"You're Fired!"

First firing of the quarter took place this week. A team member who hasn't communicated effectively with his/her (hey, this person DOES have a gender but privacy concerns prevent me from divulging it at this time) the team was officially fired by it. Now it's up to the fired person to apply to another team. It will be interesting to see how this goes.

So often students do not require accountability from their team members. I've seen teams in the past carry people who don't live up to team contracts, usually to their detriment but not always. Sometimes teams have two or three very strong workers who also place high value on social maintenance. They find it more costly, personally, to upset someone than to work extra hard to cover for someone.

I'll report later on what happens with this team.

Do Students Read?

Ah, I had one of those classes yesterday that would have made me cry when I was a new teacher. In my morning small group communication class, I was asking questions about the reading assigned for the week and students responding blankly. Three of 30 people admitted to reading the assignment for the week. Sigh.

Oh, well.

Blogging VS Blackboard

The students in my MW morning small group communication class would rather that I use Blackboard than the blog I've set up for them. Sigh. I guess I'll have to make the change.

New Start

My three classes this quarter are lively and many of the students seem engaged.

This, at least, is my beginning observation. It may just be that there are a few loud people in each class who chit chat, engage with me, and generally make noise. The week has been a bit chaotic with people needing to get into classes and the school encouraging us to do everything we can to let as many people as possible in.

I'm teaching two sections of small group communication and one section of interpersonal. I also have two weekend workshops: Listening and Team Skills. I put the team skills class into the schedule just before registration as a way of getting people an "anchor" class -- a way of getting into the system so that they can register early in November. My service to the college, as it were. And also, because I'm going to be hiring a new part timer to teach the spring one credit workshop, Conflict Management, I needed to pick up and extra load unit.

It's all over now

Wow. The summer class is done. Sunday we had persuasive speeches, I graded them, and posted the grades this morning. Now it's three weeks till I'm back on contract.

Many folks improved for their persuasive speeches. They took the comments made by their evaluation partners to heart. Others obviously just wanted to get the class over and done with the quickest way possible.

My favorite speech of the day was one on why COCC should pay more attention to food allergies and food intolerance, especially in the food offered on campus. I liked this speech for many reasons. First, it was on a very local issue. Second, it was quite well researched. Third, the speaker had a personal stake in the issue.

I'm always a big fan of local and personal. I pretty much get bored with issues I've heard like a bazillion times -- global warming, nutrition, and exercise among them. I'm not bored with the people who give the speeches. Just with the topics.

Informative Speeches

Had a great collection of informative speeches yesterday. We talked about rescue dogs, the Milgram studies, music therapy, the symbolic meaning of the eagle and many other things. My favorite speech, however, was the one on Anthrax, or Bacillus Anthracis. It was well organized, had plenty of data, and was something I didn't know anything about. The student who gave the speech was able to clarify a very complicated topic.

There were a couple of speeches on very complicated topics that were probably a bit too big for the 6 minute time limit. The speech on American monetary policy wound up being interesting but confusing. A presentation on Global Warming seemed to give a few different descriptions of what caused the problem but didn't completely hang together.

One thing I've noticed is that the biggest reason people do poorly in my classes is that they don't read the directions. I think I've done a pretty good job explaining exactly what people need to do to succeed in the course but sometimes I think people don't actually pay attention to their own opportunities for success.

Today I'll be hearing the persuasive speeches. I'm missing a few students. I hope that the folks who attended yesterday attend today. I've also got a couple of people who showed up and did the work for the first weekend but who haven't shown up this weekend. I fear that unless they contact me they'll wind up getting Fs. I hate giving failing grades.

SUMMERTIME FUN

I'm teaching this summer for the first time since 1998. I'm leading an air-conditioned version of the Public Speaking Bootcamp. We just completed the first weekend. It's a fascinating group, very mixed in terms of ages and worldviews. About a fourth are over thirty and a fourth under twenty. There are white and blue collar workers, kids just out of high school, and one gentleman who spent 15 years in prison.

And I was impressed by the work they did this last weekend. Some of them chose very interesting rhetorical figures for their evocative speeches, like diacope and catachresis.

Now comes the hard part -- disciplining themselves to get their work done over the next three weeks.