What a long, stange blog this has been

Sorry to crib the title of this post from the Grateful Dead, but it couldn't really be helped. Writers find inspiration in many strange places...

This semester I wrote about teaching, specifically at the community college level. Let me first say that I love my job, although at times I am confused, saddened, and in a rightful fit regarding issues that we deal with: violence in the workplace, grade inflation, budgets, plagiarism, creativity, endless committees, learning disabilities, technical glitches, writer's block, and a myriad of other things that come our way.

This by no means means that college composition is a boring field to be in (I guess it all depends on what a professor has her class spend time on: I'd be on the verge of committing Hari Kari myself if we had to do endless academic essays and grammar workshops). But there are great things happening in our field, and hopefully compositionists will continue to use technology to support writing environments for college students. I can't wait to see what technologies we have 10 or 20 years from now. Virtual writing spaces? Sign me up!

Hopefully this has been a productive semester for you all, too. Maybe one or two of you will continue blogging; some of you will delete your blogs the second class is over. Either end of the spectrum is OK with me. My hope is that you continue to read blogs and see the power inherent in the ability for an "Average Josephine" to have immediate access to an almost unlimited readership. As we have seen, some bloggers came up on our list of "worst" blogs, but many came up on "best of" compilations because of the scope and 3-D aspects of their sites.

So, I'll leave you with a few of my favorite professional blogs. Check them out. And if you don't find something you like or want, or need to read, then the job is for you to fill that gap:

1. Salam Pax: tinyplanet.org/iraqblog; "Shut up, you fat whiner!" at justzipit.blogspot.com; http://salampax.wordpress.com/
2. Nate Silver: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
3. Heather Armstrong: http://www.dooce.com/
4. "James Chartrand" et al. http://www.copyblogger.com/
5. Firedoglake authors: http://firedoglake.com/

More to come at a later date. Hasta la vista! Ciao!

Julie P. Q.

Woodbridge Campus Shooting Today

This is not going to be some eloquent post about student/professorial stress. We've all heard the stories about what happens at school (or work, or home) when somebody who is imbalanced, mad, sick, or all of the above uses violence to deal with the issues in their lives. Unfortunately, one of those common places just happens to be college campuses.

There was a shooting at my college campus today; I'm not always on campus on Tuesdays, and I was not there. I did get the following text from NOVAALERT "Woodbridge Campus Only--Slelter in Place Until Further Notice. There is an emergency on campus." Yes there was. I got in touch with a colleague and she told me that an upset student went into one of his classes and shot at the teacher. She didn't see ambulances, but there are about 30 police and state vehicles out front. Students went running. We have no idea if anybody's hurt.

To my students: give me a call (see syllabus) if you want to chat. This is not the time to worry or be alone. We're all in this together. If I have any updates on the situation I'll post here.

Student Success in Surprising Places

Karen* was a student in one of my Preparation for ENG 3 classes a few years ago. She was in her mid-twenties, had a few children, and worked while going to school almost full time. The first thing I noticed about her was her attitude. She was always ready, willing to learn, smart as hell. But she didn't lord her abilities over other students, and even though she was quite intelligent, she struggled with some aspects of college work (didn't we all?). I recall that she had a particular issue once with providing proof that she wanted that medical career. I asked her, "Where is this coming from?" She spent the next three months figuring out her motivation to become a physical therapist, and she realized that it stemmed from the time her aunt was in a rehabilitation center after suffering a fall; the time she spent with her aunt affected the rest of her life, especially her career ambitions. Her writing project described this incident and the upcomging degree requirements in clear detail.

It's important for me to say that Karen aced the English class she was in with me, although she didn't have it so easy in the next one. That could be chalked up to how she got along with her next professor; the type of work provided; how professors grade differently in a subject as subjective as English; her contexts (that is, the time and ability she had to dedicate to her work, and the other life events going on around her). She passed the class and made sure she was in line to get into a particularly tough medical program.

Knowing what I knew about her life story: that she had children in her teens and had to leave home; that she had had difficulty with family and high school; that she struggled to give her children a lifestyle that was comfortable and a mom they could be proud of, it's easy to say that Karen was motivated. Most students in her position would have caved to the pressures. I cannot imagine it myself, having gone through college in the traditional way (at 18-21), without kids and with a full athletic scholarship, to balance all of the competing needs, requirements, and desires of those in her family: those of her mother, her children, her partner, her boss. I would have easily quit just for a few extra hours of sleep a night.

Karen keeps in touch with me to this day. I even asked her to come back to ENG 3 and provide a motivational speech to the students there. Her message was, "It can be done." And then she proceeded to provide examples from her life and from her work in that class to support it (oh, and it made this English professor's heart happy to see a thesis point being driven home with supplemental support!).

Karen is now in her medical program. She'll get her degree--she works so hard at it, studying at every possible moment, getting tutors, working with her professors. She might not be a natural at some of the scientific concepts (most of us aren't), but she bullies her way through the work and makes herself bend to grasp the knowledge. She's so ambitious that she'll most likely eventually go for a master's degree. And she'll get it.

Karen is a success: the statistics suggest that she has less of a chance than a younger student who is unburdened with a full-time job and family. Peng and Lee suggest that "Demographic characteristics likely to place students at risk include low family income, low parental education, single-parent family, and limited-English proficiency. Data were derived from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88), a survey sponsored by the National Center for Educational Statistics" (1992). This means that all of these factors coalesce to affect how well a student does, even as early as elementary school.

I am personally included in these statistics: I was raised within a single-parent family, who also, at least when I was younger, dealt with a very low family income. Luckily my mom (like Karen) survived the lean years; went back to school and eventually earned multiple masters' degrees, raising her children's chances at success. But my mom's parents had it rough: while they stayed married, my grandfather didn't get past 8th grade and worked in a labor-intensive job his whole life (as a painter); my grandmother worked, too, at a medical supply company on the line, especially to bring in money to help take care of extended family. My mom's only options were relayed to her early on: nun, teacher, or nurse. The family just didn't have enough money for something else (she always wanted to be a lawyer). Thankfully she had those options...

In an article by Christina Burke, she suggests that women with obstacles are now taking charge of their futures, moreso now than ever before. Sue Beran is one of them: "Despite difficult circumstances--working two jobs, the daily commute from Moulton, a separation and being a single mom with two small children --she managed to graduate summa cum laude --with highest honors --and a 4.0 in an associate degree in applied sciences in medical laboratory technology."

Sometimes I guess students need those life experiences to be motivated to find their passion and do the work they need to succeed. College will be here when they're ready (but, sadly, it'll just keep getting more expensive). In the meantime, students like Karen make for exciting and fulfilling teaching.

*Karen's name and a few identifying details have been changed to protect her identity.

References Cited
Burke, C. (2008). Hard Work Pays Off at The Victoria College. McClatchy - Tribune Business News. Washington: May 11, 2008. Retrieved December 5, 2009, from http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.vccs.edu:2048/
pqdweb?did=1476608301&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId
=1364&RQT=309&VName=PQD

Peng, S. S. and R. Lee. (1992). Measuring Student At-Riskness by Demographic Characteristics. ERIC--Resources in Education. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (San Francisco, CA, April 20-24, 1992). Retrieved December 6, 2009, from http://csaweb116v.csa.com.ezproxy.
vccs.edu:2048/ids70/view_record.php?id=7&recnum=2&log=from_res&SID=tjbg52
mi9o8kgve3kg1t43d734&mark_id=search%3A7%3A6%2C0%2C10

Helicoptering: Or When Parents Hover and Students Run for Cover

Here's a scenario. Let me know if this sounds familiar to you: A mom wants to motivate her son into finding an academic advisor, applying for financial aid on time, taking a full complement of classes. Son is in his 20s, lives at home, and is fairly typical of a lot of students I see, especially in a very metro area. These students stay close to home, go to community college, and rely more on their immediate family for day-to-day needs (roof, car, insurance, food, health care, incidentals). Is this a good thing, a bad thing, both, or none?

In the past I've suggested to parents in this situation that they need to let their kids make decisions or else they'd have a 35 year old man-child (or woman-child) still living in the attic. For some people, they never want their children to leave home. As an educator, this is one of the worst things imaginable for me. The problem becomes: who is responsible for the 23-year-old student? His education might be partly my responsibility. That is, I have to get current, timely information to him, and I have to be able to evaluate how he processes that information so that I can tell whether or not he's learned the course content. But isn't "Jimmy," the student, responsible, too? He has to come to class, do his work (on time), and do good enough work to successfully pass the class in question.

So where do mom and dad, and grandma, and Jimmy's girlfriend Patsy come in? Unfortunately, they sometimes show up on stage and refuse to sit down. I've seen parents do their college children's homework; call and complain about grades and treatment; storm the dean's office; house, feed, wake up, cook, clean and pamper adults who do not work, but only go to school, and only sometimes at that.

This confusion is not about the hardships of the economy: there are plenty of families out there living together, working hard, and making a multifamily living arrangement work during difficult times. Rather, this confusion is more about middle-class American parents who have always given to their kids to the detriment of themselves, who email professors to find out the grades of their 28-year-old princess, who continue to pay for Jimmy's classes, even when he's failed the same one 3 times (two from a lack of showing up, one from showing up but not turning in any work). Where is the social responsibility to raise prepared adults?

I realize that this "rant" (for lack of a better word) focuses on parental responsibility and how it should be that parents transfer responsibility to their teens so that said teens are ready for the trials and tribulations of a college life. I've recently had a student complain that I got all "volcano" on him for calling him out on web surfing during a class. He never once mentioned that he was breaking a syllabus rule, and being completely rude at that. Where is the responsibility? And what would a professor like me have Jimmy's mom do? Here are some suggestions:

1. Make him go to school full time or work full time
2. Make him pay rent or get his own place
3. Stand up for your stress: don't say something then back down
4. Remind your kids of how hard you worked, how hard their grandparents worked, sacrifice.
5. Look after yourself first. Kids respond well to parents who are not punching bags or victims.

There comes a time in which parents (and professors) can spoon-feed ill-prepared students all the materials they need ("oh, you want another handout because you lost the last one?" "you'd like another week to do the work because you forgot?") but all this does is just delay the inevitable: the more excuses we as professors accept (and parents of college students accept), the harder our lives become in the end.

And isn't it typical that I write an entire post about what's wrong with some students, in that their parents were too lenient? What about all those success stories of students who struggled against the odds, put themselves through school, raise kids, work 2 jobs, suffer but succeed? I think that will have to be my next post. Because without them, it would really seem hopeless sometimes.