Chemo Cap 2

As an update to a previous post, a while back my friend sent along a pic of her little one in the green tasseled hat I made for her.  I'm glad it looks as cute as I had hoped it would!

As for more recent projects, a friend, J, asked for hat donations for another friend of hers who is going through chemo treatments.  I have no idea who this woman is, but I decided that spending an hour or two knitting a hat for the friend of a friend is the least that I can do.  I had seen a really cute hat knit-up at the local yarn shop, one that used perled ridges around the sides of the hat.  I couldn't find exactly the same pattern, so I tried it on my own.  It didn't come out quite how I had hoped -- the one I saw had fat ridges where the knitted "valleys" in between disappeared, leaving the look of stacked rings on the outside of the hat.  I guess you get that with ribs where the perling is wider than the knitting.  I did 4 rows of perling followed by 4 rows of knitting, and the ridges just don't have the same effect.

Mildly ridge-y hat

A better shot for the overall shape and colors

I then accidentally threw it into the dryer for a few minutes, which helped define the ridges a bit more, before I put it in the mail.  (It was on a table waiting to be sent out -- some laundry ended up on the table on top of it -- I needed to get the wrinkes out of said laundry before work one morning, so everything got tossed into the dryer for 10 minutes -- don't judge me, okay?  *smile*)  I just hope that the woman I knit it for will like it, since I know absolutely nothing about her personality or tastes.  If she hates it, then maybe it can be her backup hat for when she doesn't want to actually leave the house, or something.

So that makes 2 hats I have knitted for people I don't know personally in just the past few months.  And now I have found out that a close friend of mine in CA has also just been diagnozed with breast cancer.  She's a knitter, and is surrounded by my old knitting friends from CA, so making a hat for her doesn't seem like the right thing to do to show support -- she will have plenty of hats if she wants them.  I wish that I could send along something else that will be unexpectedly useful, but having no personal experience with a friend or family member going through chemo treatments in the past, I don't know what else will be a good idea.  Whenever I make a baby gift, I like to send along some practical things, like baby lotion, wipes, washcloths, etc.  But I'm not sure what kinds of practical things can be of help to her.

Does anyone have suggestions about what else to send in a chemo care package?

My Report Card

I meant to write this weekend and let you all know how my lesson plans turned out, but I ran out of time.  So here it is.

I was moderately successful.  In my disengaged Composition II class, I asked lots of leading questions during my lecture, and got some feedback.  Mostly from just one student, but that's better than nothing.  This week, I'm going to try a trick other teachers here use with bigger classes: making them go over the reading and then give the lecture to the class.  Usually instructors will break the class into groups, but with only 4 students, they'll have to work individually.  I hope it works!

With my overly-talkative Composition I class, I managed to get through the lecture in a reasonable amount of time.  We were able to do some group editing, but because I was focused on providing my own edits to their rough drafts, the conversation wasn't as well-directed as I would have liked.  I got them back on track with some focused discussion questions, but by the time I took them to the library to work on their papers, we only had 6 minutes of class left.  So, again, mixed results.

My biggest problem right now is the number of students I have who are failing my classes.  I don't have a bell curve in my classes, which is what you usually expect to see -- most students have Bs or Cs, with a small number acing the class and a small number failing.  Instead, I have a bi-polar graph -- my students are either passing with flying colors, or they are failing.  Very little in-between.  Now, statistically speaking, it's hard to get a well-distributed curve with 4 classes of about 5 students each.  But even if I add them all together, across all my classes, the same pattern exists.

I don't think the problem is that my classes are too hard -- if that were the case, I'd have a bunch of C students and a bunch of F students, right?  Instead, the pattern I see is this: if you come to class and turn in your homework, you have an A in my class.  If you don't come to class and don't turn in homework, then you are failing.

So the question is, how do I get my students to all come to class and turn in their work?

I think I'm going to be visiting the academic dean soon to see if she has any ideas there.

Good Teacher, Bad Teacher

I am teaching two different composition classes this term, on Thursday and Friday mornings. They are Composition I and Composition II, so you would expect my experiences to be different simply based on writing level, but that's not what makes them so different from one another.  And the differences between the classes cause me to become a different teacher, so I feel the need to figure out what makes these two groups such polar opposites.

Both classes are small -- 4 students in one, 6 in the other, but in both classes I only reliably have 3 students a week.  Both classes are a mix of students I've had before who know my teaching style, and students who are new to me this term.  Despite the fact the Comp I is a prerequisite for Comp II, students in both classes have similar writing abilities -- one or two write quite well, a few have a lot of grammatical errors but their organization is good, and one or two struggle with their writing at all levels.

The lesson plans vary in only one really obvious way: I start the Comp I classes with a punctuation quiz each day, but I don't do that for the Comp II students.  But the rest of the lesson consists of covering PowerPoints on writing, having a class discussion and then having the students write a summary of the discussion, and then, if there is time, letting students work in the library on the writing assignment that is due the following week.

The last 2 weeks, my Comp I class has been so busy talking with me, they haven't even made it to the class discussion and summary, much less had time at the end of class to work on their assignments.  My Comp II class, on the other hand, usually has at least 2 hours to work independently.

My Comp I class is engaged.  We discuss each line of the PowerPoints, they ask questions, and they are able to provide examples for the concepts I am presenting.  They share their ideas, and often interrupt me to ask questions about the topics I am using simply for illustrative purposes.  During our 10-minute breaks, they often stay in the room with me and chat about their writing, musical tastes, personal lives, etc.  When I ask them to work in groups, they have easy discussions and help one another out.  One student in partcular tries to answer every question, and willingly shares his ideas, experiences, and writing with the rest of the class.

My Comp II class is disengaged.  They look blankly at me as I go through the PowerPoints, or put their heads down on their desks.  They don't volunteer information, and getting an answer if I ask a question is challenging.  I sit in the room alone during our 10-minute breaks.  When I ask them to work together as a group, they have nothing to say to one another, and usually revert to writing individually and in silence while sitting at the same table.  One student in particular gives me extremely terse and guarded responses, even when I try to draw her out with direct questions.

And I find myself responding to the difference in emotional tone in the two classes.  In Comp I, I am joking around, getting input on each point I make, drawing out the lecture into a more general discussion of writing.  No idea is too minor to explore in detail.  In Comp II, I feel as though I need to rush through the PowerPoint to make it less painful.  Every slide feels trite and obvious, as though there is nothing interesting I could add.

The only thing I can chalk the difference in classes up to is those two stand-out personalities among my students: the sharer, and the clam.  Right now, they are setting the tone for each class, and setting the tone for my teaching as well.  The differences, and my different teaching styles, finally came to a head last week, and I realized I need to do something about the situation.  I need to take control of my classes again.

So this week, in Comp I, I'll move through the lecture more quickly, do a few exercises, and then give them time to work on their papers.  And in Comp II, I'll ask more questions during the PowerPoints, do more hands-on exercises in class, and only then will we head to the library so that they can work on their papers.

This is my class, damnit.  I don't have to be the bad teacher if I don't want to.