Fall 2020 Midterm Reflections

Since 2010 I have taught and built classes in Blackboard and Moodle and Google Classroom. None of these LMS are great, although they have varying issues. I dislike a lot of the surveillance built in. I dislike the addition and use of things like TurnItIn and Respondus Lockdown Browser. I've also written here a lot about how my teaching has fundamentally changed, especially the last few years.

Before all this (waves at the multiple apocalypses) I had planned on trying just a simple page/website for class, inspired by and modeled on Jesse Stommel's. I was looking forward to the challene of teaching in this new form, a way to focus and refocus on what was important in my classes, the connections I made in my classes, with my students. It seemed the natural pedagogical progression of my moves towards ungrading, grading conferences, less work, more open work, trusting students.

But then this summer my university said they created Blackboard shells for everyone to use. I knew the semester was going to be hard on my students for lots and lots of reasons and I did not want to become one more thing that was hard so I put aside my ideas and built my classes in the prescribed shells, following the guidelines. All the layouts were the same, with the idea that students would know where to find everything because all their classes would use the same layout/shell.

I was really horrified over the summer on the sheer number of conversations I heard from professors, laser focused on catching students "cheating" and properly using respondus lockdown software. These crap attitudes seem to have only gotten worse in K-12 as well as higher ed as the semester has gone on, with teachers and professors demanding students turn cameras on (I've been told in meetings *I* have to have mine on), forcing student to reveal their studying situations, punishing students for things SEEN in these meetings, and other, totally crap things.

Like many, I spent the summer trying to imagine and plan for as many scenarios as I could for teaching this fall. Trying to center care for my students and awareness of what they would be dealing with, and then balance this with covering some content. 

I planned out, and created, all five of my classes in Blackboard. I had three face to face classes and two totally online classes. Two of my face to face classes were 20 and 35 students, so I divided them into three groups because they were MWF classes, and assigned each a day. I figured having the modules/classes totally built would allow me to spend the semester responding to students, and things as they came up versus feeling stressed about building modules and staying ahead of students.

As a result of this planning my courses have less work, few readings and assignments this semester and I am fine with this.

Students mostly seem to be enjoying class, appreciating the design of class, and the flexibility built in.

But a couple weeks ago our systems went down, with everyone losing access to Blackboard on a Sunday afternoon. Monday I emailed all my students to tell them not to stress, that they would of course not be penalized for this, and to go take a walk, or a nap, or something. By Wednesday morning we still did not have access and had no idea when it would be restored so I went ahead and returned to my plan of an outside webpage/site for class.

https://sites.google.com/view/drkshimabukuro/home

I built the bare bones, and sent my students emails Wednesday morning, before we had class, so we could go over it in class, answer questions.

I also told them that we would not be returning to Blackboard because I though stability was important, and I was not going to go back and forth on them.

Because I already use Google Docs all the time in my classes, all my syllabi are live Google Docs, my resources and notes are Google Slides, it was fairly easy to transition. I told the students I was not going to back build the past 4-5 weeks, what was for most classes the first module, so I could focus on prepping what we were doing NOW. But I also told them that if there was something they needed/wanted/noticed was missing, just to let me know and I'd happily add it.

I designed the page so that the home page had general information and announcements.

Then each class has a separate page with everything for their course on a single page.

There are then separate pages for resources and class policies.

Based on the students' comments, this is all working really well, and they like the new site.

One shift was in the assignments since Google Sites does not have a submission system. But again, this had a pretty easy fix. I just asked them to email me their work with their grade reflection. It's a lot of email BUT I like it better. First, it has made me refocus on making sure I'm giving good, detailed feedback. Also, the format allows me to make comments, but also ask questions like "can you explain to me what your revision process was like?" and the format of email is more conducive to these conversations. It also made me realize that I had duplicated class work/discussions in Blackboard, planning for the eventuality that we'd have to move online, and this was confusing to students. They weren't sure what work they were or were not supposed to do. In making the move to the site I was able to just focus on the major assignments, and the idea of formative assignments just for feedback and learning became clearer.

Students had already turned stuff in through Blackboard and I of course did not have access to that, so I did a couple of things. I asked them to email what grade they had if they remembered. I had also put in Fs for missing work (even though they could make it up) just so they had an accurate idea of their grade and could prioritize. I told them I'd be removing those for the first assignment and that if they wanted to not make up the missing first assignment it would not count against them. That we'd focus on moving forward.

Another issue I had to find a solution to was a channel for discussion. This was less an issue for my face to face classes, but was something I needed to figure out for my totally online classes. I ended up introducing Slack for this. We're easing in, because I told them I wasn't going to throw 50 things at them, but I also figured easing into it the rest of this semester would help me beta test it for the spring. For ease of use, I just created the one workspace, and each class has a separate channel, with a channel for general questions. We'll see how this works, it's a work in progress and still pretty new. My main thought with the one workspace was that I could be "on" during office hours, and "see" everything, and not have to worry about having to flip between multiple pages. I TOO am juggling a lot and could do with fewer new things.

Some general observations:

I designed the class to NOT focus on handouts, paper copies, hard copy peer editing, etc. I have been mostly paperless the last few years with things available on Google Docs, but still had some things I handed out. Concern about germs this semester meant I got rid of this.

This is a little hard for me because I do like have students write informally in class and turn stuff in, and the hard copies ARE easier for me to grade. But it's been fine.

In one class we're in an auditorium, so it's really easy for me to walk up and down the aisle, see folks' screens and stop and intervene, ask if they need help, answer questions. This has worked out well although I can tell you I'm often not 6' away. 

My other face to face classes are in a more traditional classroom, and during discussions I'm up front, more than 6' away, but not when they're workshopping a piece, then I'm walking around, sitting next to them to read stuff.

I just can't do my job standing in front of the room all the time.

I was really worried about access with so much being online. Students use their phones, iPads, laptops, Chromebooks in class and seem to have been fine BUT I have also scheduled lab time for workshopping assignments in my general education course for ease of use.

I've also had students come during some days, get the opening instrctions, lecture, and tell me they're going back to their rooms/home to work, since it'll be easier on a regular computer, better wifi, not on their phone, and that's worked out fine too.

Attendance has been an issue, but maybe not as bad as I thought?

I try to email students one every week or so if they've not been coming, not as a "gotcha" but as a literal check in. Some were quarantined, some were sick, and these long term absences are just a reality. They can access everything online and turn in work, even for the face to face classes, even if it's not the same. Others are dealing with a lot, as many of our students are, family issues, extra work shifts, stress, anxiety, depression. I've gotten frantic emails about needing extensions, and apologies. It has been a bright spot for me to be able to repond that they never need to apologize to me, that my class has no due dates, no penalty for late work, and that I trust they will turn in the work as soon as they can.

Except for a couple of guest speakers, I am not holding class in Zoom, although I am using it for major meetings, workshops, and office hours. I prefer Hangouts, and used it this past spring when we moved online, but too many students have had too many issues with it, so I'm using Zoom now.

Some students have expressed concern with not feeling safe coming to class (because of elder family, feeling like students were partying, and not wanting that exposure, etc.). I admit because my classes are scheduled face to face, I don't have a good answer for this other than to tell students I understand if they don't feel comfortable coming to class. But I haven't been holding hybrid/dual classes like I know some are.

On our campus we've had 27 reported cases, 17 recovered, 11 in quarantined, which I think even for our size I think are good numbers and I hope we get through the rest of our semester. We haven't heard yet about spring, but I'd guess we're looking at a later start, then a similar semester- about half of classes online, then a semester with no breaks, straight through until May.

Our Blackboard access has been restored, but like I told my students we are not returning to it. 

We are using it ONLY for students to check their grades. I put in the grades from our work the last couple of weeks, and cleaned up the gradebook so ONLY the major assignments, not the formative feedback ones, showed. I took out the Fs for the first assignment, so they don't count against them. There have been a couple of glitches, things I missed, but students have emailed me and I've corrected those with no issue. I also went through and hid the content, so there's no confusion about using Blackboard and made the My Grades the landing page, so they don't have to go hunting for the one thing we're using Blackboard for.

I'd love to find another way to do grades moving forward, and think because most classes have 4 major assignments, one for each module, and usually they're each 25%, I could post a math lesson in the course so students could figure their own grades. That way I wouldn't need Blackboard at all.

So far I am happy for the move. I like the simplicity of it, I like the ease of integrating my resources and materials for students from Google Drive. I think it's easier for the students to navigate. I also like that I've refocused on the feedback conversations through email.

Midterms are this week, so we're officially halfway through our semester. Given all the things we had to deal with, account for, and try to address, I think it's going as well as it could be. I love teaching, and I'm enjoying my classes and my students. I think that my classes in the spring will look like my classes do now. The only thing I don't think I'll be doing is splitting the larger classes up, teaching the same material three times. And I do plan on asking students what else I could do to support them when/if they don't come to class. But other than that I think we've done the best we can, and it's been because the university made X plans and changes, faculty then built on that making Y plans and changes, and then the students did their part.

I know it's all awful and traumatic and didn't have to be this way, but surviving the semester, making my students are okay, and that I'm supporting them as much as I can, understanding and caring for them, is what I'm focused on.

Nightmare on Elm Street Nostalgia

 A colleague and I are working on an edited collection, (Don't) Look Back: Nostalgia in Horror and Slasher Films.

More than other projects, popular culture lends itself to responding as an aca-fan, identifying first our personal experience or response to something, then using that as a way into analysis of the text.

Given the topic of the edited collection, you'd think I would be occupied by my own nostalgia and initial experiences with horror films, but my chapter takes a different approach, so until this week I actually hadn't thought about my first introduction to horror and how it led to a lifetime interest and professional bent.

When I was growing up we were not allowed to watch violent films. This included action films but definitely included horror. Mom thought sex scenes were okay but violence was bad and would warp our brains. Not even cartoon violence was allowed, I remember her banning The Simpsons. I also remember sitting in a theatre with family and friends watching The Success of My Success and the moms being very traumatized at the amount of sex scenes (more hinting than actual scenes) and I remember Mom making some comment about oh shit, didn't know about THIS.

I remember when I watched Star Wars on VHS asking Mom what this scene was, and her telling me "furniture from the house." It was YEARS before I realized that no, those were the burned bodies of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru.

But my childhood exposure to violence was limited. I remember her even restricting Tom and Jerry. So I was totally unprepared in every single way to watch Nightmare on Elm Street when I was 9 years old.

I was at my Girl Scout leader's house for a sleepover. I remember she was Mormon, and they had a lot of kids, most of whom made up the troop. I remember thinking she had old hair, shortish, put in curlers tight to her head. They had a separate den which was not a room I'd ever encountered before. One of the older children, NOT a Girl Scout somehow got a copy of the recently released VHS of Nightmare on Elm Street.

I have a clear image in my head of us laying in sleeping bags in like a U around the TV and VCR. I also remember the older girls leaving almost as soon as they pressed "play" in what I'm sure they thought was a joke to scare the younger ones. Except I also remember everyone falling asleep in the first few minutes, as we didn't start the movie until late into the sleepover. 

But not me.

I sat inches from the tv, riveted. 

I was terrified the Girl Scout leader would come in and catch me and I'd get in trouble.

I was quickly terrified by the movie.

But I could not look away. I was glued to that screen. I felt that even as terrified as I was, I'd be okay if I could make it to the end, see how it ended. That surely that ending, the resolution, would enable me to put it behind me.

Narrator: it did not.

I did not, at 9, understand the ending. I don't think most adults watching it did, and there's been over the years a fair amount of discussion about original intentions and sequel set-up battles the ending created. I just knew that it wasn't fair, it was not how things were supposed to be. It was not right. But I was also confused because Tina and Rod and Glen were alive, when they weren't supposed to be, so that was good. And Nancy's mom was sober and coherent (even at 9 I knew those signs) which I KNEW was good. But I did not understand the trade off. That the price for these good things was evil one. Or that the temptation of wanting what you could not have left you open to evil. 

They were complicated thoughts that I did not quite have language for, but I remember they all bothered me, and I think that this unsettling, the fact that I could not sit with it, put it in a box I could understand, was part of the reason why I could not let it go.

While the ending and it's not-logic dream answer is part of the reason I could not let go of the movie, either as a child or as an academic (I've written more about Freddy than anything else), the central reason I could not let go of this movie, why it haunted and terrified me as a 9 year old and stuck with me as an adult was this 5 second scene.

This scene sets up the uncanny, the unexpected with Tina, set up as the main character but then killed in the beginning of the film. So from the get go we, the audience, do not know what to expect. The rules have been thrown out the window, there is no expectation we can follow. Instead our attention shifts to Rod and Nancy and Glen, not people we really paid attention to. Yet Tina still manages to be the center of the narrative. She literally haunts Nancy, yet it's not really her. 

Nancy has fallen asleep in class but as the movie and series sets up, not only can she not tell the difference between being awake and asleep, but the nightmares she experiences while asleep can affect her waking life.

She walks out of class after seeing an image through the classroom window and follows this bloody trail down the hall, seeing Tina's bloody body in a see-through body bag. But it is not Tina in that bag, or being dragged down the hall. It is not Tina's voice we hear. And this is part of the haunting I think. We don't know on first viewing that this is not Tina but we know something is not right. As the movie goes on we learn nothing can be trusted. We do not know what we experience awake or asleep. We do not know if or when we are safe, as even, especially, in our dreams we are most vulnerable and the nighmares we experience in sleep can follow us into the real world.

Tina standing there in a clear body bag, drenched in bright red blood, stands for all these things, representing the center of the ideas and story of the film. She is not the center of the narrative, but she is the point. Her trauma, her haunting, her pain, is quickly forgotten, serving only to torment others. What her family, or even boyfriend Rod, experience are quickly moved on from. She becomes just a tool for Krueger to torment Nancy with.

At 9 I did not understand all of this. I could not analyze or break down or describe the threads seen in this scene. But I understood the point. I knew that the point of this scene was to tell me I was not safe. That I would never be safe. That the world of rules and safety and justice did not exist. I'd already had a not great childhood by 9, so this was not new information for me. But the knowledge that other people knew this, that there was a great awareness that this is what the world was really like, that was new for me. And as much as it terrified me I think part of me was vindicated knowing I was not crazy or making things up to believe that sometimes we did not win. And it did not work out okay. I also understood the idea that the monster might not always act the way you expected and could be charming, although they were never to be trusted.

I had nightmares for weeks. Everything about Nightmare on Elm Street terrified me. Krueger scared the crap out of me, but I remember being confused, because he was also funny, and I knew I wasn't supposed to like him but I kinda did (a feeling and impression the sequels emphasized and leaned into, making for a very confusing presentation of a serial killer).

I remember going into my mom's room the first night home, terrified, and ashamed to tell her what happened because I KNEW I was not supposed to be watching that movie. She let me sleep with her that first night but the next night told me I had to deal with it. 

I don't remember where I got the idea, perhaps from Nancy herself, but even though the logic of the movie and my own abuse history told me this would not work, I remember when I had nightmares about Freddy imagining I was turning my back on him, pretending he wasn't there, trying to take away his power. 

It did not always work. But eventually I stopped having nightmares about Freddy although I never left him far behind.

The idea that you encountered monsters all the time, often on their terms, and often lost even when you thought you'd won, was one I was familiar with. Other than a lifetime fascination with bogeymen and the monsters that were always just out of sight, I think the thing I took with me was that you always had to fight. Even when you know "the dice are loaded," even though you know "the war is over" and "the good guys lost," that "the fight was fixed," "the poor stay poor, the rich get rich."

You show up, you fight, you lose, and sequel after sequel, through each exponentially bad experience, trauma on top of trauma, you keep going.

Because what other choice do you have?

"That's how it goes."

Goodnight My Angel

 

March 2009-27 August 2020

Nehi (grape, not orange, orange Nehi is gross)

Sassy McSasserton

Fussy McFussypants

Wee Demon

Bebe

Smoosh

My best friend

I lack all the words

I feel like a ghost in my own house

It's empty and wrong and lonely without you

There's no one to eat pizza crusts

Crunch carrots

Sass me

Snuggle with me

Show me Woobie

Life is dimmer now

Transluscent

Less real

I hope Puppy Death when he came for you was kind