Continued from Friday the 13th's post. More of Bendnotes 4.
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Some weeks ago I was at lunch up at Grandview. I sat at the buffalo's table. The president and [the instructional dean] start talking about hunting. I talk about folks I knew in Poky [Pocatello] who would use hunting season to collect their family's winter meat supply. Then I ask about how the meat is prepared. I actually asked the president if he ever sat aside any elk burgers for charming new faculty people. He said that he would if I wanted some. (I saw him again last week and he said, "I've put aside something for you.") After more chit chat, I turned back to [other faculty at the table] with a smile which I hoped told them that I understood that I had been sucking up and that the choice to do so had been a conscious one based on organizational discomfort and that they should not think that I really thought them less important as humans than [the president]. At least I hoped my smile said that.
I went to talk to the [instructional dean] about my PIP (professional improvement program.) After we went over just what my PIP needs to look like, he and I got into an argument about women's vs. men's ways of knowing and that relationship between logics and power structures. At one point I remember that I was sitting on the edge of my chair, cutting him off, and saying that I disagreed because of xx. I have forgotten what it was I was saying. But I remember (in part because I've told this story a couple of time already) that he sat back with his hand covering a big smile. . . . A few days later as I was talking with a student about communication climate, I realized that when [the instructional dean] had told me in the fall that he had thought he'd never survive his first two years at a community college, he had been helping establish a positive communication climate for me. I went in and told him what I had told my student and thanked him. Was I sucking up? I didn't experience that particular incidence as sucking up. I experienced it as a move in establishing a relationship with one of the few people on this campus with whom I can have a good argument.
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As I copied the first paragraph above I realize that for years I've remembered that conversation with the president as happening at the first Faculty/Administrator retreat. Much of what exists in the Bendnotes no longer exists in memory. Memory is an odd thing. As you can see I'm also editing out some names. Some of the stories in Bendnotes might also invite ire, even after two and a half decades so I've decided to leave them out. But one of my SO F.n YOUNG colleagues has asked for copies so he'll get the unexpurgated versions.
I only have a couple more pages of Bendnotes to share and I think I'll wait until next quarter to do so. The person who wrote them -- so self-monitoring, so terrified -- seems familiar but different from the person she became.
Tomorrow night I'll tell the story of the first teaching job I ever had which was also the first job from which I was ever fired. Then I'll go into a no-blog zone for the Holiday holiday.
Showing posts with label 1988. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1988. Show all posts
Monday, December 16, 2013
Friday, December 13, 2013
LY #81 Faculty view of Administration 1988
Continued from yesterday's post. More of my conversation with Don at Buffet Flats, December 2, 1988 from Bendnotes 4. NOTE BENE [Accuracy disclaimer]: Please note that all discussion here about contractual issues may have been deeply flawed by the weak understanding of the person doing the reporting back then.
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Don talked about how the president . . has come to identify himself very closely with the organization over the past couple of years. "It seems like the president and the school are the same thing," he said. He told me that a month ago he had been in the president's office where [the president] had been yelling at him and shaking a finger in his face. Don seemed amazed that he would be yelled at by the president. . . .
. . . I said that it sounded like paternalism, but that [the president's] paternalism had helped the school over the years. Don agreed, and in his agreement mentioned how wealthy the school was, indicating that the funding the school has achieved over the years is much due to [the president].
But he is afraid that no real changes will be possible until a new president comes in. I didn't ask, because I didn't have the presence of mind to do so, what that meant in terms of the negotiations.
Don is also disgruntled with the president and administration because of the standards being set up for promotion and for appropriate use of the professional improvement time. See, we have to agree )(through our professional improvement plans) to do 8 weeks of professional improvement work over a four year time period. All the college people do. Part of the current negotiations involve a fight over how those 8 weeks will be spent (professional improvement can mean going to summer school, going off on a dig, etc. Needs to be a formal program, of sorts.)
The administration wants to say that the 8 weeks have to be spent in blocks of 6 and 2 and 4. Don suggest that this decision supports and aids only those faculty members who are academically oriented. Don suggests that this decision supports and aids only those faculty members who are academically oriented. He says that the college has four different tasks: developmental education (beginning writing/reading, bonehead math); college preparation, vocational-technical education; and (I think the last was) community eduction. Vo-tech people, for their professional improvement, are more likely to go away for week long programs in industries like at general motors. If the administration decides that only 2 and 6 or 4 and 4 is appropriate, they will be constraining the work of vo-tech people, making it very difficult for them to get their professional improvement plans through the system. According to Don, the administration legitimates this choice by saying that it's just too difficult to let people decide for themselves what the best time period is. that it's too complicated to let some folks take a week at a time while others take 8 weeks at a time. Interesting that the choice will be made on the side of the academic types. Don thinks that the president wants the college to go more and more toward the purely academic. don believes that that would be a mistake and a denial of the many roles the school needs to play. He also told me that the president wants to get rid of the developmental courses because they don't look good (he indicated that the president wants the school to have a national reputation).
"Like our track program." Don was talking about his amazement about the track team. It's the first year we've had a competitive sports program. And, in our first year, COCC's track team came in second, nationally, in its division. Don was amazed, but he also seemed to be suggesting an analogy that I didn't quite follow between what's happened with the track team and what the president wants to do with the school.
In talking with Don, I positioned myself as a good guy, concerned about the region and its needs. I don't think this was just an act. But you be the judge. I find that I am just too many people these days. I wonder what will happen if they all get together in a room at the same time.
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Tomorrow's post from Bendnotes 4: "Kake Positions Herself as a Friend of the Administration"
------------------------
Don talked about how the president . . has come to identify himself very closely with the organization over the past couple of years. "It seems like the president and the school are the same thing," he said. He told me that a month ago he had been in the president's office where [the president] had been yelling at him and shaking a finger in his face. Don seemed amazed that he would be yelled at by the president. . . .
. . . I said that it sounded like paternalism, but that [the president's] paternalism had helped the school over the years. Don agreed, and in his agreement mentioned how wealthy the school was, indicating that the funding the school has achieved over the years is much due to [the president].
But he is afraid that no real changes will be possible until a new president comes in. I didn't ask, because I didn't have the presence of mind to do so, what that meant in terms of the negotiations.
Don is also disgruntled with the president and administration because of the standards being set up for promotion and for appropriate use of the professional improvement time. See, we have to agree )(through our professional improvement plans) to do 8 weeks of professional improvement work over a four year time period. All the college people do. Part of the current negotiations involve a fight over how those 8 weeks will be spent (professional improvement can mean going to summer school, going off on a dig, etc. Needs to be a formal program, of sorts.)
The administration wants to say that the 8 weeks have to be spent in blocks of 6 and 2 and 4. Don suggest that this decision supports and aids only those faculty members who are academically oriented. Don suggests that this decision supports and aids only those faculty members who are academically oriented. He says that the college has four different tasks: developmental education (beginning writing/reading, bonehead math); college preparation, vocational-technical education; and (I think the last was) community eduction. Vo-tech people, for their professional improvement, are more likely to go away for week long programs in industries like at general motors. If the administration decides that only 2 and 6 or 4 and 4 is appropriate, they will be constraining the work of vo-tech people, making it very difficult for them to get their professional improvement plans through the system. According to Don, the administration legitimates this choice by saying that it's just too difficult to let people decide for themselves what the best time period is. that it's too complicated to let some folks take a week at a time while others take 8 weeks at a time. Interesting that the choice will be made on the side of the academic types. Don thinks that the president wants the college to go more and more toward the purely academic. don believes that that would be a mistake and a denial of the many roles the school needs to play. He also told me that the president wants to get rid of the developmental courses because they don't look good (he indicated that the president wants the school to have a national reputation).
"Like our track program." Don was talking about his amazement about the track team. It's the first year we've had a competitive sports program. And, in our first year, COCC's track team came in second, nationally, in its division. Don was amazed, but he also seemed to be suggesting an analogy that I didn't quite follow between what's happened with the track team and what the president wants to do with the school.
In talking with Don, I positioned myself as a good guy, concerned about the region and its needs. I don't think this was just an act. But you be the judge. I find that I am just too many people these days. I wonder what will happen if they all get together in a room at the same time.
-------------------
Tomorrow's post from Bendnotes 4: "Kake Positions Herself as a Friend of the Administration"
Thursday, December 12, 2013
LY #80 1988 Conversation with an Older Colleague
I continue with the evening of December 2, 1988, at the non-victory party at Buffet Flats as reported in Bendnotes 4. After the brief notes on my conversation with Hal, I had a long report on my conversation with Don, a member of the Faculty Forum's bargaining committee.
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We begin by talking about the stress of doing different kinds of labor. I had snapped at a student in the hall the day before, caught myself, apologized, and then been called on the carpet by that student in our class. I shared this story with Don. . . He said that sometimes he snapped at students when they interrupted the administrative work he was doing. I said that he could close his door. He said that he was forced to do that sometimes but that he hated to, because it gave the impression that he was inaccessible. I said that if he worked for a university he would have to worry about that. (Our organizational culture at COCC, and perhaps at many community colleges, laces students first.) He talked about having to almost have two different minds -- his administrative mind which he could cut off and cut out if a student came by, and his teaching mind. This of course gave me the oportunity to talk about my experience of being constructed very differently by my different classes (I said that I was much more open in in interpersonal, much tougher in speech) but that I was lucky because I teach about the way communication constructs us. As I spoke, Don smiled, and responded sometimes by saying, "Yes, I can see how that would be very hard."
I was interpreting some of Don's responses to me as being very similar to my responses to my students. He used support strategies and responded to my presentation of myself as challenged by my job. I have heard that the math and science department here seems to be a paradisical organizational culture. I began to see, by Don's supportive communication behaviors, how that culture may be constructed.
I wanted to get some information about how the negotiations were going along. So I began to talk about the class structure at COCC. [Here I discuss my interactions with a friendly part timer who had developed one of the courses I was teaching but who bore me no ill will.]
Don talked about how they were trying to get support for the part timers, so that people who worked hard for this institution were rewarded for doing so. He said that the administration supported their position by saying that they were already paying part timers here more than any other Oregon community college. Don talked about the bargaining team's position that a first class institution should deal with all its employees equitably.
I talked about how I had felt a lot of friendliness here -- that no part timers . . . had treated me, personally, like the enemy, even though they had every right to do so. I chose this strategy to reveal to Don that I understood the ways in which economics can influence interpersonal interaction. I wanted to create a sense of identification. I also wanted to provoke a sense of protectiveness in him -- I was disclosing a weakness (the desire that people like me, and my own sense that other people might not think I'm ok) and I expected him to respond to that exposure of weakness by showing me that I was ok. I hoped that he would do so by reciprocally disclosing information about how the organization worked. This reciprocal disclosure would show me that I was ok -- trustworthy, believable, a concerned citizen.
He did.
----------------
I'll continue this conversation in my next post.
------------
We begin by talking about the stress of doing different kinds of labor. I had snapped at a student in the hall the day before, caught myself, apologized, and then been called on the carpet by that student in our class. I shared this story with Don. . . He said that sometimes he snapped at students when they interrupted the administrative work he was doing. I said that he could close his door. He said that he was forced to do that sometimes but that he hated to, because it gave the impression that he was inaccessible. I said that if he worked for a university he would have to worry about that. (Our organizational culture at COCC, and perhaps at many community colleges, laces students first.) He talked about having to almost have two different minds -- his administrative mind which he could cut off and cut out if a student came by, and his teaching mind. This of course gave me the oportunity to talk about my experience of being constructed very differently by my different classes (I said that I was much more open in in interpersonal, much tougher in speech) but that I was lucky because I teach about the way communication constructs us. As I spoke, Don smiled, and responded sometimes by saying, "Yes, I can see how that would be very hard."
I was interpreting some of Don's responses to me as being very similar to my responses to my students. He used support strategies and responded to my presentation of myself as challenged by my job. I have heard that the math and science department here seems to be a paradisical organizational culture. I began to see, by Don's supportive communication behaviors, how that culture may be constructed.
I wanted to get some information about how the negotiations were going along. So I began to talk about the class structure at COCC. [Here I discuss my interactions with a friendly part timer who had developed one of the courses I was teaching but who bore me no ill will.]
Don talked about how they were trying to get support for the part timers, so that people who worked hard for this institution were rewarded for doing so. He said that the administration supported their position by saying that they were already paying part timers here more than any other Oregon community college. Don talked about the bargaining team's position that a first class institution should deal with all its employees equitably.
I talked about how I had felt a lot of friendliness here -- that no part timers . . . had treated me, personally, like the enemy, even though they had every right to do so. I chose this strategy to reveal to Don that I understood the ways in which economics can influence interpersonal interaction. I wanted to create a sense of identification. I also wanted to provoke a sense of protectiveness in him -- I was disclosing a weakness (the desire that people like me, and my own sense that other people might not think I'm ok) and I expected him to respond to that exposure of weakness by showing me that I was ok. I hoped that he would do so by reciprocally disclosing information about how the organization worked. This reciprocal disclosure would show me that I was ok -- trustworthy, believable, a concerned citizen.
He did.
----------------
I'll continue this conversation in my next post.
LY #79 December 1988
On December 5, 1988 I wrote Bendnotes 4, the last issue of these reports back to my friends in Utah. Over the holiday break I realized that no one back there really cared, so I didn't continue on with the letters. My next few posts draw from this final communique.
Back in October I wrote a bit about the No on 8 campaign. (For more information on Measure 8, see this report on the outcome from Balletopedia or this article at the Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest. ) One of the primary movers and shakers of the Central Oregon resistance to Measure 8 was Gene Carsey. Gene and his partner ran the antique store Buffet Flats, located ten minutes north of town. On December 2, 1988, they held a Christmas Party for people who had signed the advert against Measure 8 published in the Bend Bulletin. My next three posts will focus on two conversations I had at that event.
Before copying the first conversation, a few words about Buffet Flats. It was located across the street from what is now The Fun Farm. I first visited Buffet Flats the day after my job interview in April, 1988. At that time it was a many-roomed antique store in which the sound system, and a few television sets (including a miniature one in a large doll house) played the The Wizard of Oz on a continuous loop. This1993 story in The Seattle Times gives you a flavor of what it was like a few years before. Its wacky and very queer existence suggested that Bend was far more liberal than further years of experience would substantiate. I often attended the gay-centered Saturday night dances at The Other Side, one of the outbuildings on the Buffet Flats property. For a bit more information on the odd-ball creation of Gene Carsey and the late Mike Craven, you can see this short video from Weird TV (made before Mike's death in 2005) or the 2008 entry to Roadside America. Reviews with a bit of "history" can be found on Yelp. Local Photographer Jill Rosell has a 2010 photo essay on the weed overgrown site.
But enough about local lore. Back to talking about ME!
___________
I had a chat with Hal Gillespie (who is an old timer here and who works down thehall from me.) Hal poisitions himself as a left liberal. He is a "card carrying member of the ACLU" and is often involved in liberal causes. He is tall and rather fat, with a round face and a gray beard. Hal is going to Princeton next week to read for the college boards. He said, "Bart [dean of instruction] isn't happy about it. He doesn't like people leaving."
I wonder why.
Because Hal is leaving in the middle of the week and will be late getting his final grades in.
And Hal said, "But if he was really upset, all he'd have to do is ask me to stay. I'm obedient."
Hmmmmm.
I had a bit more chat with Hal about a video we were watching on MTV out at the dance area. It was the Material Girl video, and we talked about the way is quoted "Diamonds are a Girl's Best friend." We shared our knowledge of the 50s period of film making. I talked about how the dancers in the Madonna video were looser in their bodies than fifties boys chorus lines. He noted that the set screamed of the style of Hermes Pan. I was very aware that we were positioning ourselves (I very consciously) as fellow experts in historical/aesthetics. I did not argue when he made a couple of statements I thought weak or fallacious because I was not at that moment into argument -- I was into creating identification with a fellow worker.
Back in October I wrote a bit about the No on 8 campaign. (For more information on Measure 8, see this report on the outcome from Balletopedia or this article at the Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest. ) One of the primary movers and shakers of the Central Oregon resistance to Measure 8 was Gene Carsey. Gene and his partner ran the antique store Buffet Flats, located ten minutes north of town. On December 2, 1988, they held a Christmas Party for people who had signed the advert against Measure 8 published in the Bend Bulletin. My next three posts will focus on two conversations I had at that event.
 |
| Map of The Funny Farm from Roadside America |
But enough about local lore. Back to talking about ME!
___________
I had a chat with Hal Gillespie (who is an old timer here and who works down thehall from me.) Hal poisitions himself as a left liberal. He is a "card carrying member of the ACLU" and is often involved in liberal causes. He is tall and rather fat, with a round face and a gray beard. Hal is going to Princeton next week to read for the college boards. He said, "Bart [dean of instruction] isn't happy about it. He doesn't like people leaving."
I wonder why.
Because Hal is leaving in the middle of the week and will be late getting his final grades in.
And Hal said, "But if he was really upset, all he'd have to do is ask me to stay. I'm obedient."
Hmmmmm.
I had a bit more chat with Hal about a video we were watching on MTV out at the dance area. It was the Material Girl video, and we talked about the way is quoted "Diamonds are a Girl's Best friend." We shared our knowledge of the 50s period of film making. I talked about how the dancers in the Madonna video were looser in their bodies than fifties boys chorus lines. He noted that the set screamed of the style of Hermes Pan. I was very aware that we were positioning ourselves (I very consciously) as fellow experts in historical/aesthetics. I did not argue when he made a couple of statements I thought weak or fallacious because I was not at that moment into argument -- I was into creating identification with a fellow worker.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
LY #77: 1988 "Kake Gets Evaluated"
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| COCC Bookstore 1991 in Grandview |
______________
Darla ___, doctorate in psych from Berkeley, ex-radical . . . with . . . a habit of touching you when she's speaking to you, attended my 1 o'clock Fundamentals class on 9/30, and my 12:30 t th Fundamentals class on 10/13. After the Thursday class, we met down the hill at a coffee shop called the West Side Bakery.
When she attended my class, I introduced her and told them who she was, saying, "Now you get to see a real live tense public speaking evaluation." I am very up front with my students about my position in the Biz -- if asked, I tell them my contract says "probationary". I had told my T Th class that Darla would be there -- and boy, did they perform well. On that day I was introducing the Public Speaking in Oregon project (my own idea ....) But the evaluations. I had them write out on a piece of paper the finish of these two sentences: "The in class evaluations were most useful when . . ." "The in-class evaluations were not useful when . . . "* Oh my, but they responded wonderfully! they talked about how the evaluations were best when they were honest and included both good and bad, and not just good. After each comment, I paraphrased. Ah. What a lovely class. Lots of dialogue, lots of concern for the students. They seemed comfortable with me.
During our talk, the biggest advice Darla gave me was to sit down when I lectured -- that when I stood I talked too fast. And that I should also relax, because when I am nervous I look awfully severe.
When I shared this story with my class, I saw Rob, a large blond fellow smiling wikedly. "Yes Rob?" I said. "Nothing," he replied. "Just a short joke." "Yes?" "I thought you were standing up!"
That's how my students treat me. They tease me.
So. Darla seems to think I'm Okay.
________________________
* By "in-class" evaluations I was talking about the oral feedback I used to have students give each other right after a round of speeches was finished. I now have all feedback given in written form for three reasons: 1) a new speaker's quite literal inability to actually hear and process feedback given right after a performance 2) the face-threatening nature of any honest critical practice and my need to keep the speech class a "safe" place 3) student reluctance to criticize other students.
Sunday, December 8, 2013
LY #76 1988 Continued: The PhD Issue
Tonight's post continues with the happenings on October 6, 1988, as recorded in my Bendnotes 3. Last night's post was my 1988 report on a Faculty Forum meeting. Tonight I'm typing up a couple of discussions that occurred after the meeting.
_______________
"C. and I talked with Don after the meeting. He gave us the story of Fred's decision to turn the school toward the PhD. He also told us that "while I respect Ward a lot" that they don't see eye to eye -- Ward is perceived as being very close to the administration. As we walked back to the office, C. and I shared with each other our concern about being the bad guys, the professional guns brought in to take the place of those who were good teachers but who didn't have the magic letters after their names, or who weren't committed to the PhD myth. Although she is a Dr., she and I agree that a belief that the PhD means something about an individual's ability to teach is a belief in magic.
{By the way. I figured out this week that little of what I learned about teaching at the U of U is useful for this job here. The major job of a teacher here, still, is to try and teach, not to sort out the wheat from the chaff for the replication of an archaic and oppressive disciplinary society.}*
When we got back to Deschutes, we ran into Mary Monaghan, and she eased our minds by telling us that we wouldn't have been chosen if we had not been seen as potentially excellent teachers as well. She was especially nice about me, remind me that she had supported and fought for me strongly.**
. . . So. That's an overview of part of the political situation here. Sometimes it's real interesting to me. Since my depression sat in, it's mostly been really dreadful.
____________
* To understand this comment, you need to know that at the University of Utah graduate students often taught one of the three "weed" courses. A weed course is not one in which students smoke weed. (Yeah, I know what you were thinking.) It was a course in which the teacher, usually a graduate student at the U Comm dept, was required to bring in a classwide GPA of no higher than 2.4 because these courses were designed to "weed out" those students who supposedly didn't have the smarts to do great work in the communication program. Weeding was necessary because communication was one of the most popular humanities programs so their needed to be a gateway to entering.
The required C+ class GPA meant that almost every high grade (B and up) needed to be balanced with a lower grade. If a graduate student like myself allowed a class average to slip upward toward 2.8 or, heaven forfend, a Stanford-like 3.3, then we would have been "spoken to" and threatened with the loss of the teaching assistantship. Because I was at the U. only because I had the assistantship (which covered my tuition AND gave me enough to pay for rent and food as well) I did my job as required. Of course, being who I am, I often told the students about the weeding I was required to do. When one of the major departmental faculty heard about my honesty, she was very upset and told me that, "It's not a good idea to be too truthful with them." And yes, she was someone who touted a left-wing, post-Marxist ideology.
One interesting aspect of this kind of grading requirement is that a student who might get an A in one class because they outshone the other folks, might have pulled a B or lower in another class where there were more high performers. An undergraduate's grade in these classes had as much to do with the other students in the class as with his or her own abilities. Thank all the powers that bee that I haven't been required to grade like this since I left the U. Nowadays, I have a set criteria for an A which I really believe almost every student in my classes can reach if they do the work.
** Reading once again about Mary's comment about fighting for me leads me again to think that I was the second choice of the COCC hiring committee. I wonder how I could find out for sure?
_______________
"C. and I talked with Don after the meeting. He gave us the story of Fred's decision to turn the school toward the PhD. He also told us that "while I respect Ward a lot" that they don't see eye to eye -- Ward is perceived as being very close to the administration. As we walked back to the office, C. and I shared with each other our concern about being the bad guys, the professional guns brought in to take the place of those who were good teachers but who didn't have the magic letters after their names, or who weren't committed to the PhD myth. Although she is a Dr., she and I agree that a belief that the PhD means something about an individual's ability to teach is a belief in magic.
{By the way. I figured out this week that little of what I learned about teaching at the U of U is useful for this job here. The major job of a teacher here, still, is to try and teach, not to sort out the wheat from the chaff for the replication of an archaic and oppressive disciplinary society.}*
When we got back to Deschutes, we ran into Mary Monaghan, and she eased our minds by telling us that we wouldn't have been chosen if we had not been seen as potentially excellent teachers as well. She was especially nice about me, remind me that she had supported and fought for me strongly.**
. . . So. That's an overview of part of the political situation here. Sometimes it's real interesting to me. Since my depression sat in, it's mostly been really dreadful.
____________
* To understand this comment, you need to know that at the University of Utah graduate students often taught one of the three "weed" courses. A weed course is not one in which students smoke weed. (Yeah, I know what you were thinking.) It was a course in which the teacher, usually a graduate student at the U Comm dept, was required to bring in a classwide GPA of no higher than 2.4 because these courses were designed to "weed out" those students who supposedly didn't have the smarts to do great work in the communication program. Weeding was necessary because communication was one of the most popular humanities programs so their needed to be a gateway to entering.
The required C+ class GPA meant that almost every high grade (B and up) needed to be balanced with a lower grade. If a graduate student like myself allowed a class average to slip upward toward 2.8 or, heaven forfend, a Stanford-like 3.3, then we would have been "spoken to" and threatened with the loss of the teaching assistantship. Because I was at the U. only because I had the assistantship (which covered my tuition AND gave me enough to pay for rent and food as well) I did my job as required. Of course, being who I am, I often told the students about the weeding I was required to do. When one of the major departmental faculty heard about my honesty, she was very upset and told me that, "It's not a good idea to be too truthful with them." And yes, she was someone who touted a left-wing, post-Marxist ideology.
One interesting aspect of this kind of grading requirement is that a student who might get an A in one class because they outshone the other folks, might have pulled a B or lower in another class where there were more high performers. An undergraduate's grade in these classes had as much to do with the other students in the class as with his or her own abilities. Thank all the powers that bee that I haven't been required to grade like this since I left the U. Nowadays, I have a set criteria for an A which I really believe almost every student in my classes can reach if they do the work.
** Reading once again about Mary's comment about fighting for me leads me again to think that I was the second choice of the COCC hiring committee. I wonder how I could find out for sure?
Saturday, December 7, 2013
LY #75 Report on the Faculty Forum 1988 "Strike?"
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| COCC Library 1991 (Now Modoc) |
"October 6 -- 7 - 8 am, Faculty Forum Meeting
-- 8:00 - 8:20 Don G. talks to C. [a hire from my year], Kake
-- 8:20 - 9:20 -- C. and Kake Deconstruct
Faculty Forum
Faculty Froum is the name given to the faculty union. The faculty at COCC no longer belongs to any of the national teacher's labor unions. Instead, every teacher at COCC is a member of the union automatically ($10 per paycheck goes to the union.)
C. and I met up at Deschutes and walked over to Ochoco 5, a room in one of the sciences buildings with chairs attached to risers and tables of the elements on the walls. It isn't odd for things to begin at 7 am around here because so many folks have to be at work at 8. (My first class on Thursday isn't until 9:30).
Bruce N. (the geologist) called the meeting to order. We votes to accept the minutes. We then voted for a new member of the College Affairs committee. Even though there were new folks there, no explanations were given as to who the people were we were voting for and what their stands were in regards the committee. They stood up, we looked at them, and then we wrote our votes on little slips of paper and handed them to the front. C. and I sort of giggled about the guesswork we were doing . . .
Then Don G. -- a clean shaven fellow with a round face, a muscular body (slightly gut spring) blow dried hair and a Dukakis-Bentson button, got up to explain the history of the negotiations. He said that there were five major issues: Faculty governance, professional improvement, faculty loads, contract language, and salary-and-insurance. Those are in order of importance. The first two issues are centered on the question of the PhD. It seems that two years ago, President Fred got a bee up his butt about PhDs -- he decided that those sabbaticals and professional improvement plans which were directly related to producing terminal degrees were those which would get the most support. The administration here decided that without any by-your-leave, handing it as a fait accompli to the faculty. Needless to say, as teachers in a community college (the job of which is to serve the community, not some disciplinary body) the profs here didn't cotton to the PhD idea.
After discussing the main points, G. went on to give an overbiew of the history of the negotiations. They started last February. they originally talked to a team of familiar administrators. Then the administration brought in a lawyer from the outside. Things got bogged down, and everybody went away for the summer (I am not telling you all the details he told us about negotiation -- I have notes on it but you'd just be bored.) When they cam back, they fond that president Fred still won't budge, so it looks like a mediator is coming in from Portland. (Arbitration is illegal in Oregon.) What's going to happen is anybody's guess. Ten years ago there was a similar upheaval, but Fred held out and the faculty rolled over. G. reported that Boyle has said that "Mediation won't do any good."
It's a tense situation. Boyle is retiring in two years. The faculty, which has accepted Pres. Boyle's paternalism for 20 years, is afraid that the new pres will be even more difficult to work with. There was talk at the meeting about the possibility of a strike, but someone said that it wasn't likely unless the faculty had more backbone that it did 10 years ago. Someone mentioned that there was a new school board now which might be more supportive of the faculty. The "ultimate authority" is the board.
L. (a middle aged woman from nursing) asked twice during the meeting if Don wanted a vote of confidence. He said no, that that wasn't necessary at this time.
____________________________________
Tomorrow's post: C. and Kake talk about the meeting.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
LY #61 Meals with My Hiring Committee
Since I was ripping on the dudes who interviewed for Bouknight's position, I suppose I should tell a couple of stories about the day I interviewed.
Lunch was held in the meeting room upstairs just off the cafeteria in Grandview. Anyone on campus who wanted to meet the interviewee was invited. I didn't know who all of the folks I met was important so I pretty much smiled at everyone. I remember that Mike Smith asked me if I could play softball. I'd been playing softball in Utah so of course I said "yes," assuming that anything I said could be a point for or against me. And then I dropped some lettuce on my lap.
Later that day I went to dinner at McGraths with my hiring committee which included Hal Gillespie and Mary Monaghan, both felled by cancer in the early 90s. The other member of the dinner party was John Purdy, a specialist in Native American Literature who went on to teach at Western Washington U. As I look back on it, I realize that the black and white dress I wore at dinner, purchased at the Happy Dragon Thrift Shop in Los Gatos, was far too short to wear in that professional setting. But at the time it was the only dark dress I owned. I was very careful at dinner to drink one glass of wine rather than none or two -- the same amount of alcohol as the other folks at the table.
As I noted in an earlier blog post, I looked lesbian in those days which might have been the reason that one member of the committee, the late Ms. Monaghan, asked me sotto voce an illegal question about whether or not I was married. I was a bit flummoxed, but said "yes."
The other moments I remember from that day don't include either my teaching sample or the actual formal interview. I do remember that the first person I met officially was Gene Zinkgraf, "personnel director" at the time. And my last interview of the afternoon, before dinner, was a meeting with dean Bart Queary. I asked if there was anything he could tell me about why I shouldn't take the job. He told me that many people in Bend were too obsessed with exercise. (I don't remember whether it was he or Hal Gillespie who used the term "body nazis" to describe the exercise obsessed folks of Central Oregon.)
Between my interview with Bart and dinner with the English department folks, I went back to the Riverside Inn where the college had put me up and called a friend to let him know that I'd given an awesome interview.*
But perhaps not. It took over a week for COCC to get back to me, during which time I flew off to interview at Augustana in Rock Island. When I got back I took the call from Ward Tonsfeldt who intimated that COCC was close to both going to semesters and becoming a four-year school.
* This friend was probably the most important person in my life to me to me at that time, as my spouse and I were separated. For the purposes of this blog, I will call this friend, about whom I'll be writing more Zephod, a moderately legal spelling of Zaphod, as in Zaphod Beeblebrox - "He's just a guy, y'know?"
Lunch was held in the meeting room upstairs just off the cafeteria in Grandview. Anyone on campus who wanted to meet the interviewee was invited. I didn't know who all of the folks I met was important so I pretty much smiled at everyone. I remember that Mike Smith asked me if I could play softball. I'd been playing softball in Utah so of course I said "yes," assuming that anything I said could be a point for or against me. And then I dropped some lettuce on my lap.
 |
| Hal Gillespie 1991 |
As I noted in an earlier blog post, I looked lesbian in those days which might have been the reason that one member of the committee, the late Ms. Monaghan, asked me sotto voce an illegal question about whether or not I was married. I was a bit flummoxed, but said "yes."
The other moments I remember from that day don't include either my teaching sample or the actual formal interview. I do remember that the first person I met officially was Gene Zinkgraf, "personnel director" at the time. And my last interview of the afternoon, before dinner, was a meeting with dean Bart Queary. I asked if there was anything he could tell me about why I shouldn't take the job. He told me that many people in Bend were too obsessed with exercise. (I don't remember whether it was he or Hal Gillespie who used the term "body nazis" to describe the exercise obsessed folks of Central Oregon.)
Between my interview with Bart and dinner with the English department folks, I went back to the Riverside Inn where the college had put me up and called a friend to let him know that I'd given an awesome interview.*
But perhaps not. It took over a week for COCC to get back to me, during which time I flew off to interview at Augustana in Rock Island. When I got back I took the call from Ward Tonsfeldt who intimated that COCC was close to both going to semesters and becoming a four-year school.
* This friend was probably the most important person in my life to me to me at that time, as my spouse and I were separated. For the purposes of this blog, I will call this friend, about whom I'll be writing more Zephod, a moderately legal spelling of Zaphod, as in Zaphod Beeblebrox - "He's just a guy, y'know?"
Thursday, November 7, 2013
LY #52 Back to the Beginning - My First Big Office!
In my Bendnotes 2, September 22, 1988, I described Deschutes Hall and my first office as well as the Pinckney Center and the man for whom it was named. Note my early delight in heavy oak furnishings -- a decorative style I no longer love.
"Bend sits in a curve of the Deschutes River, from the French, Des Chutes, the shoots, I guess, the rapids. I work in a building called Deschutes. It is less rippled than the river.
"Deschutes is a single story building with five classrooms on one side and eight offices, two bathrooms and a sitting space on the other. . . At each end of the hall are double doors, sort of like an air lock. (In fact, I heard it called the airlock at one point and laughed, though the speaker was being serious, because my head was filled with images from 2001.) Between the two doors at either end of the hall there is an office. . . . My office has many wall shelves, a large oak desk, a big oaken wild west lawyer type of chair, a chair with a green vinyl seat and wooden arms for visitors to sit in and a wooden coat rack. It's real nice and I plan to enjoy it, no matter who I kicked out to get it. From my window I look down (remember, the college is built on the side of a hill) on a picnic table, through several trees, and across the valley to the volcanic tag ends of the Cascades.
"Life could be worse. Overall, the campus does look like a community college, not a college. No ivy wrapped pillars here, or pseudo Greek columns. The college got its money for buildings from the school district in the mid-sixties and it shows.
"One of the more interesting buildings is the Pinckney Center for the Arts. This houses the ceramic and painting studios and the little theatre (where L- the woman who put me up this summer, is the drama department). The Pinckney is interesting, I think, for two reasons. First, for its theatre, which is really a big room, not unlike a ballroom with a high ceiling, in which a rolling stand of seats has been placed. Second, because it was named after Orde Pinckney, the gentleman I am sort of replacing, though I think that it's probably not possible to even imagine replacing this monument.
"Orde . . . wears string ties with bars of gemstone at the top. He is an Orator. He speaks in bell-like pear shaped (okay, okay, mixing of oral and aural metaphors -- so sue me) tones and lectures exquisitely -- I have heard him twice now, because I hold office hours at the same time as his speech class. He has also taught American government and history. But his style and mine are, well, think of comparing Helen Hayes and Laurie Anderson, or Lillian Gish and Sandra Bernhard. (I know, I know. Those analogies need not be scanned too closely.)He has a beautiful voice, smiles at them, has great stories -- but he is not interactive, not improvisational. I only hope that I become as fine at my style as he has at his."
"Bend sits in a curve of the Deschutes River, from the French, Des Chutes, the shoots, I guess, the rapids. I work in a building called Deschutes. It is less rippled than the river.
"Deschutes is a single story building with five classrooms on one side and eight offices, two bathrooms and a sitting space on the other. . . At each end of the hall are double doors, sort of like an air lock. (In fact, I heard it called the airlock at one point and laughed, though the speaker was being serious, because my head was filled with images from 2001.) Between the two doors at either end of the hall there is an office. . . . My office has many wall shelves, a large oak desk, a big oaken wild west lawyer type of chair, a chair with a green vinyl seat and wooden arms for visitors to sit in and a wooden coat rack. It's real nice and I plan to enjoy it, no matter who I kicked out to get it. From my window I look down (remember, the college is built on the side of a hill) on a picnic table, through several trees, and across the valley to the volcanic tag ends of the Cascades.
"Life could be worse. Overall, the campus does look like a community college, not a college. No ivy wrapped pillars here, or pseudo Greek columns. The college got its money for buildings from the school district in the mid-sixties and it shows.
 |
| Pinckney Center floor plans |
"One of the more interesting buildings is the Pinckney Center for the Arts. This houses the ceramic and painting studios and the little theatre (where L- the woman who put me up this summer, is the drama department). The Pinckney is interesting, I think, for two reasons. First, for its theatre, which is really a big room, not unlike a ballroom with a high ceiling, in which a rolling stand of seats has been placed. Second, because it was named after Orde Pinckney, the gentleman I am sort of replacing, though I think that it's probably not possible to even imagine replacing this monument.
"Orde . . . wears string ties with bars of gemstone at the top. He is an Orator. He speaks in bell-like pear shaped (okay, okay, mixing of oral and aural metaphors -- so sue me) tones and lectures exquisitely -- I have heard him twice now, because I hold office hours at the same time as his speech class. He has also taught American government and history. But his style and mine are, well, think of comparing Helen Hayes and Laurie Anderson, or Lillian Gish and Sandra Bernhard. (I know, I know. Those analogies need not be scanned too closely.)He has a beautiful voice, smiles at them, has great stories -- but he is not interactive, not improvisational. I only hope that I become as fine at my style as he has at his."
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
LY #51 Teaching in a small town
When I moved to Bend, it's population was around 20,000 people. According to the Bend Area General Plan, written in 2005, the 1990 Census for Bend counted 20,469 people within the city limits. In my Bendnotes 3 written in October, 1988, I wrote about what it meant to be a college teacher in this small town.
I was writing about a colleague who was having trouble doing research on campus because she couldn't hide the identities of the people about whom she was writing.
"Why can't [she] disguise her subjects? Cause this place is so f***ing small, that's why. You figure it out. I'm the speech department, for Burke's sake! At least, the only full time faculty.
"At least three students have mentioned that they have seen me 'running' around town. I have to assure them that I 'jog' not run. A woman faculty member told me a story about having an affair with a married man (and, I mean, is it my face which tells people they should tell me their life stories as soon as we sit down for a cup of coffee? Or is it the cowl and rosary?). She and he met only at her place until they finally decided to risk meeting each other during the day at a coffee shop out in the big-ugly mall (the Mountain View Mall -- home of GI Joe's and K-Mart). Faculty doesn't go there. So, he is there and she walks in. As soon as she walks in the owner of the joint comes out from behind the cash register and says, 'Hello Professor ______' * and shakes her hand. When she sits down, she is waited on by one of her students.
"On Saturday, when Will was in town, he and I went down to Penney's (BIG SALE) where I saw one of my older students and her son, a young fellow who, she reported to me yesterday, was amazed that she had a teacher younger than her and that her teacher had a TAIL.**
"Well, you can imagine!"
* Yes, the original letter has that blank space.
** My first four years at COCC I wore my hair short with a rat tail.
As everyone knows, Bend grew rapidly during the 1990s. By 2000, the city was up 31,560 in population, which, according to the Bend General Plan was more than three times the statewide average. According to the United States Census Bureau, in 2010 the population of Bend was 79,109.
I was writing about a colleague who was having trouble doing research on campus because she couldn't hide the identities of the people about whom she was writing.
"Why can't [she] disguise her subjects? Cause this place is so f***ing small, that's why. You figure it out. I'm the speech department, for Burke's sake! At least, the only full time faculty.
"At least three students have mentioned that they have seen me 'running' around town. I have to assure them that I 'jog' not run. A woman faculty member told me a story about having an affair with a married man (and, I mean, is it my face which tells people they should tell me their life stories as soon as we sit down for a cup of coffee? Or is it the cowl and rosary?). She and he met only at her place until they finally decided to risk meeting each other during the day at a coffee shop out in the big-ugly mall (the Mountain View Mall -- home of GI Joe's and K-Mart). Faculty doesn't go there. So, he is there and she walks in. As soon as she walks in the owner of the joint comes out from behind the cash register and says, 'Hello Professor ______' * and shakes her hand. When she sits down, she is waited on by one of her students.
"On Saturday, when Will was in town, he and I went down to Penney's (BIG SALE) where I saw one of my older students and her son, a young fellow who, she reported to me yesterday, was amazed that she had a teacher younger than her and that her teacher had a TAIL.**
"Well, you can imagine!"
* Yes, the original letter has that blank space.
** My first four years at COCC I wore my hair short with a rat tail.
As everyone knows, Bend grew rapidly during the 1990s. By 2000, the city was up 31,560 in population, which, according to the Bend General Plan was more than three times the statewide average. According to the United States Census Bureau, in 2010 the population of Bend was 79,109.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
LY #27 Notes on a No on 8 event, 1988
These notes are from Bendnotes 4, December 3, 1988. Most of this letter is about COCC politics and intense moments in teaching. But I want to finish up my chatter on queer issues with this materal.
"Background: remember that I told you I had signed or was going to sign an ad which would run in the local paper asking people to vote "no" on Proposition 8, a state proposition designed to make it legal to overthrow Governor Goldschmidt's proclamation that people who work for the executive branch of state government should not be fired because of their sexual orientation. It was called the Gay Rights proposition. Those who supported proposition 8 did to great extent because they were fundamentalist Christians or because they believed the arguments of the creators of the proposition that it called for 'special rights' for homosexuals. The No on 8 people (the group was called Oregonians for Fairness) used the image of Jerry Fallwell and the lines, "'It's not right. It's not fair. It's a witchhunt!' to try and convince Oregonians to support the bill. They didn't mention homosexuality at all. So anyway, I had heard from ---- [name given in letter] a local gay leader (owner of the antique store . . . which has the dance party every Saturday night at one of their buildings, . . . [This antique store] is 10 minutes out of town north on Highway 97.) --- had told me that Orde Pinckney had agreed to sign the petition. I then agreed to sign and gave him a list of names of my colleagues. (I did not tell my colleagues that I had done so.) He called them, got them to sign. And the ad was published over the week-end before elections.
"We lost."
Much of the rest of this last Bendnotes is about conversations I had with the COCC liberals who had signed the petition when many of us attended a post-election party at the antique store. I am saving those discussions for later posts.
I suppose this would be a good place to say that I was also on the founding board of Central Oregon chapter of PFLAG, the secretary and member at large for a year or two and spent several years as the editor of the newsletter. (Pretty much a cut and paste job.)
Finally, I want to note that "coming out" is, in some ways, a never ending process if one doesn't have a super-close fit between the culturally "understood" stereotyped signs of a particular identity. Although I have been "out" since high school, many people look at my life and assume that I am heterosexual because I am in a long-term relationship with a man and, let's face it, because I wear my hair long and chemically stressed.
"Background: remember that I told you I had signed or was going to sign an ad which would run in the local paper asking people to vote "no" on Proposition 8, a state proposition designed to make it legal to overthrow Governor Goldschmidt's proclamation that people who work for the executive branch of state government should not be fired because of their sexual orientation. It was called the Gay Rights proposition. Those who supported proposition 8 did to great extent because they were fundamentalist Christians or because they believed the arguments of the creators of the proposition that it called for 'special rights' for homosexuals. The No on 8 people (the group was called Oregonians for Fairness) used the image of Jerry Fallwell and the lines, "'It's not right. It's not fair. It's a witchhunt!' to try and convince Oregonians to support the bill. They didn't mention homosexuality at all. So anyway, I had heard from ---- [name given in letter] a local gay leader (owner of the antique store . . . which has the dance party every Saturday night at one of their buildings, . . . [This antique store] is 10 minutes out of town north on Highway 97.) --- had told me that Orde Pinckney had agreed to sign the petition. I then agreed to sign and gave him a list of names of my colleagues. (I did not tell my colleagues that I had done so.) He called them, got them to sign. And the ad was published over the week-end before elections.
"We lost."
Much of the rest of this last Bendnotes is about conversations I had with the COCC liberals who had signed the petition when many of us attended a post-election party at the antique store. I am saving those discussions for later posts.
I suppose this would be a good place to say that I was also on the founding board of Central Oregon chapter of PFLAG, the secretary and member at large for a year or two and spent several years as the editor of the newsletter. (Pretty much a cut and paste job.)
Finally, I want to note that "coming out" is, in some ways, a never ending process if one doesn't have a super-close fit between the culturally "understood" stereotyped signs of a particular identity. Although I have been "out" since high school, many people look at my life and assume that I am heterosexual because I am in a long-term relationship with a man and, let's face it, because I wear my hair long and chemically stressed.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
LY #25 COCC Celebrates National Coming Out Day
The picture was taken by someone taller than myself, as you can see. (Which could be just about anyone.) This rainbow bedizened door was artistically installed in the upper level of the student center today in honor of National Coming Out Day (which is actually tomorrow but since our campus has few classes on Friday, events that want to attract students happen between Monday and Thursday).
COCC had a link on its front page to the Multicultural Center's National Coming Out Day events page. (I don't know how long this particular link will be good.) For the past few years, ever since Karen Roth became the leader of this department, COCC has sponsored a variety of wonderful events for all variety of populations.
I didn't make it to the "Gay History" jeopardy game though I did steal a cookie and cup of cocoa from the Center before going down to the cafeteria for a lunch date. Before today's event the center had asked that folks sign the "Ally Pledge," so my name was among what looked like over a hundred others. Some student life folks were collecting still more.
It all reminded me that even though I now experience "straight privilege," because I am married to a man (a man who loves Broadway musicals, opera, Joan Crawford, and nice clothing), when I arrived at COCC most people thought I was a lesbian. Why? Well, there was my appearance. I had short hair with both a coxcomb and a rat tail. I dressed in tailored suits. Then there was the fact that I never used personal pronouns for my relational partner. And the folks on the hiring committee, who'd read my vita, would know that I'd written a regular column for the Salt Lake City gay paper, The Triangle, when I was a graduate student.
Almost as soon as I landed in Bend in 1988, I also started working with the "No on 8" campaign. Measure 8 was the anti-gay rights measure before the more famous "Measure 9." Both, of course, were the creations of the Oregon Citizens Alliance, a a conservative Christian group lead by Lon Mabon. Here is a note from my Bendnotes 3, from October 1988:
"With one exception I have lived a stainless life since entering this sleepy mountain community. But wait till my name turns up in the next couple weeks on an endorsement against Proposition 8. I got up the courage to sign because Gene Carsey (local leader in the Gay Community) told me the "old Orde Pinkney" had. So, I figure I can explain my signature, if worst comes to worst (ie, pinkie slip time) by saying that I was taking a cue from my predecessor. So, there my name will be, before god, the school board and everybody. There's a saying about hanging, sheep and lambs, which I believe might be apt at this juncture."
Tomorrow I'll share more about my experience with the gay community in Bend in 1988. And I'll explain how it came to pass that in 1992 an ex-cop explained to me that I was a bisexual.
Monday, October 7, 2013
LY#22: Marxist Guilt, 1988
In a final addition to the September Bendnotes (dated September 27) I sign off with this paragraph:
"EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA
Stay tuned next time when you'll hear about Kake and the politics of the PhD. How she found herself to be one of the elite who bought her position through an ideological construct over the long time experience of more polished teachers who do not have terminal degrees. Watch Kake battle her Marxist guilt!!! Thrill as she fights the demons of leftist conscience."
When I got my name sign on my office door in Deschutes, the blue rectangle wasn't wide enough to cover the screw-holes on either side of it. These holes marked the the name of my predecessor, a teacher with a longer name. Someone let me know that this teacher had created two of the classes I was teaching and had applied for the position but that I had been hired instead because I had the PhD.
I wasn't yet "the Man" in those days, so this discovery bothered me. In fact, it pretty much bothered me until about nine years ago when this same teacher came back to teach for COCC again and wound up walking away from the school in the middle of a quarter, leaving myself and Dr. Jon Bouknight to step into the three un-personed classes. The information I got from the students when I conducted a "talking stick" debriefing settled what was left of my itchy conscience.
I remember telling my fresh new colleague Sean Rule that the experience had changed my mind about teaching speech.
"I used to think any idiot could teach public speaking," I told him, hollering across the lawn near the Metolius Building.
And he, dear young fellow, hollered back, "No, it takes a special kind of idiot!"
"EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA
Stay tuned next time when you'll hear about Kake and the politics of the PhD. How she found herself to be one of the elite who bought her position through an ideological construct over the long time experience of more polished teachers who do not have terminal degrees. Watch Kake battle her Marxist guilt!!! Thrill as she fights the demons of leftist conscience."
When I got my name sign on my office door in Deschutes, the blue rectangle wasn't wide enough to cover the screw-holes on either side of it. These holes marked the the name of my predecessor, a teacher with a longer name. Someone let me know that this teacher had created two of the classes I was teaching and had applied for the position but that I had been hired instead because I had the PhD.
I wasn't yet "the Man" in those days, so this discovery bothered me. In fact, it pretty much bothered me until about nine years ago when this same teacher came back to teach for COCC again and wound up walking away from the school in the middle of a quarter, leaving myself and Dr. Jon Bouknight to step into the three un-personed classes. The information I got from the students when I conducted a "talking stick" debriefing settled what was left of my itchy conscience.
I remember telling my fresh new colleague Sean Rule that the experience had changed my mind about teaching speech.
"I used to think any idiot could teach public speaking," I told him, hollering across the lawn near the Metolius Building.
And he, dear young fellow, hollered back, "No, it takes a special kind of idiot!"
Saturday, October 5, 2013
LY: #20: Whiny, Pathetic, Narcissistic, Loneliness - 1988
A sad part of those 1988 Bendnotes is the shouting loneliness of the person writing them. My young self had a strange idea that these long, digressive, overwritten missives were being read. In the September 22, 1988 note she, I, write(s):
"As I enter the second week, I shall continue to keep the old eyes peeled for interesting happenstance. Since all but one of you have ignored my last set of notes, and that one merely commented that s/he thought it was well written (a sign more of my lack of style than of his/her perspicacity, I fear), I shall simply write what I think interesting."
In the following note, written in late October, has an opening more appropriate to someone who might be writing a weekly editorial, not a set of photocopied letters.
"Well gentle readers. Perhaps you have noticed the lateness of this episode. Perhaps you wondered whether or not the woman you knew had given up her attempt to reconstruct her experience in this strange new world. Perhaps you though I had abandoned you.
"But never fear. This process by which I hold back, hold off the reality of my experience by continually conceptualizing it as a construction I send to you keeps me from being truly caught up in the ineluctable substance of the moment.
"At least it did until a short while ago. . .." After that line, my use of metaphors and Monty Python references spirals out of control as I say that I've been watching too much television while I'm not at work. I also refer to an old Wayne and Shuster comedy routine about television addiction which I'm sure none of my friends had even heard of by using the line, "the gal with the golden eyeball." If I look at these old letters with the eye of my therapist I see an Enneagram 4 whose "basic desire" is "to find themselves and their significance, to create an identity out of their inner experience." (This is from Riso and Hudson's The Wisdom of the Enneagram). Or I could see someone with a "narcissistic wound," (this concept also courtesy my current therapist) who is caught up in the importance of proving she's just as important as she thinks she is. What I've also learned about myself since two decades and 1/2 ago is that I score very high in "uncertainty avoidance." Any situation that is unstable and unknown (like a brand new job) sends me into high stress mode and I see that too in these letters.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Last Year #11: Advising, continued continued
Today, advising was . . . weird and very, very easy. On my way down to Pioneer Hall, still the computer building, I saw my colleague Matt Novak who said that the morning advising had "Five students and thirty teachers." He suggested the students might have been a bit frightened by all those folks focusing on them.
And so it was during my shift. There were about 12 profs and in the first round (12:55) 5 students and in the second round (2:10) about 7 students. The only person I spoke with was a middle aged man who's wife was the one who wanted to be a student. Unfortunately she wasn't there because their child had a health emergency. I didn't know if FERPA even allowed me to talk with him as a representative for her. And I had no proof he was who he said he was. It was a complex situation and I didn't know how to handle it so I towed him to another room and another person.
So, having all those profs without students felt like a waste of resources. There was a time when students came to our offices. My friend Lilli Ann asked if I could remember when it was they took us out of our offices and put us into bulk advising. She liked it better when we saw students in our offices because we could get actual work done between advising appointments. I actually enjoy the bulk advising because I usually only see a couple of students rather than five or six. Today I saw only the guy with questions for his wife.
Then I went home home where my dumb phone got a text from the school that OSU Corvallis and Cascades had received an unspecified threat.
Back in 1988 (from Bendnotes September 22), after surviving the day when I had to take over for my sick colleague, I wanted to see the rest of the registration process.
"On Thursday morning I wandered over to Pioneer Hall (the math/computer building) to see what registration looked like. As I walked past the tables, I overheard a student complaining about me. "I went to see Miss Monaghan, but this other lady talked to me instead and . . .' the whine signified some fatal error on my part. Well, and it was only fair because I had spent some time complaining about her to [the other new teachers] the night before. She had taken almost an hour of my time. She had wanted a photography class which had a 2 hour lab the middle of Tuesday afternoon. Well, she could only take classes Tuesday and Thursday. She would not take classes before 9 (10 if she could help it) in the morning, nor would she take classes in the evening. And then she complained about the way the college scheduled the classes. My favorite of her questions was, 'What can I take for one credit on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at 1 pm' [at this point the writer shared thoughts of being very mean to the student]. Her tone told me that it was the school's fault or my fault that she couldn't make a pleasing choice. I finally started using phrases like, 'Well, you've limited your choices,' and 'you've certainly given yourself some tough rules.' If she hadn't whined, and sat in my office and stared at the schedule for minutes at a time, I wouldn't have been so aggrieved. Another individual, a young fellow, had come to my office with similar problems in scheduling, but he owned his choices, so it didn't bother me."
And so it was during my shift. There were about 12 profs and in the first round (12:55) 5 students and in the second round (2:10) about 7 students. The only person I spoke with was a middle aged man who's wife was the one who wanted to be a student. Unfortunately she wasn't there because their child had a health emergency. I didn't know if FERPA even allowed me to talk with him as a representative for her. And I had no proof he was who he said he was. It was a complex situation and I didn't know how to handle it so I towed him to another room and another person.
So, having all those profs without students felt like a waste of resources. There was a time when students came to our offices. My friend Lilli Ann asked if I could remember when it was they took us out of our offices and put us into bulk advising. She liked it better when we saw students in our offices because we could get actual work done between advising appointments. I actually enjoy the bulk advising because I usually only see a couple of students rather than five or six. Today I saw only the guy with questions for his wife.
Then I went home home where my dumb phone got a text from the school that OSU Corvallis and Cascades had received an unspecified threat.
Back in 1988 (from Bendnotes September 22), after surviving the day when I had to take over for my sick colleague, I wanted to see the rest of the registration process.
"On Thursday morning I wandered over to Pioneer Hall (the math/computer building) to see what registration looked like. As I walked past the tables, I overheard a student complaining about me. "I went to see Miss Monaghan, but this other lady talked to me instead and . . .' the whine signified some fatal error on my part. Well, and it was only fair because I had spent some time complaining about her to [the other new teachers] the night before. She had taken almost an hour of my time. She had wanted a photography class which had a 2 hour lab the middle of Tuesday afternoon. Well, she could only take classes Tuesday and Thursday. She would not take classes before 9 (10 if she could help it) in the morning, nor would she take classes in the evening. And then she complained about the way the college scheduled the classes. My favorite of her questions was, 'What can I take for one credit on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at 1 pm' [at this point the writer shared thoughts of being very mean to the student]. Her tone told me that it was the school's fault or my fault that she couldn't make a pleasing choice. I finally started using phrases like, 'Well, you've limited your choices,' and 'you've certainly given yourself some tough rules.' If she hadn't whined, and sat in my office and stared at the schedule for minutes at a time, I wouldn't have been so aggrieved. Another individual, a young fellow, had come to my office with similar problems in scheduling, but he owned his choices, so it didn't bother me."
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Last Year #10: Advising, 1988, continued
Today's scheduled advising was cancelled due to a downturn in enrollment. I spent most of today restructuring my online sections of interpersonal communication (of which more anon). I have some anecdotes to share from my first year, September 22, 1988 Bendnotes letter.
"A boy sits slumped in the comfy chair in Mary's office. He seems to have no focus, no interest in what he is about to do. In the office, standing, are his parents. It is they who look through the schedule, they who ask about sequences. His mother suggests a course of student. They look like blue collar people. . . . I do my speel [sic]. We come to some decisions. I call in the choices. They go across the hall to formalize the roughdraft by writing it onto the registration form with the green X. Then the Mom notices that I have made a mistake. She calls it to my attention. I apologize as I redial (getting a busy signal, so continuing to redial) and tell them that I am new. As they wait, the dad looks at a square of words, printed in crayon and felt tip pen on a paper the size of an album jacket on Mary's wall. He tells wife and son that it is an interpretation of Sargent Pepper's album cover. After I get through and fix my mistake, they leave, and the Mom says that she sympathizes with me -- her first week at her job at the hospital she didn't seem to be able to get anything right.
"Sometimes the computers go down. On Wednesday, somebody went to lunch and turned her's off. The other machines went nuts trying to talk to it -- creating a 'spurious echo' which resulted in the system going down for two hours with no back-up hard copy system. There was also trouble, Wednesday and Thursday, with the phones. By 3 pm Wed. it sometimes took a half hour of dialing and hanging up to get through to the operators. We would dial in shifts. When one of us in Deschutes got through, they would enter their student and then holler down the hall for other folks. Through it all, the operators remained remarkably calm."
"A boy sits slumped in the comfy chair in Mary's office. He seems to have no focus, no interest in what he is about to do. In the office, standing, are his parents. It is they who look through the schedule, they who ask about sequences. His mother suggests a course of student. They look like blue collar people. . . . I do my speel [sic]. We come to some decisions. I call in the choices. They go across the hall to formalize the roughdraft by writing it onto the registration form with the green X. Then the Mom notices that I have made a mistake. She calls it to my attention. I apologize as I redial (getting a busy signal, so continuing to redial) and tell them that I am new. As they wait, the dad looks at a square of words, printed in crayon and felt tip pen on a paper the size of an album jacket on Mary's wall. He tells wife and son that it is an interpretation of Sargent Pepper's album cover. After I get through and fix my mistake, they leave, and the Mom says that she sympathizes with me -- her first week at her job at the hospital she didn't seem to be able to get anything right.
"Sometimes the computers go down. On Wednesday, somebody went to lunch and turned her's off. The other machines went nuts trying to talk to it -- creating a 'spurious echo' which resulted in the system going down for two hours with no back-up hard copy system. There was also trouble, Wednesday and Thursday, with the phones. By 3 pm Wed. it sometimes took a half hour of dialing and hanging up to get through to the operators. We would dial in shifts. When one of us in Deschutes got through, they would enter their student and then holler down the hall for other folks. Through it all, the operators remained remarkably calm."
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Last Year #9: Advising
Of all the duties-as-assigned that full-time faculty are required to perform, the one I've always been worst at is advising. Fortunately, one of the finest minds on the COCC campus, Vickery Viles, tries to make the process as fool-proof as possible. She gives us a wonderful workbook with all the info we need about placement tests and managing our new online tool, Gradtracks. She and her folks have also created an easy-to-read booklet for students to help get them through their first year.
It wasn't always so. Here, from my Bendnotes letter of September 22, 1988, is my attempt to describe to my colleagues back in Utah the way student advising worked.
"Advising took three days and was supposedly the stripped down, new, improved version. Certainly all the old folks said that it was no longer the madhouse it used to be. . . . "
Three other new humanities folks and I were supposed to just observe but because one of the senior English teachers was sick, I needed to take over for her.
"We had all had a good lecture about the process from Bart [dean of instruction] during our week of orientation. Nevertheless, I did not enjoy being thrown into it. . . . The process was to go something like this. My work was first to ascertain that the student who walked into my office (or Mary's office, that first day) had a green X at the top of their registration form. then I was to ask if they had filled out the form. Sometimes they had, sometimes they hadn't (the form is three sheets, with name, ethnics, and class time, number spaces). If they had, I was to call 525, the number of the registration switchboard, and read off the subject numbers . . . to the operator on line. She (always of that gender) would punch the numbers into a computer which would report with a beep if the class was closed (in our Tuesday meeting, however, Bart insisted that we say to students, 'the section is filled' -- thus does discourse analysis enter the organization.) If not flustered or pressed . . . the operator read back the subject numbers and their classes. If all went perfectly, there would be no beeps and the student would go away happy as a clam. At the sound of the beep, however, the student would have to sort through the 'full year schedule' and find another course.
"(After Wednesday morning, it was also possible to check the list of closed sections before calling in. A runner would bring them around three times a day -- color coded sheets with the most recently closed classes marked with starts.)
"The student could decide to drop or add classes any time during the day just through the phone registration technique (by having the advisor call in the schedule change). After being put into the computer, the student needed to register by the end of the day of s/he would be 'invalidated.'
"Now, if the student had no idea in hell what he or she wanted to do, real advising had to take place. The advisor [sic] had to explain the need for the four sequences required for an AA degree, and why (if the student didn't know)the student would need an AA degree. . . .
"Advising tools: the class schedule, the college bulletin, a big blue three ring binder with every teacher's expectations for students for every course clearly articulated and quantified, the student's placement test scores, pre-interpreted for our convenience, and (for us in humanities) a list of the acceptable cross over requirements from the four year institutions."
It wasn't always so. Here, from my Bendnotes letter of September 22, 1988, is my attempt to describe to my colleagues back in Utah the way student advising worked.
"Advising took three days and was supposedly the stripped down, new, improved version. Certainly all the old folks said that it was no longer the madhouse it used to be. . . . "
Three other new humanities folks and I were supposed to just observe but because one of the senior English teachers was sick, I needed to take over for her.
"We had all had a good lecture about the process from Bart [dean of instruction] during our week of orientation. Nevertheless, I did not enjoy being thrown into it. . . . The process was to go something like this. My work was first to ascertain that the student who walked into my office (or Mary's office, that first day) had a green X at the top of their registration form. then I was to ask if they had filled out the form. Sometimes they had, sometimes they hadn't (the form is three sheets, with name, ethnics, and class time, number spaces). If they had, I was to call 525, the number of the registration switchboard, and read off the subject numbers . . . to the operator on line. She (always of that gender) would punch the numbers into a computer which would report with a beep if the class was closed (in our Tuesday meeting, however, Bart insisted that we say to students, 'the section is filled' -- thus does discourse analysis enter the organization.) If not flustered or pressed . . . the operator read back the subject numbers and their classes. If all went perfectly, there would be no beeps and the student would go away happy as a clam. At the sound of the beep, however, the student would have to sort through the 'full year schedule' and find another course.
"(After Wednesday morning, it was also possible to check the list of closed sections before calling in. A runner would bring them around three times a day -- color coded sheets with the most recently closed classes marked with starts.)
"The student could decide to drop or add classes any time during the day just through the phone registration technique (by having the advisor call in the schedule change). After being put into the computer, the student needed to register by the end of the day of s/he would be 'invalidated.'
"Now, if the student had no idea in hell what he or she wanted to do, real advising had to take place. The advisor [sic] had to explain the need for the four sequences required for an AA degree, and why (if the student didn't know)the student would need an AA degree. . . .
"Advising tools: the class schedule, the college bulletin, a big blue three ring binder with every teacher's expectations for students for every course clearly articulated and quantified, the student's placement test scores, pre-interpreted for our convenience, and (for us in humanities) a list of the acceptable cross over requirements from the four year institutions."
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