The incomparable Taylor Mali, in his poem What Teachers Make, explains that:
I have a policy
about honesty and ass-kicking:
if you ask for it, I have to let you have it.
A few weeks ago, a colleague of mine at TCC circulated an email asking professors what we think our students’ strengths and weaknesses are in our [...]
I’m still so amazed by the blatant plagiarism from yesterday that I’ve not been able to even consider a Grammar Wednesday topic, so I’ll recap yesterday’s writing tips to my composition students as they consider their final research papers:
1. Do not use the personal pronouns “I” or “you” in formal writing. Establish a [...]
It’s been a day, kids. Mrs. Chili got to deal with her first ever case of blatant plagiarism at TCC.
The student in question – we’ll call her Jane – has been a problem for me all semester, not because she’s a troublemaker or because she doesn’t hand in work, but because she doesn’t interact [...]
I’m starting Hamlet with my literature class on Tuesday.
I run my lit. class thematically. Rather than going through the basics – the elements of fiction and the structure and characteristics of different genres; all stuff they should have covered ad nauseum in high school – I decided to set up the class around a [...]
I’ve been stuck on this website for DAYS now. If you haven’t seen it yet – and have not yet been sucked into the geeky, humanitarian vortex which it creates – please do go and check it out.
For the record, I’ve made it to level 43 (and I now know what an abattoir is!).
Happy Wednesday, [...]
Gentle Readers, I’ve a question to pose.
Frumteacher asked me, in a comment she posted today, what I intended to teach in next semester’s literature class. The question brought me up a little short.
To be honest, I’d not really given the content of the class that much thought yet; I’m still neck-deep in this term’s [...]
… but it’s still a literature class!
I just got off the phone with Joe, my boss, about my schedule for next semester. I was really hoping for that Monday night literature class – running, as I was, on the assumption that the woman who usually snaps up all the daytime lit. classes would [...]
Yeah, I’ll admit it; my semester hasn’t been all puppies and rainbows.
I’ve been a lot more casual with my students this semester. My classes have been smaller and, partly because of the more intimate environment that smaller classes encourage, I’ve been a little lax in my usual strict policies. I’ve let students hand things [...]
For two of my favorite men!
Falcon mentioned the other day that he’s not sure what the difference is between an objective and a subjective pronoun is, so I’m going to do a little refresher course for him – and, you know, for you, too…
Pronouns fall into three categories, if you will. First, we have subjective [...]
… or my composition kids have been paying attention!
The lowest grade from my composition class’s mid-term exams was a 70. They STILL haven’t quite figured out the subjective vs. objective pronoun thing yet, and they still don’t know the difference between its and it’s, but none of them earned a failing grade. For this, I [...]
