End of the year assessment
Every Friday I sit down to review the diaries from the past week. If I have time, I also visit some other sites looking for education-related stories, but that hasn't happened for the past few weeks because of finals crunchtime (and this week because I have had a chance to get some actual sleep after being sleep-deprived for the entire semester). To the person who wants to know how I choose the stories, here is the process. I skim each diary and read a selection of the comments, primarily to assess which category it should inhabit. Sometimes I stop and read the whole thing. Sometimes I don't. Whether I agree or disagree with the diarist is irrelevant: I believe that it invokes a reaction in me either way, then it should probably be viewed, if only for use in refinement of the list of things to which I am opposed. If it pisses me off, I need to know why. If I have almost no reaction, and I see no category in which it fits, I don't include it. If it has gotten what I think is more than enough play (eg. if it has spun off response diaries) then I probably don't include it.
The categories are of course overlapping, so sometimes I just go by instinct as to whether something is Money or Politics or an Action Alert, for instance. I have chosen to classify access to education as a Freedom on Campus issue. Stories: Ourselves and Others is of course a catch-all. The new category called People Teaching is for those times I read a diary that is, I feel, actually trying to teach me something, about Vietnam, Karl Marx, Bulimia, or whatever. I'd actually like to have more time to investigate this, but such is life: I can't read everything.
On Friday night I assemble the html for the links part. Sometimes, as was the case this morning, I have to do the whole thing over on Saturday morning because I hadn't saved the Wordpad document when I went to bed and the power went out during the night. But I like it when Saturday morning can actually be used to write an essay about something. I look for something that has happened the past week that sparks my need to describe what I think. Sometimes I have to really stretch to come up with a topic. In those cases a trip to the A&P across the street for some scones or semolina bread is taken and usually I come up with something to say. Today was one of those days.
It occurs to me that I've been doing this for quite some time now (I believe this to be #26 in the series, but my numbering is probably wrong) and it is time for some assessment. Where has Teacher's Lounge been, where is it now, and where is it going. This is not going to be something I can do right here and now, but that which you have read up to here and that which will follow is part of that assessment. I'm going to try to post a complete self-assessment for next week or the week after. Input from you readers and commentators is welcome and solicited.
Sometimes I have more than one idea float into my head and I have to choose which one to do. Moving Teacher's Lounge to its own site is still desired, at least by me. That would permit multiple diary possibilities. How that actually should be done depends on what the mission of Teacher's Lounge is going to be (Oh, god, do I hate the concept of mission statements!) I would love it if people submitted their own essays and it were 7 days a week, but 7 days a week is probably more work that I would have time to spend.
[Just for the sake of writing myself a note, and since I did have an alternative topic today, I want to write something about the ethical viewpoint that goes something like this:
There are two ways to look at every issue, my way and the wrong way.
I was thinking about the quality of interaction in meetings that I have been attending recently wherein true consensus-building was happening, and how this academic environment (and this may even be specific to this small private college campus in New Jersey) is so vastly different from the contentious atmosphere that harbors that ethical viewpoint above. More importantly, how can we as educators do our best to stamp that viewpoint out? Critical thinking, anyone?]
I know that at least some of you this weekend are or are going to be where I have been over the past two weeks: neck deep in finals week quicksand. That's okay. I'm patient. Stop by anytime this week with any sort of feedback you would like to offer. Or even send an email...my address is at my page.
Note: For anybody who is now or has ever been connected with a college that offers a BBA degree, I'm going to be posting a diary sometime tomorrow soliciting help in decyphering the difference between BBA degrees and BA or BS degrees in Business. I am the sole non-capitalist in the Division of Accounting, Business, Computer Information Systems, and Economics and the Division is considering instituting a BBA degree, but we note that it would help to know what the hell one was.
--Robyn Serven
--Bloomfield College, NJ