The Transformation of Age

When Willow finally manages to return Fin Raziel to her human form, she looks down and sees her old body and asks, "Has it been so long?" She seems to have had no concept of time, or how long she has been trapped in her different animal shapes. When Mad Madmartigan asks her what she's going to look like she says "A young, beautiful woman." While Fin Raziel's shape through the first part of the movie includes a brushtail possum, a crow/raven, and goat, her opposite Queen Bavmorda is old from the beginning, although after her fight with Fin Raziel and Willow's magic, she goes from old to drained, decaying.

Fin Raziel's story is one of transformation, but not from human to animal when she is cursed, and not as animal to human when the curse is transformed. Rather it is her transformation into old age, having never experienced the middle ground, middle age. She only remembers herself as a young, beautiful woman. She did not experience age in her animal forms. Yet one thing that is consistent is the power, both she and Bavmorda have intense power.

Neither character fulfills any recognizable roles. While Bavmorda is a mother, she does not act maternal in any way and there is no mention of a husband. Fin Raziel seems to exist outside of any recognizable gender or sexuality role. Both are defined almost solely by their age and their power.

Their fight towards the end of the movie is different and unique- what other example is there on-screen of two older women performing such a physical fight? FIn Raziel, Patricia Hayes, was 79 when Willow came out and Jean Marsh (Bavmorda) was 54.  Their characters and how they are presented is a rarity on-screen. Their age is actually NOT important to the plot. Other than Fin Raziel's realization, there is little mention of their age, their appearance. This is in contrast to other movies from the same time.

High Spirits (1988) came out the same year and the plot depends on the age, the decay, of Daryl Hannah's character, Mary. Her ghost haunts the castle, doomed to be chased and murdered by her husband night after night, and only once Jack (Steve Guttenberg) kisses her decayed self is she free of it all.

Beetlejuice (1988) also has an odd scene focused on aging Genna Davis and Alec Baldwin in their wedding clothes. They go from young, married adults (Davis was 32 when the movie came out and Baldwin 30). The imagery isn't subtle, women go from married to decayed. There seems to be no in between. You're a housewife, married, and then you're a corpse. Your defining quality is the marriage, your role as a wife.

This presentation of older women as decayed, not just old, but falling apart, was also seen in Ghostbusters (1984) with the librarian they encounter.

The idea of women going from young and vital to old and decrepit was a reoccuring theme. 1982's Thriller featured this with the zombie women.

The simplistic understanding that women are only presented as specific ages, in specific very gendered roles, is not a new concept. The idea of women as moving from maiden, mother, crone is archetypal. On screen we tend to only see women in these roles, there are few on-screen representations of women in between these roles, or NOT fulfilling these roles. While there are more than there used to be, roles that show women who choose to be single, choose to be childless, women in menopause, are few and far between. Women are most often seen in these very antiquated roles. Even women who briefly rebel against these traditional values so often return to these roles, order restored by the end of the movie or television show.

The idea that media does not know what to do with women who don't fit is not new. The one that sticks in my head, rattles around and around is Miss Havisham from Great Expectations. The text says that she was "scarcely forty."

 I thought of this line more recently when I read that "Carrie’s age range in “And Just Like That...” puts her in the same age range as the characters in “The Golden Girls” season one, according to TODAY with Hoda & Jenna. In “The Golden Girls”, Rose is 55, Dorothy is 53, Blanche is 47 and Sophia is 79. In “And Just Like That...”, Miranda and Charlotte are 54, while Carrie is 55."

Media does not know how to present older women and "older" here means a RANGE of ages. Television and movies don't seem to know what older women look like. They are EITHER the Golden Girls, "old" and in caftans, retired, or they are whatever the female version of super serum, anti-aging is. In Scream 5 (2022) Neve Campbell fits this version, at 48, as does Courtney Cox at 57. It's always what I think of as weird yoga look. It's this gaunt, stretched, uber thin look. As though the women have dropped all unnecessary weight. But it's also as if they are frozen, they don't look like any age. There is no grey in their hair. They don't seem to be suffering from hot flashes, or belly fat. They're older but not old. This is very much what "age" looks like these days, as seen in Just Like That.  It's a look that struck me with Gillian Anderson's look in The Fall (2013-2016). I FIRST remember seeing it with Madonna at the end of the 1990s, beginning of the 2000s. It seemed presented as both an ideal of how to age, mainly by NOT aging.

As I've gotten older I've started to really hate this look, this presentation. Are all of us actually aging, not able to lose the inches around our waist, walking around in tank tops in 50 degree weather, visible gray in our hair, failing? Are WE being left behind? Are we excluded if we don't embrace the non-aging aging? How much damage does this representation do to everyone who can't not age? What are we, an older, perimenopausal, menopausal, audience supposed to make of our role, our lives, our stories, when there seem to be so few options? Either we're in traditional roles, then fade away once our purpose is served, or we spend time and energy chasing a youth, a look, a resistance to aging, that defies, ignores, rejects, the fact that a woman can age and have a life.

But I was older before I learned the devastating fact that Miss Havisham was 37 and apparently the definition of old, decayed, left behind, abansoned.. The image that sticks in my head is Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham from the 1946 Great Expectations. I think I saw it one day on TCM while home sick. But I remember being very scared by her, by the idea that she just sat in this house, the set table with the wedding that never happened, the cobwebs, the fact that this woman's life just STOPPED. Even as a young person this struck me as wrong, and terrifying.

As I got older the image and concept continued to bother me. Because it presented women as only useful for specific roles, of what these images said awaited women who did not conform. Later, as I had all of the above images in my head, they seemed to combine to tell a singular story. Women who aged, who were not wives or mothers, would end up alone. Maybe they'd have power, maybe they'd be useful, but that was all they would have. Women who DID get married ran the risk of being at the mercy of violent, controlling men. Murdered at a young age, frozen in time, forced to relive horrible moments over and over while also all of this only existing as an illusion, the truth being that you're old, decaying, decrepit, outside of this cyclical narrative. You fulfill specific roles expected of you-wife, mother, defined by these dictated roles, and THEN you're old and decrepit and decayed. If you don't choose the role of wife, mother, then you end up stuck at work, haunting empty spaces, a monster to others, a horror. A cautionary tale. And ultimately that is what Miss Havisham is meant to be, a cautionary tale of what happens if you reject the roles you're supposed to fill.

In horror, women have not progressed much past these fairly rigid, defined roles. They are "Final Girls" who lose everything, whose entire lives are defined by trauma. They are monstrous mothers whose entire existence is abject and horrific. There are few older women in horror and they often exist outside of the boundaries and definitions of societal roles. Bette Davis plays Mrs. Aylwood at 72 in The Watcher in the Woods (1980), a woman haunted and traumatized by her life and her past. Zelda Rubinstein was only 49 when she played Tangina in Poltergeist (1982), and Fionnula Flannagan was 60 when she played Mrs. Mills in The Others (2001). Each of these women play vital roles in their plots, they are older women who are specialists, able to offer specific knowledge vital to others. They know things others don't. It is presented that in part it is their age that allows them this knowledge, this ability to see things, their life experiences.  But they are not the center of their stories. Their roles are important, but only to serve others. 

Media seems uninterested in telling the story OF these women, of centering them. In this way we can place them in the same context of Gothic women, the older housekeeper, the unmarried, older woman who haunts the edges. They are lessons to others, resources for others, but never the center of the plot, they never get their story told. Women who are wives and mothers are the ones who tell their stories.

Despite all the ways that Kristeva's work has been applied to women in horror, and Clover and Creed's work, little of it moves past women as mothers. Characters are girls, then mothers, skipping any formative years in between, and then disparu. They just disappear from view. Middle age, menopause, does not seem to exist in these worlds. Women transition straight into old age when no one is interested in their stories, their experiences. Just ten, twenty years that don't count. Especially with horror this seems like a very strange absence because perimenopause is a time period RIFE for telling horror stories. Horror stories that focus on the body, on the abject, on the betrayal of your own skin, on feeling out of your body, out of society, isolated, alone, left behind. Of no use, invisible. 

Perimenopause, menopause is the PERFECT horror story, the perfect setting because this time, this ongoing time, this time that stretches on and on and one, forces women to face and reconcile their own truth, their own existence, often against society and what they've been told or thought they knew all their lives.

So what do we make of, what is the purpose of, women/characters who aren't girls? Who are not or will never be, wives and mothers? DO women serve any purpose once they are no longer physically capable of serving traditional gender roles? 

I think this all opens up an interesting avenue of scholarship. In my previous work I've analyzed what happens to "Final Girls" who age, how we as an audience make sense of them. For my work now, I want to look further, past middle age, preimenopausal, and post-menopausal women, to put them in conversation with the Gothic tradition, to see these women as truth tellers, storytellers, as providing voices of resistance and frames for understanding the truth of a story.

How I Inadvertently (okay, a little advertently) Became the Goth Professor

Despite loving Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice, I never was a Goth kid. I think it was the make up requirement. It was probably also that I was too busy reading Anne of Green Gables. I liked Ally Sheedy's Allison Reynolds mostly because she hated people, not necessarily for the Goth. I loves The Craft, and Edward Scissorhands before I knew better. In college The Crow had just come out and I was working in technical theatre so I had the all black wardrobe and boots down by necessity. I remember saving money for Doc Martens and finding them uncomfortable. I ended up with a friend's pair of combat boots after she left the Marines. 

Maybe it was because I spent most of high school in a small, rural, ridiculously religious southern town. Maybe it was because I was already measuring WAY off the weird meter and didn't want to give bullies anymore fodder. Whatever it was, I was not a Goth kid. The all black wardrobe after college was part of the job, but after only a few years I had moved into teaching and needed all new clothes.

I was assigned a mentor at my first teaching job who essentially told me they had no help for me but there was a box of tissues in their classroom if I needed it. This teacher wore essentially the same thing every day- a long sleeve v-neck t-shirt, sneakers, slacks. She wore her long hair up in a bun. I honestly do not remember what I wore those first years teaching. I was in an abusive relationship where everything was controlled, things thrown out, clothes and hair dictated, so I admit to not really remembering, and I really don't have any pictures of that time.

I do remember what I wore once I moved home to teach in the high school I graduated from. First, I got the job while down visiting, and had only tank tops and shorts wo immediately went to K-mart to buy clothes for a week of work. I flew home to Brooklyn, packed my apartment, arranged movers, and flew back to be at work Monday.

When I first started I wore cardigans and skirts and colors and make up because this was a school where women accessorized and reapplied lipstick after lunch. I knew this place from attending it, some of my old teachers were still there, one telling me to call them by their first name, the other mispronouncing my name each one of the nine years I was there. I knew I didn't fit, but I knew I needed the job and therefore needed to fake it. 

I tried. Really hard. I dressed appropriately for chaperoning prom. I remember one year being inspired by CJ on The West Wing and going full on suit and make up and kitten heels. It was all just one cosplay after another and none of them really fit. 

IN my last years of teaching high school here, I had a Twitter handle and was presenting at conferences, very into branding my academics and wore a button down shirt, often a vest, and a tie. Because I was @TieGirl. I was very clever.

I think part of the reason that I liked the ties and button down shirts was because it was an easy uniform. It always seemed to me that dressing professionally as a woman was a minefield that I either failed at or felt so extremely uncomfortable doing. 

I kept up the ties until my last year at UNM. By then I was having panic attacks that made me feel like I was having a heart attack, breaking out into a sweat, and feeling like I had to pass out. The restrictive clothing made it worse. This was also when I moved back to high school teaching. Albuquerque is a pretty chill place and teachers wore a lot of jeans. I tended to wear slacks, a mostly casual top, sneakers.

This was pretty normal for me.

No one seemed to really care, and reflecting how I felt about my teaching, I got to a place where I felt really comfortable, all the way around.

Moving into a tenure track job all my old insecurities about the minefield of how to dress professionally resurfaced. Except the first event I showed up to it got dialed up to 11. 3" heels, color coordinated suit outfits, perfectly accessorized. I immediately felt like I had made a mistake. I couldn't pull that off. It made me nauseated just to think about it. I immediately thought I was going to fail. 

I didn't have long to worry about this because I only did a single whole semester before the pandemic hit and everything changed. By the end of spring I was on Blackboard for all my classes, and mostly, no one saw me. So t-shirts and gym shorts or sweats. My only real concern was my hair because at this point it'd been short for a few years and short hair with no shower is impossible to hide. But somehow the comfort of tees and sweats made those first few months okay. AT LEAST I wasn't worrying about falling below expectations of professional dress ON TOP OF a global pandemic.

By the time we were back that fall I admit clothing wasn't high on my concerns. By spring I started to think I needed to find a combination that would not be disappointing to everyone and anyone evaluating me and didn't make me crawl out of my skin. I was still having panic attacks so that was a consideration. I had a brief thought that I could fake being fashionable by dressing all in one color. I picked shades of grey. Don't ask me. It didn't feel good, but it seemed simpler to my overtaxed brain.

But by year three, and here we finally get to the heart of our story, I was really feeling the extra weight I'd put on during the pandemic and was having hot flashes all the time. I was uncomfortable and a sweaty mess all the time. I was so nervous about LOOKING like the sweaty mess teacher that I started wearing linen and all black. I figured the linen would be cooler and the black would hide any sweaty mess. I made sure the pants were drawstring to deal with fluxuating weight, converted all my socks, shoes, to black, and ended up with a bunch of different black tops, mostly t-shirts.

I ended up with a lot of duds before I found stuff that worked. I didn't feel comfortable going out to a store, and I have sensory issues, so I returned a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff also got returned because it was too tight, didn't fit. I worried a lot about not fitting, but honestly, I was so exhausted by everything else that I'd start to worry, spiral for a bit, then run out of energy to care.

I spent a lot of time and too much money trying to make every part of clothing least likely to make me break out into a hot sweaty mess.

I am just not a person who pulls off polish. Mainly because I don't care. One of the effects of the pandemic was that I stopped cosplaying the feminine stuff I'd been doing because it was expected. So I stopped wearing earrings, make up, doing anything with my hair. I was down to essentially a buzz cut, despite random attempts to grow my hair out.

I spent that third year both relieved I'd found something I could teach in all day on my feet, walking around a classroom all the time like a shark AND worried that I was proving I didn't belong here on a daily basis.

But this year, between prepping and submitting my tenure portfolio, I figured that the die was cast and I should at least be comfortable.

I would like to think that I was hitting that Eileen Fisher aesthetic.

In truth I think it's much more like Korean street fashion.

My closet looks like it belongs to two different people. I volunteer as a Guardian ad Litem, so I do home visits,  where I try to look non-threatening and testify in court, so suits. I just bought linen jackets to go with my linen pants, and just bought  some feminine tops, so court outfit done. I wear jeans but also have colored linen pants. And I have bright colored tops. Then the other half is this all black void of work clothes.

I admit that one of the things that makes me happiest about my work wardrobe is the neutrality of it all. I kinda hate the feminine cosplay I still do for court and Guardian work.

I still have hot flashes after doing nothing. I still teach in classrooms with little climate control. I still have panic attacks. But I thought the last couple of weeks, *maybe* if I kept to linen tops and pants I could try some other colors. I DO own a lot of Hawaiian shirts which I love and thought maybe I could start wearing some of the Guardian clothes to work. So last week I tried it.

And it freaked my students OUT. I got compliments, they told me they liked the outfits, but also that it threw them BIG TIME.

Last year on one of my evals a student put that I was the same all the time, all semester, always acted the same.

I thought of this again last week because a student made the comment that the REASON why my change in clothes freaked them out was because I was dependable. I always was the same. I wore black, sneakers, was always there. They counted on that.

This made me think of all the ways that our students interpret us. 

Years ago Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote a tweet thread that resonated with me, in a lot of different ways since then. She was talking about how professors put a weight on students when they share personal information. So if a professor shares personal details about their life with a class or a student, they then have to carry that information. The professor has put a weight on them. 

I've thought a lot about this. I think about how commenting on liking a movie can make students who DON'T like that movie feel like there's no room for them in that class. Or if you show a preference for one thing you're dividing the class into favorites. 

I am very aware of the burden and weight *I* have to carry when people in positions of power above me share things I don't want or need to know (in some cases should NOT know), and how that affects me.

I used to think that I HAD to share personal details in order to "soften" myself to people (a critique I've received my entire life). And certainly I tell students that I don't have an attendance policy because I thought it was unfair my art professor failed me freshman year because of absences even though I had an A. And certainly students in my feminist horror themed composition class can tell I like horror movies. I share with students things that help me when writing, they know I have attention issues, easily distracted by touch screens and glitter. Most of my students know I'm queer.

But I've worked hard the last few years to both not put a burden on students AND to draw boundaries that keep my sanity.

And I suppose that the all black outfit has become, other than a practical and simple answer to real, daily, problems, my idea of a blank canvas. Yes- I am the heavily tattooed teacher with a crew cut who dresses in all black. I'm easy to identify on campus. But it is also the same thing. Every day. Every day it's black pants. Every day it's a black top. Every day I put on my black backpack and walk to my office. Every day I don't do anything to my hair. I don't wear make up. I don't wear any jewelry other than my watch. Every day I wear sneakers, or my All Birds boots, depending on weather, but even those are black, dark grey. 

I imagine this makes for a constant to my students.

This, in addition to how I teach, creates a touchstone, for my students.

I am always going to tell them to go home if they are sick. 

I am always going to tell them to not worry about class and focus on family.

I am always going to tell them that I don't care about the absence, or tardy, or missing work, as long as they are okay, because I care about them.

I am always going to stop what I'm doing when a student brings me their laptop or notebook or gestures for me to come to them.

I'm always going to be happy to see my students when they come to my office.

My students know that they can count on my class to give them grace and space. Flexibility. This doesn't always mean they're successful in my class, but it often means they can be successful in a lot of other things.

I know that all of this is reflective of my privilege. I feel the pressure to dress as a fancy, feminine presenting professor, but I make the choice not to. I may suffer for this. But honestly, with everything going on, I'm too tired, too scraped thin to care. My choice of clothing for work means that I don't worry or even think about what I'm wearing to work. It means I am comfortable being on my feet all day. It means I'm comfortable walking around my classroom, crouching down to listen, to help. I have fewer hot flashes, and even when I'm hot or the room is hot, I don't worry about how I look.

If a side effect of all this is an inadvertent continuation of my approach to teaching, that's just a nice surprise.

A Look at a Special Topics in British Literature Module and class

I thought I'd share how I designed and taught a module in my Special Topics in British Literature class.

This course can be retaken for credit as the theme/topic/focus changes each time it is offered. The idea was this would allow professors to offer the most engaging work that refleted the most current readings and scholarship.

I chose monsters as a theme.

I divided the class into four modules (You can find the complete syllabus here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LD_IVHZEbMi47C2FCrWBJ7tzTxd6yLjXGue9sZ-hNn0/edit). In the first module we used Guthlac as foundational text. For the second module I wanted to focus on analysis and responding to scholarship. Originally I had a list of articles, pieces, I planned on having the students respond to. But I realized as we worked through the first module that scholarship without context was not going to work. So I redesigned these weeks.

Instead I chose a major British work and chose a single scene in each work taht we would focus on. For each work the students got that excerpt of that scene for them to read and annotate in preparation for class, an in-class viewing of that scene from an adaptation, and articles/scholarship about that scene or the work as a whole that they also read before class. 

My idea was that the close reading focus would allow students to have a manageable section to focus on, a known lens through which to view it (monsters), and a model/example of analysis in the  scholarship. I wanted to do several things through this. The first was walk students through how to operate in a seminar. We only meet once a week for 3 hours, so the set up is ideal. But most had never taken a seminar, so a lot of the groundwork was laid in the first module. I prepped packets of historical context, notes, the text to close read, then scholarship that we went over in class so they learned by doing in class. Then in this module they have packets that are similar but less material that they are expected to read before class.

They also got a worksheet on how to prepare for seminar, and we went over and reviewed these steps, what it looked like.

The three texts I chose were:

• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• The scene where the Green Knight appears
• We also read excerpts from Norton of Le Morte d'Arthur so they'd see "Old Arthur"
• Frankenstein
• We focused on the creation scene
• We watched the correlating scene in the 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein by Kenneth Branaugh
• We read Tracy Cox’s “Frankenstein and Its Cinematic Translations” chapter from Critical Essays on Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1998)
• Dracula
• We focus on the opening scene when Jonathan Harker arrives
• We will watch the correlating scene from 1992's Bram Stoker's Dracula
• They will read Ahmet Anil Aygun's "The Genealogy of Bram Stoker's Dracula An Evolutionary Literary Analysis of The Vampire as a Meme"
• We will look a presentation of Vampire Memes I put together

At the beginning of class I fill our board with notes. I do this for all my upper level classes. I like to provide a road map for students. I don't always cover all of it in our discussion, but it's there if/when I make reference. The students also often take pictures of it so they have it.

Here is a picture of the board notes for Sir Gawain.

This class was our first in the module and while we used the entrance of the Green Knight as a focus, reading it in the original, in translation, the movie scene, we also read excerpts from Malory, and they had a timeline and notes on Arthurian texts in general. Even thought they had these packets before class to prep we still mostly looked at the close readings together, me asking guiding questions, them looking in text to answer. Once of the reasons why I like The Green Knight is that I think it reflects a lot about Arthurian tales- Morgan, older Arthur, pride of knights, corruption of round table, who is a hero, has honor? I think the movie while based on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight also makes a great way to talk about themes more broadly as represented by multiple text.

I opened with giving a mini-lecture, more explicitly walking through the timeline of texts, the board notes. Then we looked at the manuscript information, then the original, transation. After we'd focused on lines, diction, descriptions, we watched the scene. I asked more guided questions here too after first asking what they thought. I asked how they saw certain things from the texts, asked them to think back over certain aspects.

Since this was our first we connected the scholarly chapter to what we were talking about, but did not focus on it as much.

Here is a picture of the board notes for Frankenstein.

Sometimes I do the board notes first as visual notes. Most often I construct the visual board notes based on my notes and prep for class.

I have started each class asking what they already knew about the topic before prepping for the week. I like to do this to see what preconceived notions they have but also so that they can clearly identify for themselves what they thought/knew versus what the text says. Then we compare that to the adaptation. For Frankenstein this was a perfect fit because Cox explicitly says people's understanding of the Creature comes from popular culture and not the text.

I model, explain this to students, but I ask them to first read and annotate the text, then go through and make their notes for class. I encourage them during this second look to organize, look for themes, etc.

Each week after class I scan my notes/packet and upload for them so they have access to it. Many say they cannot read cursive, so that's been an obstacle to accessibility.

I opened our discussion of the text by asking how they did with it. They said having the shorter bit to focus on helped, as did knowing they were looking at it through the lens of monsters.

After asking students what their preconceived notions of Frankenstein were, I always open discussion with "what did you think?" I like to build in space for them to talk about what they liked, didn't, were confused by, and then use this as a way into "what do you want to talk about? What lines struck you? What did you notice?" This is where their notes, their line choices, come in. I tell them when they're prepping for class to specifically think of things they want to talk about in class.

Sometimes this works great, sometimes not, so I always make sure I have close readings for us to look at.

When students ask questions I try to direct them back to the group- "well what do you all think?" Sometimes I fill in the blanks depending on the question, or provide some context. I also encourage students during these discussions to add to their notes. Their seecond assignment asks them to analyze one of the texts we've covered, so I also encourage them as they read, as we talk, to identify things they might want to base their paper on. This analysis assignment is designed for them really just to use what we've done in class. The only outside work is that they need at least two secondary sources and the packets for Frankenstein and Dracula only have one, but I feel confident they won't have a problem finding the second.

After a while, the students don't need me to prompt them, they're connecting one line/scene to another, and referencing what each said in class. They stay grounded in the text- "On page 32 where he says..." As the conversation winds down, I make sure I build in wait time, giving them a chance to process, gather their thoughts. When I think we're about done I ask "Is there anything you wanted to cover that we haven't talked about?" This lets them think about this, go back over their notes and check, or ask something they hadn't originally marked but came up as a result of the conversation.

Because their analysis assignment is grounded in close reading, in addition to them demonstrating it in discussion I also wanted them to have some practice physically doing it so I prepared a worksheet for them. I chose close reading lines from the section/scene we focused on.

We did the first one as a group, I wrote the title on the board and I wrote things down as they called out.

We did not do all the lines on the worksheet, but we did a couple more so that they understood and feltt comfortable doing it. They also then have these if they want to use any of these lines for their paper.

All this was about half of class, so we took our break.

When we came back I put on the scene from Kenneth Branaugh's Frankenstein that we had read. It was about twenty minutes and I ask them to think of the lines we worked on and discussed, the themes and big ideas they came up with, and take notes on those.

I like that the students have access the previous class (and scans available) to the texts, but that they go into the movie scene blind.

After we finished the scene we did something similar as we had with the texts- what did you think, what did you want to talk about. I take detailed notes on the scenes as part of my class prep, points to make, connections. I used this a lot last week with The Green Knight. This week the students really didn't need any prompting. But again, they will have access to all my notes in case they want to go back and look at something or supplement their own.

Once we had exhausted this we turned to what Cox said, although several times the students brought up what the chapter said as part of our discussion.

I made sure to tell them repeatedly throughout the class how proud I was of their prep, their engagement, how on point it was. How good. I ended class by reminding them to be thinking of their text choice for the paper.

I'm looking forward to finishing this module next week and seeing how the students build on these first two weeks with Dracula. 

The module after this focuses on Macbeth, and we watch the 2010 Patrick Stewart adaptation first, then the week after dive into the text, so I think the work we've done in this module is a great preparation for that. Their assignment for that module is another close reading but they're expanding to talk about how it shows a bigger theme or topic.

Their final assignment is to give a presentation based on a 16 week syllabus THEY have created for British Literature, talking about what works they included and why. What sources, articles, blogs they'd assign, why. What themes they'd focus on.

Off Kilter Semester Start

 After Spring Break 2020.

Summer 2020.

Fall 2020.

Spring 2021.

Summer 2021.

Fall 2021.

Spring 2022.

Summer 2022.

Fall 2022.

Spring 2023.

We are now in our third year of teaching in a global pandemic. For most of us it is a surreal reality at this point. Most schools dropped mask mandates last spring when states did. Many schools never had vaccine mandates. A lot of schools stopped testing to return or posting information on dashboards with the mask mandates. Depending on where you are your faculty and staff may not be masking anymore either. Your university or college may have returned to just about all in-person events. It's "back to normal." 

Except I don't remember "normal" being 47, 328 daily cases, 498 daily deaths, both of which are most certainly an undercount as the US either never got data tracking systems up and running efficiently or abandoned them along with other mitigation measures. 1 in 5 people get some sort of Long Covid. And every time you get Covid you're running that risk. 

For the most part, these three years were not used to accomplish anything. Air quality was not improved in schools and public buildings. Healthcare and education were not reimagined to be better. Equity and access were not achieved.

Public K-12 schools are not sharing when students get sick, test positive. So whole generations of children are being infected again and again. School systems are not designed to constantly have a large number of teachers and students out for a week or more. Schools may have gone back to all in-person but almost no where does it resemble anything you'd recognize as school. The fall was full of horror stories of class after class losing teachers for weeks, three, four, classes put in a gym to watch movies, first monitored by a teacher, then an aide, then a janitor as there just was no one in the school.

Hospitals are overwhelmed. This many years in many people suffering from Long Covid have stopped seeking treatment after so long with no help. Treatment, doctors, availability of options for Long Covid are not readily available, not is just general information. 

The healthcare system which was already completely broken is now just kicking the can down the road. It takes three months to get a doctor's appointment. People go to urgent care or ERs to try and get help. If you stay home and try to treat symptoms there is no cold medicine, no ibruprofren, to self treat.

Yet you have to work to know any of this. It's not covered on the morning news programs. Not covered by newspapers. 

In year three there are very separate realities depending on how privileged or rich you are and the gap between them only seems to widen.

Each semester there have been different things as teachers, as professors, that we've had to adjust to. First we all worked for free to move all our classes online. Then we rearranged our classes for hybrid formats that included alternate days for attendance and a lot of supplemental materials online. By spring 2020 I know a lot of schools were back fully face to face. These last two years may have looked normal on paper but anyone in a classroom can tell you this is far from the truth.

Students are absent for weeks at a time. They are still juggling the move home, children home, working, schedules that they started during the pandemic. Last semester was the first time students openly talked in class about the PTSD they felt from the pandemic but this was obvious before they talked about it. 

We've kept moving forward but we've been leaving people behind.

This semester is worse and I worry that education, like all these other cascading failed systems, are not stopping to acknowledge any of this, so we're not even thinking of solutions. 

Teachers have talked about how students seem more attached to electronics, burying themselves in videos and texts. Phones have become woobies.

Students have a hard time working in class in groups, participating in discussions after years of a narrow, electronic, definition of what participation looks like.

Taking notes, reading, writing, completing assignments that are NOT about uploading and compliance, these are all skills students are struggling with.

The majority of my first year students this year spent almost all of high school during the pandemic. Online. Teachers out for long periods. Possibly them out for a long time. "Canned" lessons and assignments that were best option but not great options. 

In my opinion and experience, a takeaway is that many students have a single, narrow, definition of what learning looks like, what work looks like. And they struggle outside of this comfort zone.

But I have also noticed something similar to what I first saw when I started teaching online in 2010. Students seem to have a basic misunderstanding of how we (most of education) THINKS education should work. The example I always used was correspondance courses. That you were just given a packet, a list of things to complete, and once you finished it, in your own time, whenever you wanted, you sent it in, and were done. 

There are some students that do fine with this. They self-pace, they don't need instruction, they do not see a use for revisiting or revising work. Students who do fine with this model are usually white, privileged students. They have people at home to help fill the gaps. They only have to focus on school. They have internet and computers to help. But we're leaving the rest behind.

This semester for the first time I had a large numer of students who just told me they weren't going to be there the first couple of weeks. Who schedule work shifts during class. Who are juggling families, kids, work, other classes, and are making decisions about doing the reading (or not), doing the work (or not), attending (or not) based on a very complex set of metrics.

I don't say any of this as a "kids these days" "get off my lawn" way.

Rather, I bring all this up as a way of highlighting that for the first couple of years of the pandemic educators, schools, administration have all "pivoted" and "accommodated" and "adapted" by creating alternate assignments, flexible schedules, and changing/adapting policies. But it is not enough. It might have been enough if we'd upgraded air filtration, all had vaccine and booster mandates as requirements for admission, kept accurate dashboards of information, expanded our help, PSAs, resources, to the communities we serve. If we'd educated and kept educating our students, staff, faculty. If we'd listened to science instead of seeking comfort in hygiene theatre. If the global pandemic was a brief tragedy to endure these temporary moves probably would have been enough.

But we did not do any of those things. This is not going away. This and worse is our lived reality now.

So the question is, what do we do next?

I don't have the answers but I have some thoughts.

I think students need to be better advised. I think advisors need to not just randomly schedule classes. I think that there needs to be a conversation about your mental health, your anxiety, your stress level, and whether or not you can deal with 7 classes and 15 or 18 credits this semester. I think there needs to be a conversation about what those classes are, that a balance between swimming, and art, and heavy content classes needs to exist. I think advisors need to know if the student has a family at home, is juggling child care, a full time job, and schedule accordingly.

I think conversations need to be had early and often about what face to face, during the day, classes require. If the majority of your student population has not had consistent, face to face, instruction, then you need to teach them what this looks like. Emphasize what is important. Then train/support faculty to be able to teach the skills needed.

I think that universities and colleges needs to change or adapt their schedules for this. More night classes. More online classes. A lot of schools moved to a heavy online schedule, then just cut back. More once a week seminar classes. Weekend classes.

As a whole educational systems need to dump their ableist, racist, policing policies. No exceptions. No debates.

Faculty need to learn different ways to teach. They need to actually teach. They need exposure to methods and research that works, they need support to try it out, they need to feel like they can experiment until they find what works best for them and their students.

Campuses need to carve out time, take things off people's plates so that we can brainstorm and talk together about the issues we're having in the classroom, to talk about what our students need, and read, research, discuss, how we can help them.  Centers for Teaching and Learning and administration have to let go of old models of education. Some have made changes the last few years but they are not for the better. The neo-liberal university model which was already too prevalent in education has become the rotted foundation. Faculty don't reflect about the students in front of them, they get "micro-credentialed" by corporations and told it makes them a good teacher. Companies sell training videos and speakers who emphasize that we all just need to try a little harder, do a little more, and that will fix things.

Schools need to have honest conversations with the communities they serve about what their purpose is, how they can serve the greater good.

Class sizes need to be smaller. You need to hire more faculty. You need to make mental health not just an app or day but a core tenet of your campus life. You need counselors and therapy sessions that are readily available for all students, staff, and faculty. You need to have conversations about grief and loss and trauma. Technology needs to be freely available. Campuses and dorms need to have permanent quarantines (not send students home), Covid directors in student health, regular testing, information available. They need to education their communities on the latest science and back it up with booster workshops, practical help.

K-12 and higher education were already broken, fractured, deeply damaged before the pandemic. We collectively had a chance to remake it and chose not to. I don't know if education survives this. Our images of what school looks like may become nothing more than tales we tell people, with no resemblance to what things are like now. We're already seeing public schools dismantled, defunded at alarming rates for privatized options that are just excuses to teach hate. College enrollments are falling, and schools are closing. Some places may hold on longer than others depending on who supports them, how much money is in the bank. But it's a zero sum game ultimately.

IF we don't change. IF we don't stop. IF we don't rethink how and what we teach.

I honestly wouldn't make a bet either way at this point. One casualty of the pandemic for me was my faith in the collective good. But I'd love to be pleasantly surprised.

Future Plans

Most teachers I know are reflective folks, using the end of the semester to honestly look at what worked, what didn't, what to toss, cut down, revise.

Most teachers I know also will swear that the new year starts in August and not January.

I don't disagree.

But as the days get shorter and shorter, and dark at 450p has me longing for bed, it's easy to think about the year ending, the world turning, to think about what has happened and try and peer into the future.

Some students the other day asked to interview me, and one of the things they asked me was what I hoped for for next semester. And I keep thinking of that. 

There are still over 400 people dying every day of Covid. Some places and cities seem to half-heartedly be asking politely and quietly if people will start wearing masks again but no one seems to be listening. Only 13% of the population is up to date on their vaccinations and boosters. Racist cops are still killing Black men and women with impunity. Queer and Asian and Jewish folks are still being attacked, live in fear and danger. Extreme white supremacists and the barely hiding it politicians and public figures that support them seem determined to get people killed with their hate speech and rhetoric.

The world is awful.

It's been awful.

There does not seem to be an end in sight to any of it. 

New York City is going to cut staff and locations for the New York Public Library because of budget cuts. But their police department is the biggest and most expensive in the country. Their spending will exceed $11 BILLION.

There are politicians who voted AGAINST protecting same-sex marriage.

The Voting Rights Act has been gutted, and recent runoff Georgia elections were held up as proof that democracy worked but the long lines, the delays in mostly minority neighborhoods told a different story.

There are public figures arguing we shouldn't make sure public school children are fed.

Books that serve our most vulnerable students are being banned by small minded, bigoted people who have nothing but hate in their heart.

For some more than others, it continues to be dangerous, deadly even, to leave your house.

So when those students asked me what I hoped for next semester, I mentioned some of this. That the world is an awful place. That the last couple of years have fundamentally broken my belief in the people as collective working for the greater good. But that my students always kept a small kernel of belief alive. That despite all the awful I still had hope that next semester will be better.

What does the future in THIS world look like?

Does every possible system- healthcare, education, infrastructure, just barely keep going until there is the end of the cascade of collapse? Until people are too disabled or dead to keep the economy or anything else going?

What is the end game to just letting people be disabled, to die? What is the logic? Is the capitalistic life the holiday commercials sell this time of year really worth this body count?

I honestly do not understand, have not been able to understand, the end game.

And amongst all this I've been prepping my tenure portfolio.

I had great support from Twitter academics last year in drafting and prepping my 3rd year review. Folks were so generous with their time, looking at drafts of my statements, offering advice. I am so grateful. Last year I was a nervous wreck putting together all the documents and artifacts. I was so anxious about not being renewed, losing my job. I printed and prepped back up plans. I cried, a lot, when I contemplated what I was going to do. It was a lonely, frightening, awful time.

But then I was renewed. And I really only had two pieces of feedback- why did I not present at conferences anymore/lately...

And why did I publish chapters in edited collections rather than journal articles.

So this year I focused on applying to present to online conferences and was/am excited to present at two. But I also wrote in my narrative that in my first year I hadn't planned on presenting because I didn't want to be away from campus and the last couple of years it was a combination of the dangers of Covid in traveling, conferences that became superspreader events, the ethics of traveling with climate change, and the issues with traveling to and supporting certain places.

This semester I wanted to take the two articles that I have in progress and finish them and send them off. But once again I taught an overload and every semester seems harder than the last. The trauma is cumulative. The stress and anxiety continues. The world continues to be awful. I got more Guardian ad Litem cases and the semester just flew by. There just wasn't any time.

So while I do wish I'd gotten to those and hope maybe over break of in the spring I can make time to get them both done, I have enough of a publication record both before I got here and now to meet the tenure requirements here so I think I'm okay.

Because of the positive response to my 3rd year review, having good yearly evals every year, I was not nervous this semester putting together the tenure portfolio. We do ours in Interfolio and I have done a good job the last three and a half years of saving and keeping artifacts so the most time intensive was uploading documents and renaming so they made sense. I felt good about the documentation. THen I needed to revise my narratives to both update them and add headings so that it was easy to match the narrative to the artifacts. I also had to write a new one for service. I felt good about all of it.

This process got me thinking about what my future is here. What my post-tenure plans are. 

I was explicit in my narratives with the phrase "If I am awarded tenure..." because honestly, if I don't get tenure, I will need to find another job, that job will be teaching high school English, and I won't publish anymore. So I am both excited about the chance to dedicate full time my energy to my book project and resigned that nothing about that may see the light of day.

We've suggested an English Education Concentration, and I have some things I really would love to do with this. I've talked to our program coordinator and department chair about with the renovation setting up a dedicated classroom in our building that I can set up like a high school classroom, use to teach our English Education class, and use as a learning lab, resource. I'm interested in seeing if we can offer internships for these students who want to be high school teachers as tutors in the writing center, as TAs to our GE English classes. Hands on teaching experience can be hard to get, but these are both ways I could get our students experience. I'd like to codify some of the things we sometimes do now for our majors who want to be high school teachers.

But I am not putting a lot of work into these things this year, or rather, the semester we have left. 

Because I have a habit of going all in on projects, doing all this extra, outside work for something only to have whatever powers that be not move forward with a project or nothing coming of it. A lot of times I do this because my brain needs to work on something RIGHT AWAY. Often it is because teaching, lesson planning, pedagogy, all comes easy to me so it's easy for me to do. And a lot of it is due to twenty plus years, a whole career of being told by others that "of course" I have time for this because I am not married and don't have kids.

Most of the time I don't mind volunteering for stuff. Especially if it's something that is easy for me. But a lot of the time I say yes to something because I feel I have to, have to prove my worth, have to stay busy, have to in order to keep my job, and that knee jerk answer often results in hard schedules, stressful days down the road. 

So I'm trying with all things to be more mindful. To only put energy towards things I believe in, where my time is of good use. Where I can see the benefit. To ASK questions before I say yes about what's involved, what the goals and mission are.

I have complicated feelings about this reflection, this stance, because there's the cliche about professors getting tenured and then checking out. 

I have no intention to stop teaching, volunteering, researching, serving.

But I have been thinking long-term what my life looks like here if I am awarded tenure.

I have always had to hustle in my jobs. I have always felt precarious. I have never felt safe. Secure. I have never NOT worried about how to pay bills, how to make it to the next year. I have lived a whole life totally focused just on putting one foot in front of another.

I am 46.

And if I get tenure, it will be the first time I will feel stable long-term. I was starting to feel stable in Albuquerque in my high school teaching job and probably would have gotten there, but then I uprooted everything, I moved here. And I started all over again.

I have seen a lot of scholars on Twitter share their tenure stories. Awful stories that prove academia is not a meritocracy. Wonderful stories of support systems and collectives holding people up. Thoughtful reflections that academia is a marathon not a sprint, and yet grad school only teaches the sprint, that it is hard to fight against that and retrain for the marathon.

I love my students here. I love teaching here. I have been very clear that I have no intention of leaving. I would really love the opportunity to be here long-term and make long-term plans, set down roots for long-term programs. Build on community connections I've already made.

But I'd also love some time to breathe. To be more strategic in what I put time and energy towards. To feel safe enough to say no without worrying about being fired.

The tenure portfolios are due 20 January. But we're back 4 January and classes start back 11 January, so I did not want to be frantic or feel rushed those first couple of weeks back. I always like to clear the decks before we're back so I can focus all my attention on the students and those first impressions. I had a plan this semester, a schedule for when each section's artifacts needed to be updated, when to revise narratives, and it ensured that I got everything done but never felt rushed. All my stuff was uploaded before we wound down the end of the semester. The only thing I had left was revising and updating my narratives and I finished that today.

So I submitted my portfolio.

My hope and plan was that it meant I could actually rest the next three weeks, that I could recover from yet another busy and hard semester. 

Higher ed is a weird business. It's strange that so many people never know what they're doing from one semester to the next. Or that those of us lucky enough to get steady jobs still face precarity year to year with contracts, every three years with reviews, at tenure, promotion. It is hard to build support systems and programs when so many of your folks may not be there next month, next semester. I know a lot of places have faced a lot of turnover the last few years, some by choice and some not. I know a lot of places are paring down, shutting down, whole departments or colleges that just no longer exist anymore.

Yet academics are evaluated on what they accomplish, produce, bring in. Hard to do under great conditions. Ridiculous under the last few years.

So hope and the future are odd things to contemplate.

Grad school certainly has no conversations about this, about what happens after you get the job, how you keep the job, what keeping the job takes, what comes next.

So I'm not sure what my future looks like.

I hope I get to stay here.

I love my house. I am grateful for my wetland woods. I love my Guardian work. Under ridiculous circumstances, I think I've against all odds, managed to start a life here. I'd like to continue to build on it. I'd like to not feel rushed, pressured, scared, about what all comes next.

So as everyone's year ends and begins, as people reflect on where they are and what comes next, I hope the future is better, whatever that looks like for you. That is my wish for you.

If Only I Can Get This Syllabus Right I Can Fix All the World's Problems

Usually by week 12 of the semester I've roughed out my syllabuses for the next semester. In part this is practicality, our textbook orders are due mid-October, and even though almost all my classes have open access texts as a foundation I do still have in some upper level English classes a monograph or text. I like having the majority of the syllabuses done, because then in the final weeks as an idea or reading occurs to me I can tweak and add. Years ago I switched to a live Google Doc syllabus which makes all this possible, both before the semester and during.

But that last month of the semester is always when I feel the worst. Around midterms students start to not come. The number grows as the semester continues. I often end up with 5ish students in class the last day. This is not a Covid thing, although I'm sure that has not helped, but I encountered this issue my first semester, it happens every semester, and no matter how I design the class, what policies I have, the numbers don't change. 

I used to divide my composition classes into four modules, in a sixteen week semester, roughly four weeks for each module. We did practice scaffolding assignments in each module that built to a product the students created at the end. I used to do final portfolios at the end of the semester but in a lot of ways these seemed to set students up to fail. My classes are all face to face, and I run my class like workshops, so we do almost all the work in class. Policies are designed to give students grace and space if they need it, get sick, have an emergency. But my classes are not ones where work easily moves online, and certainly is not a class where you can miss for 5, 6, 7, 8 weeks and pass. You simply miss too much instruction and workshop time.

While my class policies have been the same for years with small tweaks, I have not taught my classes the same from one semester to a next. I use student feedback to change things, I theme my comp classes, I change readings, so each semester is different. I've been trying to work on finding a format, design, that works for my students and then just tailor the readings. Students choose their own topics for writing, so that works out. 

Last year it seemed like the low stake assignments that led to a major writing assignment general approach I've been using for years, was not working. Mainly because while the LSAs were important to do well on the MWAs, keeping up with them seemed a trap to students, got them behind. And with four modules, the majority only showed up for three, and putting narrative as the fourth, something "fun" didn't work, because it required students to read and discuss, and that didn't happen. So this semester I designed class to have a research report due before midterms, with time to revise for a higher grade if they wanted, that we'd spend all those weeks working the parts of, but for practice and feedback not a grade. Then students would revisit the research report, use the information in it, to create a presentation that argued for a change based on the work. My thinking was this would cover the research skills the students needed from comp, but the second half of the semester was not new work per se but was revisiting/repackaging the information they had. And a presentation a little bit of fun.

Nothing changed. 

I still spent last week emailing all the students who didn't turn it in reminding of final deadline. I spent yesterday emailing everyone again a reminder of yesterday's final deadline.

In my Monday classes I had maybe six students. In my classes yesterday I had one in my first and four in my second. Last week many students told me they were traveling this week and wouldn't be here. Others told me they were not coming to class next week.

Now, part of this is the schedule- two days of class before a break, then back for three days before being off for two reading days, with exams the next week is hard. If students are traveling, coming back for so little time is expensive, especially with many classes offering online classes. I get it. And our fall semester usually falls this way. But the spring semester does not and there are the same issues.

Part of my problem is that the students I need to ask what happened, how to help, don't answer emails, and aren't in class to ask. I don't have enough data to do anything. Now, I can make some educated guesses. I would guess that the reasons students stop coming, stop doing the work around midterms are interconnected. They don't feel comfortable asking for help or don't think they should need help. I know this much from my check in surveys when I ask at the end of each what help they need from me and they say nothing "it's just something I have to do." Then, because they don't get help whether it's on content or time management, or whatever, they get underwater and midterms is about when this hits. Many students can do well, swim along the first few weeks, but then start to struggle. A lot of our students are first generation, and tell me that they feel "stupid" asking things everyone else seems to know. Some have toxic beliefs about their professors, help, how class should be. These I think have been consistent issues my time here.

But this semester I think there's a rise in what used to be a smaller issue. There has always been a portion of students who had a hard time understanding consequences of actions. Surprised at the end of the semester that they failed when they hadn't turned in work or come to class. But this semester students shared more about how they feel and many said they have PTSD from Covid learning. My first year students, many of whom are 18-19, spent the majority of their high school years in a pandemic. They said that their time was chaos. They were moved online, and no one knew what was going on. The assignments were about checking boxes, worksheet type assignments, graded as complete, and a focus on compliance, not learning skills or content. No one asking about what they knew. A lot of time in front of screens, both for school, and to cope/escape everything, watching tv, movies, on phone trying to stay connected with friends they couldn't see. That they had lots of different teachers. Had to move online a lot, even when they went back to in-person. Felt disconnected. 

So now in face to face classes, on campus, they feel like they don't know how to talk to classmates, make friends, take part in discussions. That they get overwhelmed with everything there is to juggle and no one telling them what to do. Not asking for help or advocating for themselves because they don't think there is any help, there hasn't been for years. 

Some students have told me they're commuting from home to campus either for work or issues at home, but not like half an hour or an hour commute, like many of our students do, but hours and hours, meaning they're not on campus in their dorm at least half the week. I think this is a real Covid consequence that I started to notice last year. Students who were online for school, who didn't necessarily have synchronous instruction or work, started working during school hours, and doing school work when they could. For some, they've kept this schedule, or misunderstand that they can keep this schedule with classes that meet during the day versus designing a schedule with days and time off for work.

I know that K-12 teachers have done their best in impossible situations. I think what I am seeing is that individual great teachers cannot overcome cascading institutional failures. And all of this doesn't even take into account the strain of students experiencing death on a large scale, feeling pressure to work, help out with child care and bills. The mentla health strain this has put on all of them.

And here's the heart of the issue- teachers, even good, caring ones, cannot overcome structural and institutional failures. The best we can do is create environments that are as flexible as possible in order to respond to a variety of situations while also being explicit about help, support, suggestions, things to do.

But every semester I will make my syllabuses, then rethink them as I panic that I'm not doing enough. Rewrite whole classes. Doodle things out, trying desperately to solve the unsolvable.

So, for next semester, this is what I'm going to do.

Starting from the end, the last four weeks on narratives, reading, responding, discussing. Since I've decided to focus more on "composition" and only using readings for models, and the readings they choose for their research, this will be a chance to transition a bit to literature. Then, what comes right before that will be a final draft of a research paper on a social issue of their choice. With that being the final product, I design backwards- I want them to focus on Murray's Making Meaning, especially on how to revise for voice and style. If I want them to be able to do that, they need to see that revision is not about "fixing" it to get to minimum requirements, so we'll annotate the papers the week before for the minimum requirements and go over how to do formatting as a last step. That would be week 9.

Going back to the beginning- in the first week I want to ask them what they think the greatest social issues/challenges are. Ask them about ones that seem to be missing. I like using the United Nations 17 Sustainable Goals as a start, like I did this semester, but don't want to limit to that. I then want students to write "I believe..." statements about these issues. Then I want to introduce them to informal research, just looking up basic facts and stats for Covid, poverty, homelessness, climate change.  Doing this as a first week introduces them to the work.

Building on this, week two I want to model, make sure they know how to read, annotate, discuss articles, opinion pieces, and then respond in writing, so we'll do that in class. Then I want them to learn how to ask analytical questions an how to form a thesis, so we'll do that in week four. We'll round out these basic, intro skills in week four by having them write a definition paragraph that sets the parameters of their issue, practices topic sentences, support. This practices skills on smaller level, lots of in class work and feedback. 

Then in week five we shift to mini-lessons/overview at the beginning of class, reading a model and walking through it, then a big chunk of class of them applying. So first we'll talk about formal and informatl sources, we'll look at sample reference pages, look the scholars up, and talk about best sources and how we use different sources. By the end of this week they find their own sources for their social issue. In week six we cover how to interact with sources, use them, not just quote dump them. We will also cover how to organize by topic, not source, and the different effects of using "according to..." or parenthetical or footnotes as ways to engage sources as well as why different fields use different styles.  So in week seven students can take this information and decide what the logical order is for presenting these topics, deciding the order they will write about them so in week eight we can talk about how to structure paragraphs, and they can write them, then once they have their body paragraphs done they can outline their papers in the introduction and talk about future steps, calls to action in their conclusion.

And all that takes us to week nine, where we pick up the end.

I want to spend more time in class informally conferencing as we do these steps, and have them continue to email prodcts (definition paragraphs, sources, body paragraphs, intro/conclusion) for feedback but not a grade, and have them conference about the final.

I want to take the every four week check in surveys and make them more reflections than surveys, since I have to report progress report grades in week 4, midterms grades in week 8, then final grades in 16. I want them to self evaluate their own progress on learning, work, behavior. I want them to set growth goals and celebrate what they've made progress on. This is the furthest ungrading I've gone, and I think I made enough movement towards this this semester that I feel confident.

Now, ideally, I'd want to take the last 2 weeks or so, including finals week and have these be in-person conferences with me, where they bring their work from the semester in, show it to me, and do an oral reflection/presentation of their learning, work, behavior, and we talk about what final grade to post. I like that this is like portfolio work, but doesn't require them to create anything extra, they're just showcasing what they have. I'm not sure about doing it during finals week, as a big part of the issue I've talked about above is the last couple of weeks. So what I may do is design the narrative chunk different. Maybe we read stories, poems, memoirs, for two weeks, then do the conferences the last two weeks.

Clear criteria- both providing list of work we did for each every four week check in, not unlike I used to supply to high school students for interactive notebooks. Providing models of how behavior affect work, learning, but are not necessarily punitive factors. Asking them to think about the skills and content they've learned. Provide feedback on using evidence, artifacts, to support. Make it clear that all of this is important, as ew go through the semester but also, a clear criteria for final grade- you must conference with me, you must present your work over the semester. Enough flexibility hopefully for students who may need to leave early, schedule early, go first, but enough time too for everyone to go, like an extension of our grade conferences.

I have two English 103 on Tuesday, Thursday that are the same prep, so I'll try this with those classes. The MWF 103 I have is themed around feminist horror, so is a four module, one product per module, more separate than building but I do want to do the reflections every four weeks instead of just check in surveys. So I can have a couple of different environments to compare and see.

I also want to be more explicit from the beginning that I am there to help, but I can only help if they communicate, but make sure I explain that is not the same as feeling like you have to share and perform trauma to "earn" being treated with basic human decency. That they don't owe me anything, but there needs to be some communication. 

I also want to let them know that there's a lot I can help with, but there is a tipping point- a certain amount of time out of class, missed instruciton, a certain amount of missing work, that we reach where we just can't get caught up. Be more explicit about 1st generation issues, the stress and anxiety we can feel, how we can feel there's no help, not just sharing resources but talking about them.

I admit I struggle with this, or rather, I tend to do this, but only later in the semester, once I've built a relationship with the students. I think they can see and hear a lot of this from week one, but I don't know if they know me well enough to believe me until later.

I haven't gotten all of the end of semester reflections form this semester yet but the ones I've read so far are encouraging. A lot of the things I do in my classroom works. Students think the "choosing their own grades, grades conferencing" approach is weird at first, but they grow to like it. Say it takes stress and anxiety away. That my teaching style is "weird" but they like it. That they like how I email to check in on them, send them reminders, and know that I care. They all really like the hyperlinked syllabus, how detailed it is, and that it is always up to date. I was surprised to learn that they did not miss Blackboard at all (we didn't use it at all this semester). They said the syllabus had everything, and they knew what their grades were because they determined them, and grades were not averaged but based on growth, so their most recent grade was their grade. This made me happy, but honestly surprised me. They did say that it took some getting used to the first couple of weeks, looking in different places for classes, but that went away quickly.

From my interactions with students, I think they think I'm fair. When I tell students that because they missed weeks and weeks their assignment doesn't do what was asked, and because they missed weeks and weeks, I don't have other work to show me they knew the content, could pass, they tell me that's fair. They don't feel like I've tricked them or treated them poorly. I want to think that this is as good as I can aim for, that I provide the spaces and opportunities for students, but that they know too what their role is. But I don't know.

Now I know the students here at the end of the semester, sending me these reflections, are probably not the ones who I need to tell me how they are, what they need, what worked, what didn't. And I still don't have a solution for that. I already ask in the monthly reflections what's working for them, what their challenges are, what they need. I'll continue to noodle on how I can do this better, different.

I know a lot of this is the end of semester feelings- I always feel super high and super low. I get to see the amazing progress, growth, and projects my students produce. But I also look at the roster and see how many students aren't there. That never responded to my emails, just withdrew, or stopped coming, or whatever. And I feel every single one of those as a failure.

I think part of this is how we approach teaching in the US. We don't train teachers to be part of a collective or to reflect on their mistakes honestly. Once we're in jobs I think so many teachers are so afraid of punishment and retaliation that teachers don't share what is going on in their classes, so we don't see that so many of us are experiencing the same thing, so we don't brainstorm and talk through what's going on. I'm not saying I think we can fix all the issues, like I've said again and again, individuals cannot overcome structural and institutional issues like racism, poverty, food and housing insecurity, no health care, no child care, abyssmal education prep. But I like to believe that if we talked and worked like a collective we could try things, share things, build a network where maybe I don't catch everyone but I catch these, and you catch those, and he catches these others, and so on.