Category Archives: Uncategorized

It’s the story of our times: turmoil and reorganization at my job. Survivor’s guilt. Wanting to get a t-shirt or a lapel pin that says, “I know how lucky I am to have a good job.”

But here’s how my brain works–I comfort myself with wisdom literature.

Ecclesiastes is my favorite book of the Bible after Habakkuk and Mark. (Actually I don’t know what my favorite books of the Bible are–I typically hate lists like that. But those three would be in my top ten.)

So this verse occurred to me today: Ecclesiastes 9:11
“Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all.”

Sometimes the right person loses their job and the right person gets hired for the new structure.

But a lot of times, it’s the opposite.

So, continuing in the theme of wisdom literature, now that I’m in a system with more supervisors than ever who aren’t local, this occurred to me:

Hello, I must be going!

Hello, I must be going.

Amery Harrington playing a character who doesn’t like what she sees in “490 Freaking Times”

It’s entirely possible that my drive to write in multiple genres is yet another marker that helps explain my diagnosis of Adult ADHD.

(Other markers include truly impressive procrastination skills and a sort of fundamental inability to shut cabinet drawers and doors.)

I can’t help it. Well, I don’t know if I can help it or not, actually. I don’t want to help it. I don’t try to help it. I just keep writing all kinds of everything.

I want to write and publish poetry, and I’ve done that this year. Here’s one I’m really pleased with, one of the more honest things I’ve written, explaining why I’m not (currently) involved with organized religion. The title sort of says it all, “Fuck the Life Abundant.”

I want to publish journalism–op-eds and academic subjects tailored for a general audience, and I do that every month in a column called “Pedagogy Stew” in the Voice of the River Valley.

I want to write and publish creative nonfiction, and I’ve done that this year. Front Range Review published a piece called “Chat Road,” not available online, sorry. I also have some pieces that will appear on Wisconsin Life sometime this winter.

I want to write and publish fiction–still waiting to hear from several places I’ve submitted fiction to this fall. But as I like to tell myself right when I’ve sent something off, “I’m currently un-rejected from a number of good publications.”

And I want to write plays that get produced. That one is taking me years and years to get to, but I keep at it, and two nice things have happened so far this year–one 10-minute play got a reading at the annual meeting of the Friends of the Spring Green Community Library. Three students and an awesome community theater actor read that.

Coming up this weekend is something even more fun. I was excited to be asked to write a piece this summer that could be used by Spring Green’s River Valley Players and Taliesin School of Architecture students.  The idea of the evening is a collaboration between the two groups, and the theme of the pieces that will be performed is “perspective.”

My play is a short one-act, five scenes–the same thing from multiple perspectives. It’s called “490 Freaking Times.” (Bonus points if you get the allusion right away.)

The play is set at a wonderful local bar called The Shed–the background is a picture of the Shed.

Here’s a funny story. Terry Kerr is directing the play and working with everyone to stage stories from the Taliesin students. Her original idea for the play was to do something like a book called Elements of a Scene, in which the same thing happens multiple times from multiple perspectives. The title got twisted in communication somehow to where I thought I was being asked to adapt Strunk and White’s Elements of Style for the stage. And I still said yes!

It’s true. I am often up for anything. (Another marker for ADHD?)

So if you’re local, and available, please come on out! Friday 9/18 at the Gard in Spring Green, Saturday 9/19 at Hillside Theater at Taliesin. 7:30 both nights, tickets available at the door, goodwill offering.

I look at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather forecast a lot on any given day. There’s the usual–do I need an umbrella or not? What should I wear? Does my son need to take his jacket or his coat? Or, during the winter especially–am I going to be able to get to work? Get home from work?

Also, as weather forecasts go, it’s pretty reliable. Nothing like the weather when I used to work at WMIX in Mt. Vernon, Illinois. We had a dartboard with weather labels, and more than once I saw the news director, Bob ______, throw a dart and then use that in the forecast. At least that’s how I remember it. It was more than 30 years ago. Maybe it was a DJ instead. Or maybe it was an episode of WKRP. Or maybe it was on WKRP and then we adopted it. The station manager at the time wanted us to call him “the big guy,” like Mr. Carlson, and I don’t think he realized that wouldn’t be a compliment, if we ever took him up on it.

But here’s the big news. They’ve changed the forecast icons! For the most part, I like the change. Here’s this morning’s forecast, for example:

Forecast for 7/8/15

They weren’t far off, though the sky here at the moment isn’t quite so rich a sky blue as the icon:

A beautiful day here at UW-Bitchland.

I like the way the new icons seem more narrative, almost metaphorical. Tonight, for example, it’s going to be foggy. The picture seems to tell a whole little story:

You’re out driving and it’s foggy and the car in front of you puts on its brakes–good thing you’re not following too close.

Oh–before it’s foggy tonight, it’ll be cloudy and the moon will be peeking out from behind the clouds. That’ll be nice.

Later on in the week, things get interesting. We have chance of storms, and LOOK! FOUR DIFFERENT STORM ICONS! It’s not just night and day difference. You can go to the NOAA explanation page to find out that the differences have to do with how much cloud cover there is during the storm. My inexpert assumption would be that in a thunderstorm, cloud cover = a lot, but no–apparently there are levels.

My personal favorite, not currently in the forecast for this week, will show up when
(Cloud cover < 60%)
Thunderstorm in Vicinity
Thunderstorm in Vicinity Fog
Thunderstorm in Vicinity Haze

(NOT all three at once, I presume). I’ve never actually seen this:

This is the new one for wind. I’ll miss the fellow in a trench coat struggling against a Chicago-style breeze, but wait! He’s back, only now when we see him it means COLD:

The tornado is very dramatic, of course: This is the tornado at night, so lightning has to be striking or you wouldn’t see it. Or I guess maybe if it was stirring up dust and powder, you’d see it. But in any case, in this one, lightning lights things up.

This is the image for a funnel cloud. Ahem. Reminds me a little of the wind sock….

HOT is the only one that I think is really a failure. I think this should just be a picture of someone looking miserable, with a fan and a cold beverage. Or maybe a heat rash.

Freezing rain never looked so lovely.

But not so lovely if you’re driving now, is it?

Ice and snow. Look how pretty.

This is like a mashup between a Christmas card and a nightmare.

Look how gloomy this one is. It’s for “overcast.” Think I’ll go write a poem.

But now for the hero’s journey. Here he is, struggling along:

Or wait!  It occurs to me that figure is a little androgynous.  So let’s just say she is struggling along when a giant penis drops down from the sky and her mood is decidedly mixed But the sun finally comes out from behind the cloudsand her mood picks up! (This is actually funnier if our hero is male. Oh well.)

WAIT! The world’s become so much more interesting–let’s just say our hero is a woman with a penis because then the windsock is funny again AND we still get to have a woman on the hero’s journey. So, anyway, now she knows she must drive between the pillars of rain

until she gets to the twin lightning bolts,so that when she wakes up in the hazy city,she will finally know that she’s home and also it’s apparently Halloween.

Kelly Wilz has written a terrific blog on the whole UW Colleges/UW System situation:

http://dissentandcookies.org/2015/05/28/letter-to-the-joint-committee-on-finance/

In the story I tell myself about myself, I’m on the side of all that’s good and holy. Or at least pretty good and not evil.

One of the reasons I’ve loved teaching at UW-Richland LO THESE MANY YEARS (I started in 1992) is that we take turns with a couple of other campuses being the smallest in the UW System. We’re the little guys. We’re the farm club. We’re the M*A*S*H* unit. We’re the ones who turned our garage into a beauty parlor and the wisdom of the ages can’t compete with our conversations.

In so many workplace narratives, the good guys are doing the hard work fighting some sort of external enemy, and then it turns out that there’s an internal enemy–usually the “higher ups.” (NOTE: does not apply to Truvy’s, since she’s the owner/operator.)

I’ll leave it to other folks to say smart things about the specifics in the UW System right now. I’ll just say that I’m heading into what is likely to be another hellish week at work, so I’m taking inspiration for survival anywhere I can.

For instance, James Lee Burke’s The Neon Rain, which I’m re-reading now that I’ve spent time in New Orleans (it is very fun recognizing street names and locations!). These two quotes are just really resonating with me–Dave Robicheaux is all the time bucking up against authorities and oppressors of all kinds–sometimes external to his job, sometimes internal.

I’ll just let these speak for themselves:

“If it’s not moving, don’t poke it. But when it starts snapping at your kneecaps, wait till it opens up real wide, then spit in its mouth.”

“What nails me about your kind is that you’re always willing to sacrifice half the earth to save the other half. But you’re never standing in the half that gets blitzed.”

Oh, so true, so true.

So I’ll be thinking about those quotes and this song–Tracy Chapman (who is aging SO nicely–it made me so happy somehow to see gray on her sweet head!) singing “Stand by Me” to David Letterman who will soon not be on the air. I’m dedicating it to all my colleagues, my work-darlings, of whom there are many, many, many.

The shadow of a hawk shot
through the blowing snow–
it looked like smoke
in steam.

 
I thought of my student,
no longer a student,
a union carpenter now.
Does he, driving to work before dawn,
think the stripes of ice
on the road look like pewter or steel?
 

What did I want for  him instead?
More student debt? A chance to be
a middle manager somewhere?
No, but it hurt me somewhere deep
when he talked about how much
he loved to sing but won’t have time
for choir or plays any more.
 

I guess I wanted choice
to be available to him
and probably it’s near-sighted
of me not to notice he’s made
his choice.

Tomorrow begins the fourth week of the sememster, and the grading is already thick. I plan to spend at least two hours grading every day this week, and then more next Saturday, depending on how far along I’ve gotten.

[I really want to work on my metaphors for grading. What occurred to me as I wrote “grading is already thick” was thick underbrush, which implies that I’m heading in with a bushhog or a machete, which is not really how I see myself when I’m actually grading….]

I’m continuing to think about the article “The Power of Feedback” by John Hattie & Helen Temperley, which appeared in Review of Educational Research in 2007.

Today I’m unpacking this chunk of a paragraph, in which they’re summarizing some of their findings:

“Over all comparisons it appears that the power of feedback is influenced by the direction of the feedback relative to performance on a task. Specifically, feedback is more effective when it provides information on correct rather than incorrect responses and when it builds on changes from previous trails.The impact of feedback was also influenced by the difficulty of goals and tasks. It appears to have the most impact when goals are specific and challenging but task complexity is relatively low. Praise for task performance appears to be ineffective, which is hardly surprising because it contains such little learning-related information. It appears to be more effective when there are perceived low rather than high levels of threat to self-esteem, presumably because low-threat conditions allow attention to be paid to the feedback.”

As I think about the reading journals I’ll be looking at later today, I’m pleased that I’ve told students I’m not concerned about grammar and mechanics in them. In general, I’m tired of how I provide feedback on grammar and mechanics (in which, since 1987, I have absolutely provided more information on incorrect responses RATHER THAN correct), and in a literature class, as students are focused on analysis and interpretation, I really don’t want them worried about grammar and mechanics at all. (That will come later, in their formal paper for the class.)

So what I need to make sure to do today is point out where their analysis uses terms from the class correctly, and where their interpretation goes in interesting directions. I will also point out where it goes badly, but I want to make sure I’m showing what works. Then, obviously, part of what I need to do is build, from journal to journal, on what they’ve done before. This seems challenging–there are 26 students in the class. How will I remember? Maybe I can ask them to summarize what went well in the last one (yes, I know I could review the previous one before I grade the next one, but honestly–I’m not sure I’ll take the time to do that). Sometimes I do remember, of course. But I won’t always remember for every student.

And then what about this part? “It appears to have the most impact when goals are specific and challenging but task complexity is relatively low.” I think the reading journal assignment I give meets these goals–I’ve given really specific instructions, and it’s a challenging assignment, but the particular tasks are not that complex (summarize the piece, use terms from class, etc.).

I’m particularly interested in the notions of praise not being effective. They don’t mean that professors shouldn’t be positive. What they mean is that when you praise the person or the effort (“You’re a good student!” or “I can tell you worked hard on this” that you’re not focusing the feedback on the intellectual task itself, and thus the feedback is less effective.) I need to think about this more and write about it more–I think it’s going to be the subject of my next “Pedagogy Stew” for the Voice of the River Valley.

But then, oh, to finish up–I try to set up my classes and tailor my feedback so that the threats to self-esteem are low, but this is hard, hard, hard, especially when we have students for whom any criticism at all feels like a threat to self-esteem.

[And gosh. Could there be a connection between images of a bush hog and student self-esteem? Aargh.]

Image from Rural Lifestyle Dealer–look how happy she is to be grading journals.