Dr. Jill Biden

Hooray for Dr. Biden and her commitment to the ethos of the community college.

This month's More magazine features an interview with the wife of the V-POTUS.  She is currently teaching three sections of English at Delaware Technical and Community College.  She calls this her "one sacred area."  My first response to her work was to wonder how bad the job of Second Lady must be to find teaching freshman comp a better option!  But then, from the article, I couldn't really tell whether she teaches writing or literature.

Dr. Biden talks about her commitment to people like herself, women who go back to college after marriage and children.  She says that she believes in her students and lets them know.  Her comments remind me so much of folks at COCC like my friend Carolyn Esky and others in the Human Development program.

Interviewer Lynn Sherr asked Jill Biden, "What is it about community colleges that so moves you?" 

Dr. Biden answers, "It's people who are struggling to get ahead.  They work at minimum wage jobs; they're trying to support families.  I want to raise awareness that this is the perfect place for them to get job training or that it's the gateway to a four-year college."

I agree with her views.  But please don't think I am a community college teacher out of any kind of altruism.  I sometimes think it would be nice to live the life of my oldest friend -- a private university professor who pretty much teaches just what he wants to teach and who has grad students doing his slave work.  But, bottom line, I prefer doing what I do.  I believe in the community college not just for my students but for myself.  I think that what I do is "right livelihood," one branch of the noble Eightfold Path.  By increasing other people's opportunity to live a successful and powerful life, I ease my own suffering.  And there ain't nothin' self sacrificing about that.

Manhattan Perception Management

Jack Donaghy would be proud!  Proud of the management of perception performed at the foot of 30 Rock.  I went to the Top of the Rock when I was in Manhattan over spring break and experienced the amazing class erasure performed at the entrance to the experience.

One enters the Top of the Rock experience as though entering a ride at Disneyland.  We take a short one story elevator to the ticketing area.  Once there, we walked through an overview of the history of the building of Rockefeller Center.  This included some videos about the construction, about the wonderfulness of the founders, and about Swarovski Crystals (they constructed some of the decorations within the Center).

One is almost required to have one's photograph taken on the way in.  One is posed on a "steel beam" in front of the New York skyline in a shot that emulates or parodies the famous photograph by Charles Ebbets called "Lunchtime atop a Skyscraper."

At the end of the journey one may choose to purchase the full packet of pictures for $25 (two magnets, cardboard framed photo).  The package probably costs $2 to create but the labor! 


Yes, it's the labor I'm thinking about.  The structure of this visit continually links, blends, mystifies, (pick the word you want) the interests of the workers with those of the plutocrats (great 1930s curse word) who financed and continue to finance the building and its works.  The ticket stubs, the advertising, the videos, all ignore the huge differences between those who make things and those who own them. 


And, sadly, I think that this is what America wants -- to ignore the gigantic differences in lifetime safety, stability, and hope between those who have and those who have not.

New Quarter Halfway Over

I thought this would be a light quarter.  I only have two classes, one the public speaking weekend bootcamp and the other a small group communication class taught at night.  Unfortunately, I am also on three hiring committees which have eaten up a lot of time.  And I'm setting up to teach online this summer.  So I'm behind.

Another Disappointment

Another disappointment included not receiving help from faculty and staff at our "partner" university, Oregon State. I'd been planning to teach a brand new course, Introduction to the Rhetoric of Film. The only school in Oregon that offers it is OSU so I needed to know their student learning outcomes in order to create a course that they would accept so our curriculum committee would accept it. Last year, in winter 2009, when I emailed the department chair for the first time, he didn't answer me. This year, I emailed the teacher of the course and spoke with him twice. He promised to send the syllabus and the outcomes but never did. I also emailed the departmental administrative assistant who didn't sent me a syllabus either.

So, by the time COCC's registration started in late February, I was feeling very unprepared to teach the course. None of the current textbooks I've found, like The Terministic Screen or Narrative in Fiction and Film, are suitable for community college freshmen. If I was going to work without a text I really needed outcomes and a bit more help. Didn't get it. After a weekend of registration filled almost all the other speech courses but left my new SP199 course with only two bodies, I decided to abandon the course and teach another section of the ever popular small group communication.

Horrible Ending of the Quarter

Last quarter ended terribly and I just haven't wanted to blog about it.

First, there was the problem of my Philosophy of Love and Sex class. Reading their final analyses, I realized that at least half of them were leaving the class invested in the same old belief in "true love" they had when they entered. I feel like King C'nut, trying to hold back the waves of noxious ideology and like him, I think I just have to turn back that work to a higher power.

Second, there were the two exploding teams, one in each small group communication class. Two teams did not check up on their paper writers and suffered at the very end of the quarter when in one group, the writer stole two thirds of the paper and in the other, the writer didn't even turn the paper in. This is a terrible betrayal of other students who, basically, allowed themselves to be betrayed. I spent much time online on my Ipod Touch dealing with each issue.

I was on my Touch because we were off to New York on March 21 where, among other stories we consumed was South Pacific, a play that celebrates "true love" in that "at first sight" 1940s fashion and reveals it in all its awe-full glory.

Another Wonderful Presentation

I'm a few days late in writing this because Lucky Seven actually performed last Thursday night.

This was another wonderful presentation. They gave their presentation on communication in a dental office. They had an attractive PowerPoint with pictures of people from the office. Their presentation was very well organized. I appreciated especially that they had a funny skit AND they made excellent use of their written sources (something some of the teams have neglected to do.) But the aspect of the presentation that I most appreciated was that they went beyond their original question and became critical thinkers and asked about the problem of "groupthink" in a low conflict work environment. Great work!

Great Small Group Presentation

Yesterday I saw the first of my small group communication class's Team Oral Reports and I must give props to KJCJs. They presented a report on Conflict in the Restaurant Setting that was excellent! It had everything I want a group presentation to have. They dressed in black uniforms to show their solidarity and also gave each team member a chance to present information. Their presentation had a clear beginning, middle and end. It was creative: they used web videos and skits as well as simply presenting with talking heads and PowerPoint. They referenced their sources, had quotes from the text, showed that they understood the course concepts and overall worked together with energy and commitment. Great work!

Oh yes, they also introduced us to the wonderful video series created by Generation Awesome called "The Bartender Hates You"

Images

I was thinking tonight (after receiving the envelope from the college) about COCC's change from the masculine postage stamp (rectangular) to the feminine moon as its representative symbol. The college paid a firm of grown up advertising and marketing folks to research and implement this change so (therefore, Q.E.D.) it must be based on valid assumptions about effectiveness in our target market.

But what are those assumptions?

Papers

Ack! As Bill the Cat might say. I have 43 tests and 43 student papers from the Philosophy of Love and Sex class to assess today and tomorrow. Fortunately, my spouse is willing to help with the grading of the test (it's objective) (mostly) (I should learn to use scantron but never think that far ahead). I will combine grading with poodle grooming (a five to six hour job).

On the plus side, we went to the opening of the A.R.T.C.A.T. show at the Pence gallery last night. That was great. Wonderful work by the best art students and teachers of Central Oregon.

Differences in Classes

My two Small Group Communication classes took the midterm last week and in one section, four out of five teams got As and in the other section only one team received an A. I'm trying to think of what I've done differently in those classes.

I could use fallacious post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning and say that one of the classes had to change their classroom and that made a difference. But who knows?

3Days Off

It was great having the college website shut down for two days. And I slept all Friday afternoon. So, basically, I haven't worked for three days except for grading my TR Small group midterms. Tomorrow I'll write the midterm for the love class.

Love Sometimes Stinks

This ain't about love. It's about my Philosophy of Love and Sex class. This week they proved to me that most of them are not reading the assigned material. Sigh.

I could give them a pop quiz every Wednesday night. But what would be the point? This is class they don't have to take. I don't want to turn them off the material by making them actually read it, for goodness sake. Now, I wasn't all that surprised when I found out that only seven out of 43 admitted that they'd read the online chapters of La Vita Nuova by Dante. But when most of them had not read On Love by Andreas Capellanus (selections of which are in our textbook, The Philosophy of (Erotic) Love) well, that made me kinda sad. I want them to be interested so don't want to punish them. Nevertheless, it's hard to talk about the material or play with it if they haven't read it.

Last week we had a terrific time comparing sections of the New Testament, especially Mark 10 and Matthew 19, about Jesus' comments on divorce. We also looked at a few different translations of 1 Corinthians 7, from the King James to The Message. In that class we also looked at love and gameplaying, checking out bits of Ovid's Art of Love. I also read about Roman Empire marriage customs from Diane Ackerman's book, A Natural History of Love.

Well, next week is the midterm. Gotta write that today.

Failure with Resolve

Well, I thought I'd make it through January at least with my resolution to blog daily. Nope. Not only did I skip the MLK weekend while I was traveling, I also skipped all last week and weekend. This is kinda the story of my writing "career." I have very little personal discipline and if I can't see a clear reward at the end of a project (I mean something besides the very amorphous concept of "self expression") then I don't do the work. And it is work. And I'm not a graphomaniac.

I suppose I could say a few words about how Socrates thought writing problematic (see Plato's Phaedrus). Or show my self awareness by noting that almost no one (Hi, Stacey!) reads my rambling. But the truth is, to paraphrase Henry Clay, "I'd rather be president than write."

Posting for a Class in CMC

I'm taking an online course at Chemeketa C.C. called Computer Mediated Communication. Here's my "reflection" for this week. It will just need to do double duty. The teacher asks us to write privately on certain topics.


"How has technology affected your life and improved or detracted from your life? Are you a technophile or a technophobe? What are the benefits and liabilities of using technology in your life? List four or five benefits, i.e., connecting with family and friends and four or five liabilities, i.e., spending too much time on the computer, etc."

The spork is both a spoon and a fork. As a technological innovation it is both a stroke of genius and a joke. It does the work of two utensils but does that work inadequately. In my experience, all technology has some sporkiness about it.

Because this is a class focused on technologies of communication, I won't talk about my love/hate relationship with cars. Well, come to think of it, the automobile did have a huge impact on communication by giving people a private protected area outside the home in which to share intimacies. Cars also made it possible to spend time with distant (i.e., over 10 miles away) family and friends. So the car actually IS a communication technology. But not of the sort we're talking about in this class. The car is not "intended" as a channel of communication but as a mode of travel.

Technologies can often have unexpected consequences. The usage of technology can also have unexpected effects on the further development of same. Technology and society impact each other in complex ways, as our author notes when he quotes Rob Kling on "social realism" (p. 43) Social realism views the "relationship between technology, culture, and social interaction as more of a two-way street."

The same is true of my personal experience with technology. I act on it as it acts on me. I can use technology for unintended purposes (I can hang a spoon from my nose or use an old laptop as a target). Technologies encourage me to use them.

I am a bit of a social constructivist in that I tend to believe more that our social systems and groups impact how we manage technology. But I'm not strict about that.

There are many technologies that I love and value. I love email. It's a quick way of keeping a paper trail at work while communicating basic information or just socializing. If I relied on only oral communication I'd also have to keep a journal or notes so that I'd have a record of agreements. I love writing on a computer. That's the thing I love most: word processing programs. When I first started keyboarding, it was on manual typewriters. I remember in high school turning in papers that one teacher called "topographical" because they were covered with so much liquid paper.

I love researching in databases or on the web. And, wow, Boolean searching is the bomb. It is SOOO much simpler than card catalogs or going through indexes.

And my life has been made immeasurably richer by first microfilm and now digital copying of old newspapers. The New York Times is completely available! I did a radio show on our local low power fm station that was focused on the music and news of the WWII era: "Swingtime With Sylvia." It wouldn't have been possible without technological access to old recordings and the New York Times. The coolest CDs I have were a huge collection of music copies from "V-Discs," Victory Discs, records (wax singles) that were sent to military bases for free. I have these amazing recordings of Fats Waller, Woody Herman, Glen Miller, Artie Shaw...etc. All this amazing history, complete with comments to our boys oversees, made possible by both old and contemporary technology.

I also love being able to watch my niece push towards success as a model as she posts dozens of startlingly glamorous photographs.

Now for the downside. I am addicted to visual narratives. I watch way too much television, especially crime dramas and police procedurals. I assume that if I weren't watching I'd be reading, becoming more educated, being more creative, etc etc. I occasionally go on media "fasts" to try and cure this addiction but it always comes back. I also communicate too often with email when I could just walk down the hall and talk to someone. I sit too much. My body protests. I also don't read as much fiction as I used to and can barely get through a novel. My attention span is the size of a gnat. Was it ever any larger? Do I remember?

And there are times when I feel utterly overwhelmed by the amount of information trying to push its way into my brain. When I was young, I prided myself on being able to talk about the news. Now, even though I listen to NPR ever day, I really hate a lot of what I hear. I find that too much news makes me depressed. I feel like the fat kid in the Gary Larson cartoon: "May I be excused? My brain is full." http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSci102/images/extbrainfull.htm

Also, I'm not a big fan of the death of privacy, but since it's a relatively recent invention, I'm trying not to sweat the loss too much.

Social Comparison

One of the ways that we create our self concept is "social comparison:" we compare ourselves to others to figure out who we are.A student in my evening class asked, "Of course you know Jim Hawes? And I said yes, and this student commented that we have a similar style in the classroom -- chillaxed. Hmmmm. I'm still processing that comment.

Getting into Groups

This morning the MW Small Group Communication class found their team members. The start of the team project is always interesting to watch. I encouraged them strongly to be aware of team member behaviors and take notes after class.

Last quarter so many folks had trouble with the Final Analysis that I'm trying to encourage everyone as strongly as possible to keep track of the behaviors of their colleagues. I also created a set of rubrics for the written and oral reports.

My ego was stroked today when my colleague Kathy McCabe, an ex-police officer and head of our criminal justice program, told me that her daughter thinks I'm terrific. (Why? She only saw me once and in a state of moderate inebriation. Maybe it's the hair.)

Skipped a day

Friday sucked so bad that I skipped yesterday. But here I am, back on the horse of language saying that I will be so glad when I'm no longer an administrator.

I haven't been writing much media analysis lately but I do want to point out something I thought last year about the Visa Aquarium commercial . This is sooo intended for boomers who took psychoactive drugs when they were young and now have children to bring up. Look at the fire breathing sea horses, the kaleidoscope imagery, the sea rays arranging themselves into an M.C. Escher drawing. And, of course, there is the soundtrack by the Moody Blues. "Tuesday Afternoon," a song about an afternoon in a flowering field has spaced out lyrics which have nothing to do with an Aquarium though the analogy between fish and flowers seems apt. The commercial startled me when I first saw it because, as someone who lived in the sixties, its imagery and music was sooo similar to that in the hippie bookstores and head shops of my youth -- the high color visions of those who took 'shrooms and acid. And now those people are taking kids to the Aquarium on a workday. The message, "Yes, I used to be a stoner, but now I'm a responsible parent. But, you know, there was a magic to those old days and maybe I can recapture it through the mind of my child."

I remember my dad taking me to a movie in the middle of the day when I was eight years old. He was working night shift at the time and I was at home from school for some reason. Maybe we were both playing a kind of hooky. He took me over to San Jose (10 miles) to see "Sail a Crooked Ship." I loved watching a silly, grown-up movie with my dad. I've seen the movie since and it's really, really bad. All I remember is that it starred Ernie Kovacs and had an embarrassing moment when a woman's bra was used as a slingshot. Now I wonder if Dad was drunk at the time. It was such a strange thing for us to do.

So one wonders about the little girl in the ad and what she'll remember of the day out with Dad.

Hard Decisions

I had to make a hard decision yesterday and today had someone email the president of the college and say that I was heartless and a disgrace.

This is what's really hard about administration. Someone always hates you.

Week ENDs in mess

Being a chair means putting out fires and managing tragedy.

I tried to avoid going to my office today, instead hoping to be able to just go to the north campus to teach my class. Instead, I had to go to the main campus to pick up my class bag (I have my classes in separate bags by subject) and found an email message from a woman my administrative assistant said had been yelling at her about smoking.

Oi, don't get me started. I don't smoke. I hated that my mother smoked and that it killed her. But how much damage, really, can be done by walking through one puff of smoke in the freezing outside air? Control indoor smoking, yes. But outdoors? Sigh.

So this complainer left a long message on my phone, on the dean's phone, and is writing a protest letter to the state of Oregon about various violations on the COCC campus. She though my admin was an art teacher and condemned her for "setting a bad example." It's enough to make me want to take up smoking.

On the horrible terrible side, one of our faculty members had her cancer take a terrible term and is in the hospital. I've got to find a replacement or cancel the classes. Actually, this isn't as hard for me as you'd think because there is one person, a newly minted PhD and son of the admin mentioned above, who might be able to take the classes.

I will be SOOOO glad when I'm no longer chair. I'll be on my feet more in classes and working more, but it won't be as stressful.

Ice Day

After an emergency session at the highest levels, my school canceled all classes that started at 4:00 or after. I got email and phone messages on my cell (text) and home phone, not to mention the warning on the website (which seemed to appear rather late).

So -- I spent some time allowing people into my evening class and posting syllabus and schedule on Blackboard.

Sigh. Soooo exciting. Lead story at News 21.

Redmond at Night

I'm in a strangely shaped classroom in Redmond: thin and long from my left to right. There are only 30 seats so that will keep me from loading the class up. It's located in the building the college rents to the Oregon State workforce division. We have a little side door so they can lock up their lobby at night.

A few folks laughed. I worked the age thing better this time because I used a "nominal group technique" sorta structure rather than just having them meet and talk about the question.

Among the guesses at my age: 50, 47 ("we averaged them all out"), "don't look a day over 25," "none of our business," 55, "Older and wiser than us." One woman (who took the time to chat with me before class) said that it was a trick question.

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, because you're a woman. Because it's the first night. It's difficult to put into words."

"Let me see if I can put words in your mouth. 'you're a woman' ... In our culture woman are not supposed to tell their age because success is related to being young and pretty. So guessing age wrong could be insulting. And 'it's the first night' means that we don't know each other yet and you don't know how to respond, especially since I wield the economic power in the classroom. So, in that way, it's an unfair question."

She said that I'd done a good job of mind reading.

First Class

Well, last quarter I tried something new in my classes: I didn't read my syllabus aloud the first day. Instead, I threatened them with a quiz on it and then just had them sign a note that said that they had read it. Big mistake. I got questions about the syllabus all quarter.

Yesterday, I went over the entire syllabus after kicking out people on the wait list who couldn't fit into the class. I made some jokes. Then I had the students cluster and guess at the answers to three questions:

• Why is Huck teaching this class?
• What gives her the "right" to teach this class?
• How old is she?

That gave me a chance to introduce myself and also talk about decision-making and power relationships. We laughed about the age conundrum. (Guesses ranged from 41 to 59.) Nevertheless, I think I'll change the assignment a bit for tonight's class and give them a chance to work individually first.

Tomorrow

Winter quarter begins tomorrow. Ah, the beautiful chaos of first week! When we all like each other and our future together isn't predictable. It's also a time of nervous energy for me because I have some communication apprehension issues. Fortunately, our first meetings are heavily routinized so that we are free to let our minds wander across our feelings -- do we like each other or not? will these meetings together have purpose and will that purpose make sense? Will we each be committed to doing the work of making a class?

Day Two

What counts as "blogging"? For the purposes of surviving my resolution this year, I will be counting entries in either this blog or Another Bag of Poodle Papers. I will not accept Tweets as blog entries.

One of my Facebook friends turned me on to another New Year's idea: picking a single word for the year. I believe the idea comes from Christine Kane. My word for the year is "Metamorphosis." My New Year's Day ritual is to construct a collage vision for the year and then post that in our kitchen. The collage construction is never completely conscious. I just select images that seem to be necessary and that go together. I'll post a picture of my latest college later in the day.

Happy New Year

I fell down on the job last quarter. I didn't talk about the successes and failures of my classes. Sure, I thought about it, but, hey, I'm a slacker. What can I say.

Some of the data on blogger bloviating shows (?) that folks spend very little time reading any one blog entry. 2005 informal analysis by ProBlogger suggests people spend 96 seconds per blog. { http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/03/17/how-long-do-your-readers-stay-at-your-blog-length-of-stay-statistics/ } I've tried for the past half hour to find more up to date stats but without much luck.

This could be because people don't really notice the passage of time while on a blog, according to the qualitative study conducted by Baumer, Sueyoshi, and Tomlinson of Irvine. www.ics.uci.edu/~ebaumer/chi1132-baumer.pdf

Of course, such a study may be difficult because it takes a lot of work to go to blogger websites, contact them, and ask for their data collection.