August\u00a0 & Anxiety<\/p>\n
Today began our first day of meetings before classes start. These are meetings for Valdosta State University faculty and staff. I have meetings every day this week. Today was the convocation, tomorrow is the College of Education & Human Services (COEHS) from 9:30 am to 3 pm, Wednesday & Thursday are Courageous Conversations (all day-both days and at the Rainwater Conference center) and Friday is our Department retreat\u2014not at the beach, but at the home of our new Interim department head, but he may live at the beach-I don\u2019t know yet.<\/p>\n
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But, what do I really need to be doing? Preparing for classes (syllabi, rubrics, lectures, materials, guest speakers), revising and writing book chapters for the book I am second author on, and finishing an administrative evaluation that was due months ago.<\/p>\n
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But, I have committed myself to doing weekly blog posts on teaching related stuff, and today at the convocation one of the topics was student retention. Retention sounds like an administrative thing rather than a part of sound teaching, but I got a list of \u201cSeven things we can all do for retention\u201d and I thought this would be a good framework for my blog for the next 7-8 weeks.\u00a0\u00a0 Each week I will discuss how I am applying one of these seven (1) Get to know students, (2) Connect our students with activities (3) Connect our students to resources (4) Understand the challenge of the first grades (5) Encourage experiential opportunities (6) Assemble the team (7) You are Valdosta State to our students.<\/p>\n
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I do teach graduate students-MSW students and that is different than undergraduates, and in looking at these seven at first it seems that they mainly apply to undergraduates-beginning students, and with these seven, #4 was the one to get my attention. \u201cUnderstand the challenge of the first grades.\u201d\u00a0 To me grading is one of the most challenging parts of teaching-students want to do well-they want to make \u201cA\u2019s\u201d and with grading we communicate numerically and with words what students are doing well, and what they need to improve on.<\/p>\n
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As I have taught I have realized that this communication about student performance doesn\u2019t end when we return the assignments\u2014it is ongoing, and as Professors we have our performance too. Performance in teaching and communicating with students. (Remember last week when I discussed how many assignments to give? Well, I still haven\u2019t figured that one out).<\/p>\n
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Communicating\u2014for me communicating about student grades and performance when they are not excellent can cause great anxiety.\u00a0\u00a0 I just have to work my way through the anxiety-knowing I am not perfect. I embrace and learn from my failures, but as a tenured Professor I have lots of experience with failure and anxiety.\u00a0 I\u2019ve learned they aren\u2019t going to kill me-they haven\u2019t yet . . .<\/p>\n
But, that brings me to \u201cCourageous conversations.\u201d And, this is not to minimize this two-day event comparing conversations about grading and evaluation with conversations about race, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexual orientation, politics, religion, national origin, health status, learning, age, education and much more.\u00a0 I think we need this\u2014I could say, \u201cOh, we don\u2019t need two days of Courageous Conversations.\u201d Or \u201cI\u2019ve had this before.\u201d But, this me\u2014this 54- year old me at this time, has not had these sessions with this group of people\u2014my College of Education & Human Services colleagues. I am excited about COEHS becoming a more cohesive unit. We are just starting to come together.<\/p>\n
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I hope I am able to finish everything before next week.<\/p>\n
Property of DHF Counseling & Consulting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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