This kind of stuff makes it all worthwhile.

Last week, in my 10am D2U comp class, I'd tried to nip any potential gay-bashing in the bud before we peer-reviewed Michelle's essay, and it worked. The session went remarkably well. I told Michelle she was incredibly brave to go ahead and write an essay on being the subject of anti-gay prejudice in a class where homophobia often hangs in the air like a thick fog. Later I got this e-mail from her:

Thank you so much for your support! You truly don't know what it has meant to me.... I honestly don't believe it was our "bravery" as you call it, but more so of your strategy going into the essay review. You let my other classmates know that though they may not agree with my views[, they might try] not to criticize them but to keep an open mind about things. Thank you again for your support. We all appreciate it.

Wow. I did something that helped a student! I was really touched and humbled to get this message.

Friday afternoon, I got a message from Taylor (not her real name), a very bright young woman in my 9am D2U comp class. She's a senior in high school and is cross-enrolled at D2U to earn some early credits for college. She's an exceptional student, and a bright spot in that often-sleepy bunch. She wrote:

I really do enjoy your teaching and feel that I have learned a lot. In fact, thanks to you and all the things you have taught me, I did very well in the Awesome Methodist College scholarship competition I was in last week. I walked away with the grand prize, a 4 year full ride starting this fall. ... I really do feel that your class was one of the main factors in why/how I did so well in my competition last weekend. Thanks for all you do!

Wow again. I did something else that helped a student! Someone really, truly learned in my class. I was really humbled now.

Messages like these make all the struggle and frustration worth it. My fervent "please, God, let them learn something from this class, even if it's just a little something" prayers really do get heard.

"Get right, or get left"--my thanks to you, Ed Brown.

That's a popular end-times slogan for Pentecostal/Holiness/Charismatic churches down here in the South--you'll find small hand-lettered versions of it tacked up on pine trees on the roadside of many a "blue highway" down here. Either "get right" with the Lord, or "get left" when the Rapture comes. My high-school biology teacher, Ed Brown, used this phrase regularly when our class was unmotivated a little too close to the end of the term. "Y'all are going to find yourselves in mighty hot water," Mr. Brown would drone, "because Science Fair is a week away and nobody except Val and Mindy has their project even close to done. As my Grandma Bessie used to say: 'Get right, or get left.'"

Today was Get Right or Get Left Day in my comp classes at D2U. The 9am class was the most guilty of the trangression of Slacking on Peer-Review Days, and I think the message got through. Like the old Hank Williams song goes--they have seen the light. I gave them a big speech and told them I'd be happy to give out bad grades, if that's what they wanted, or to see them drop the class, which would mean many fewer papers for me to grade. And I told them that most of all, karma is a bitch. Not helping your peers on this paper may mean that someone doesn't help you on your paper, and you don't get the help you so desperately need, and your paper ends up sucking like Britney Spears in the back of the school bus on a 4-H field trip.** Many were taken aback; a few were terrified and wrote me e-mails asking for extra help. This class might even see three or four students drop next week, as it's the final week before Spring Break. Glory!

Sometimes a class just needs a big kick in the pants.


**No offense meant towards 4-H'ers, or toward Louisiana. 4-H was (and may still be) the most popular school club for kids from small Southern public high schools. And Britney was (and still is) a cheap slut from Slidell.

Dodging one bullet...but getting hit by another.

The peer review with my homophobic-undercurrent D2U comp class went amazingly well. The students whom I'd thought might be problematic either 1) were really helpful, or 2) kept their mouths shut. Michelle's girlfriend and a gay male friend of theirs (who's also a student in my 12pm Intro to Lit class) came to class and served as support. I think their mere presence helped Michelle feel a lot better about her essay, and about the flak she might get from other students. And I was amazed that there was none. My prayers were answered--thank you, God!

I'm now encountering a different problem: apathy.

My 9am & 10am composition classes have really gone "Slacker" the last few days. No effort from most of each class to help their peers with Peer Review. So each class is going to get Ye Olde Fire and Brimstone Teacher Sermon tomorrow. I don't give a crap if Spring Break is less than two weeks away! I still expect everyone to put forth extra effort in helping classmates with their papers. Many people in the 9am bunch are either going to get WF-ed (that's "withdrawn/failing") out of my class for their slack attendance, or they'll end up with D's at the end of the semester and will have to repeat my class. Sad, just sad. But if they really want to do poorly--and it seems as if they do!--it sure won't bother my conscience.

So I'll let you know how the Fire & Brimstone works. These two classes--but especially the 9am--need a good kick in the pants. Maybe half the class will drop after tomorrow. That would be ideal. It'd just leave the students who really want to be there in the class to do their work and get decent grades.

"Even the saddest poem I write is proof that I want to survive"

This essay from the "This I Believe" series was fantastic:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5221496
NPR: "The Making of Poems" by Gregory Orr

Just wonderful--sad yet simultaneously uplifting. Tragic, yet hopeful, too. Thank you, Gregory Orr, for bringing this little bit of light into my daily reading.

Act your age, not your shoe size

My 10am comp class at D2U has some serious problems. It's a shame, really, because they're a diverse and quick-witted group. There are traditional first-year students (white, black, Latino, Arab), older first-year students (25-40) with experience in the work force, military wives going to college for the first time, and international students (Jamaica, South Africa). We have in the class cheerleaders, basketball players, golfers, artists, Goths, "preppie" folks, stay-at-home moms, Democrats, Republicans, anarchists, potheads, bartenders, and factory workers. There are students there from pretty much every part of the country, too. It's weird that there's an undercurrent of homphobia in there, and it's mostly been fed by a student from Puerto Rico. She'll say stuff without realizing there might be gay people in the room--for example, how having single-sex public schools "might lead to something worse!" than boys & girls exchanging notes during class. "Worse than what?" I should've asked, but I didn't. I'd hope that ignoring it would help. Perhaps not giving it any attention would make it stop. Well, that didn't work.

Unbeknownst to me, I had a lesbian student (whom I'll call Michelle) who was really worried. She talked to me after class last Friday, and her fear simply radiated from her person. Michelle's essay, which is on the stereotypes lesbians & gays face in American society, is due to be peer-reviewed this week. She was worried about getting grief from classmates, and I couldn't say I blamed her, either. I told her I'd help her out as much as I could. I told the class Monday that when you're writing an essay, there will be some people who simply won't agree with you, no matter how good your argument may be. I let them know that, in our class review group, if you're one of those people who's just not agreeing with a point that is being raised--let's say, if for some reason you're totally against gay people--then try assessing the essay based on the writing, sentence structure, punctuation, etc. Hopefully, this will nip in the bud any snide little "well, that's just disgusting" comments in the back of the room when Michelle's essay is up for review. Didn't ask you to like it. Asked you to assess the writing, dumbass. If not, I guess I'll have to talk to a few students..."snatch a few knots in their tails," as my dad would say.

Our anti-gay "ringleader:" a funny, intelligent, outspoken young Puerto Rican woman. That's what's so bizarre to me about the whole thing. She's brown-skinned and speaks with a heavy accent--she's one of the people whom thousands of people in our city would love to "send back to her own country," even though (as a Puerto Rican) this is her own country. Perhaps she's forgotten the Golden Rule? Who knows. Why would someone who's so smart say stuff like that? Beats me.

I talked to this student, whom I'll call Lourdes, after class Monday. I asked, "Do you have anything against gay people?" She replied, "No! Why do you ask?" In the ensuing conversation, I found she just wasn't paying attention to what she was saying. Lourdes also told me she has gay family members. (Issues with those family members, perhaps?) She told me that what she had been trying to say came out wrong, and if anyone had been offended, they could come talk to her and she'd explain herself. So I ended up having some sympathy for her--since I'd realized she wasn't trying to be a jerk--and no longer feeling like I wanted to choke her. Hopefully, this is all resolved now.

The last few months have been funny in terms of my composition classes. I try to get my English 1101 students to start considering questions about race, ethnicity, gender expectations, and prejudice in our discussions and in their essays. The majority of my first-year students are pretty open-minded about gay/lesbian people. They're not threatened by these folks at all and are secure in their straightness. But I've been shocked to see that 95% of anti-gay prejudice comes from black students, especially those who are religious. One small group of black students in last semester's 9am comp class--and they were great students, too, very lively and intelligent and good-humored--went from eloquently speaking out against racism in all forms to zoom! bashing gay/lesbian people. All in 6.2 seconds. Hello, black folks! If there is any group whom you could use in your corner when it comes to prejudice, that group would be gays and lesbians. To turn your backs on potential allies just because the Bible told you to is foolish and short-sighted. The Civil Rights battle is far from over.

One young lady in last semester's class, a serious Christian who was born and raised in Nigeria, began saying to me, "Oh, well, the Bible says about gays that..." [blah blah blah, quoted a few Bible verses] I replied, "Sure, that's in there--but did you look elsewhere in the Bible at those verses about the Mark of Cain? Those were used to keep black people in slavery, and a lot of Ku Kluxers still use them today." That shut her up. I tried to point out to the class that the Bible has been used to justify slavery, killing thousands of Muslims during the Crusades, torturing people of all kinds in witchcraft trials, oppressing/murdering Jews, oppressing women, and so on. I told them that while the Bible's full of wonderful things, it can be (and has been!) used for all kinds of murderous intentions. Hitler and his crowd were after the Holy Grail, you know. I hope the class listened.

All this has made me very tired. I'm glad to be working from home today. More updates later, if Wednesday's peer review session warrants it.

38 and cloudy, with cats in the vicinity

Another rainy, cold day in west central Georgia finds me at the computer with DeeDee on my lap instead of my feet. Why don't cats ever snuggle on the part of my body that's the coldest? Why don't they walk on my back when it's achy and needs an acupressure massage? Ungrateful little stinkers!

It is indeed yucky-cold out: 38 degrees and rainy. Oh, the temp just dropped to 37. Not much going on here; I'm staying home to work on class stuff. I'd planned on doing laundry, but that would mean going somewhere outside of my house, and it's just too yucky a day to do that. The Weather Channel is calling for possible sleet and ice tonight, but I imagine that'll only happen north of here, maybe in Atlanta, Gainesville, Cedartown, etc.

I'm working on a long post about tolerance issues in the college English classroom. My 10am comp class at D2U has some major problems. Seems like the true mark of a minority group's having "arrived" is when that group can be nasty, hateful, and thoughtless toward other minority groups. How short our collective memory is! Much more on this later. I'm trying to sort it out so it'll make sense to you when I post it.

In the meantime, the outdoor cats are wet and bedraggled and all on the front porch. None of them really like any of the others, but not one wants space badly enough to go back out in the rain. It's a quiet four-way showdown. Someone eats at a bowl but gets an inch too close to the others; wrrrrrrr...rrrrrRRRRR!...then the interloper retreats to his/her corner of the porch again. No fights, no clawing, no yowling--just "eat your food and stay outta my personal space." Just priceless!

Today's E&P posting has been brought to you by Spam.

On average, I get a dozen spam e-mails each day in each of my five or six e-mail accounts. Most of the spam is advertising porn or dating websites. The "subject" lines and their spelling/mechanical errors are hilarious. It's also obvious that 1) the spammers are trying to mix up the sex words so they can get past Junk Mail filters, and 2) the spammers only know a little English.

Every few days, I'll be posting spam e-mail titles for your snarky enjoyment. Don't let the R-rated words deter you! The ones that arrived today...

GiantCock TinnyGirls
[I guess they ran out of BismuthyGirls.]

GetYour MatureNudeAnd~~BustyOldHoesHere
[Poor schmuck was burning up the thesaurus, for sure.]

50YrsOld andStillLovetogetNailed
[I guess what they say is true: what we won't admit in public gets revealed in our sex lives. Or the spam we send out.]

The sweet scent of magnolias hides the stink of bullshit

Ninety-nine percent of the time, students (and people in general) can't tell the difference between good writing and cliches--what sounds good or funny coming out of our mouths translates to looking/sounding hackneyed on the page. A feature on NPR today is a great example of this:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5220106
NPR: Proposed Mississippi State Poem Questioned

The legislature of the Magnolia State is on the cusp of making Paul Ott's poem "I Am Mississippi" the official state poem. This would be all right if it weren't so full of Mississippian and Southern cliches:

I Am Mississippi
by Paul Ott

I'm the land of the Choctaw
The hills of Vicksburg, and a cross-cut saw

Dinner on the ground and a muscadine vine
I'm a longleaf pine, and Mississippi's on my mind

I'm a banjo pickin' and all night sings
Azaleas a-bloomin' in Ocean Springs

I'm a Gospel Singer and the old folks at home
And I'm the eagle on the top of the capitol's dome

I'm coffee in the morning and an ole smoked ham
Cathead biscuits and blackberry jam

I'm a Mississippi moon, a dusty Delta Dawn,
B. B. King, Magnolias in bloom

I'm an antebellum home on the Natchez Trace,
A rusty plow on the old home place

I'm Walter Payton catchin' a pass,
Elvis Presley, Coon hounds and bird dogs and tea of Sassafras

I'm Miss Mississippi and all her glory
I'm William Faulkner as he writes a story
I'm Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman
John C. Stennis, a southern statesman

I'm the Mississippi River as it rounds the bend
I'm Gone with the Wind, y'all come back again

Well, I'm everything good you have ever dreamed about
Hush yo' mouth, I'm Mississippi
I am the South

Wasn't Gone with the Wind set in Georgia? Any idea why is "Coon" capitalized? Looks kinda old-fashioned-racist to me. Or "Sassafras" and "Magnolias," for that matter?

I'm as Southern as the next person who likes to wash down her Moon Pie with an RC Cola. And this is a decent poem in and of itself, as long as I don't think too hard about it. But there are so many other things about Mississippi that the poem leaves out. It whitewashes Mississippi and just deals with the expected items/pasttimes/stereotypes that we've come to expect. How about the Civil Rights Movement? Bless those Freedom Riders and the risks they took to ensure that all of us could live as free people. How about Eudora Welty? "Why I Live at the P.O." is no doubt one of the best examples of storytelling in American literature.

Thank you for reading. This meeting stands adjourned. [steps down off soapbox]

My job is not difficult enough, so...

We already have the Regents' Exam here in Georgia, which 1) wastes tax dollars, and 2) frustrates students who don't write well under pressure. (My estimate is that 35% of Georgia college students have to retake the Regents' at least once. I'll double-check that and see, though.) And now, yeeee-haw! From the same people who brought you the utterly groundbreaking logic of the No Child Left Behind Act--that is,"If you can pass a standardized test, then you must be smart!"--there's the distinct possibility that colleges will soon have to deal with more useless testing junk (post-SAT, post-ACT, post-getting into your college of choice) from the U.S. Department of Edumacation:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5205322
NPR: Commission Mulls Standardized Testing in Colleges

As my dad might say: "Good Goddamighty."

The gold medal in the 1000-meter Slacker Slalom goes to...

My early-morning lit class at D2U turned in the rough drafts of their poetry essay last Monday. One student--who is repeating this class after having earned an F the first time around--didn't turn one in. Until last evening. A week late.

I don't know if he thinks he has me fooled, or what. I don't chase students for their work, so I didn't say anything to this student about it. Wonder if I should remind him he's getting no credit for turning it in a week late? Hmmm. I do give students a "freebie" once per semester that lets them turn in an essay one class period after it's due. But a week after it's due? Puh-leeze. The guy still gets 0 of 30 possible points for this draft. And it's not very good, to boot.

Just when I think students can no longer surprise me, one will do something new and bone-headed that surprises me yet again.

Brrrrrr!

It's 35 degrees and cloudy today in west central Georgia. I've seen a flake or two of snow, which means it is butt-cold outside. Tonight's low is predicted to be around 25. There will be much grading done tonight. It's too damn cold to do anything else.

You ain't goin' nowhere

Nothing like a diversion from the work I really should be doing!

The February issue of Southern Living arrived in the mailbox today...
http://www.southernliving.com

This is one magazine I think I'd have to get no matter where I moved. My sister lives in Denver--about as far from anything Southern as you can get--and still subscribes. With great recipes like Mexican Chocolate Bundt Cake and Stuffed Southern-Fried Chicken, who can resist? There's nothing like a homemade roast or casserole or cake to improve a crappy winter's day. Or a really bad attitude. Or a crappy winter's day when you can't shake your really bad attitude.

And for your homebody enjoyment, there's Southern Living's House Plans:
http://www.slhouseplans.com

Now I'm looking at cute little gazebos and weekend cabins. Oh, and custom landscaping plans, for those who don't mind spending their hard-earned money. If I had $400 to spare, you bet I'd let SL's landscape designers draw up plans for my yard. There's a lot to be said for painting the wood fence in your yard some color other than white.

**In a related feature to the next item: this issue of Southern Living profiles the old Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, former home of the Grand Old Opry and a fantastic place to go see live music. You can hear a couple songs by Ricky Skaggs, Bruce Hornsby, and Josh Turner at http://www.southernliving.com/features. I saw John Prine at the Ryman in October 2004--he was incredible, and I'm sure that the fact he was playing the "mother church of country music" didn't hurt the show one bit.

My new favorite music source, Pandora:
http://www.pandora.com

John Prine Radio is playing "Some Humans Ain't Human" from Fair and Square; after this Prine song, there'll be more related songs by similar musicians, such as Merle Haggard, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Johnny Cash, Richard Shindell, Waylon Jennings, Rodney Crowell, Hank Williams Sr., Steve Earle, and so on. It's amazing how Pandora takes a artist and plays similar songs that you might like based on tonality, voices, genre, and so on. I can listen to this for hours. And do. Oh, now it's Prine's "Hello in There." Now Hank Sr.'s "Crazy Heart." Oh, now Rodney Crowell's "Still Learning How to Fly!" I keep meaning to put on a CD, but each "next song" catches my ear.

John Prine on the brain:
http://www.johnprine.net

Johnny better hurry back to the Southeast during a time when I can actually go see him.

Students' rough drafts await my attention. But why do today what I can put off 'til tomorrow?

You don't say!

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/02/10/parents.vs.teachers.ap/index.html
CNN.com: Parents, Teachers Have Educational Divide

I'm about to lose control and I think I like it

This new intense, class-wide peer review system I'm using with my classes at D2U is actually working. My students are finally getting the picture that lots of peer review and revision are two important keys to have a good final draft. Glory, glory hallelujah!

This peer-review process involves making a lot of photocopies, though--I think I've used half a ream of paper already. Dr. Who* stopped into my office this afternoon to ask me to lighten up on the poor photocopier. The English Department only gets a certain amount of paper to use every semester, and I'm using most of that allowance on my classes. Whoops! Dr. Who just wanted to give me a heads-up before anyone on the Office Supplies Committee** noticed and said something to me about my using 40 metric buttloads of paper. I'm not in trouble, thankfully, and all parties involved know I'm doing this so my students can get a better handle on writing and revision. From now on, I guess I'll be getting students to e-mail me all their papers, and then I can meld them all into a long, seamless document to either e-mail out or post on the web.

I don't particularly want to use WebCT for posting. I hate having to use the infernal thing at SBCC--hey, I've already tangled with it and come away limping. WebCT lends itself to organization. If you are not the organized type (read: if you are like me!) you and WebCT will probably not get along. Dozens of my D2U students have complained about our school's WebCT/Vista platform: they can never get in, it won't let them access their classes, blah-blah-blah. So I'm hoping against hope that there's some sort of feature on Blogger that will allow me to post students' papers as Word documents, downloadable as their authors formatted them. I guess I'll be spending part of the weekend looking for a way to do this. Blogger is accessible from just about anywhere on the planet, so I think that'll be a good way to go.

But the exciting news is still that my students are seeing the light about revision! This is SO incredibly exciting! It's moments like these that make teaching worthwhile.

*Dr. Who is the pseudonym for the D2U professor who's my supervisor. Since this blog isn't sanctioned by any of my employers, I use fake names. And he really does look like Tom Baker of cheesy British sci-fi fame.

**D2U does not actually have an Office Supplies Committee. We have a committee for everything else, though, so I wouldn't be altogether surprised if an e-mail announcement were to go out about an Office Supplies meeting Wednesday at 3:00.

What's the punishment for having a boring-ass blog?

I sure hope it's not painful or costly, because I'm on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List for the federal crime of Possession of a Boring-Ass Blog with Intent to Distribute.

Sara at Going Jesus is rocking out with her knitting projects and cool clothes. Mario at Stuff on My Cat is making people the world over pee their pants laughing at crazy cats with stuff on them. Angry Chicken is inspiring people to craft and quilt 'til the cows come home. Here at Educated and Poor, it's teach-teach-teach, nitpick-nitpick-nitpick. How did I let my life get so boring? I'm having serious blog-envy issues. Everybody else's blog is cooler than mine! Waaaaaaaa! [flashbacks to sixth grade begin]

(It's my own damn fault that my blog's on the snoozy side. You know that I know that...right?)

But...hey. Wait a minute. I'm coming up with ideas now...maybe I need to put up a link called "Music to Grade By" with iTunes or Amazon.com links. Yeah! That'd be cool! Or when I get my "Stripping for Fun and Fitness" DVD and my home stripper pole put up in the office, I can do a feature on "College Professors Who Like to Spin Around Chrome Poles." Yeeeeeaaaahhh, baby!

[start Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back" here]

Any other brilliant suggestions out there?