teacher sucks. If I wanted a parasitic invasion, I might just as well have hung out in a subway car.
Anyway...Teacher's Lounge. Oh, yeah. Fortunately I was gathering the links as the week went along rather than waiting until Friday this week, so I have managed to finish them. It felt like a slow week. Some of the regular diarists didn't post, likely because they were ending their own semesters. Still, there are 45 links. Who knew, back when I started this and would link to a handful of education links and go scouting CNN and the Times for filler, that this would grow so much? Part of that is the increased interest in the topic. Part of it is because I have expanded what I look for. I ventured into the realm of trying to decide if what I was reading was teaching or some undefined else.
Which brings me to today's topic. In a slow week I found a dozen links to what I would call teaching. And even then I am intentionally ignoring some of the biggest sources of teaching here, which are my Saturday morning compatriots, Home Repair, Garden Blogging, and Painting Palooza. Want to learn how to weld? Check out eeff. Need cooking instruction? Check out What's for Dinner? History, philosophy, psychology, sociology, science, mathematics, statistics, literature, art history. What do you want? Someone here is probably teaching it. Or could.
But that's a whole other kettle of fish, as they say, from what I started Teacher's Lounge to accomplish, which was as a place to talk about the issues of education, teaching and learning. So I'm sitting here in my plague-infested haze wondering about whether there should be a spin-off or a total re-conceptualization of how we might try to connect student with teacher around these parts. Discuss.
--Robyn Elaine Serven --Bloomfield College, NJ |