The Daily Break

For a long period of time over the past summer (pretty much the whole summer), I was tucked away in a basement writing portions of what will become my dissertation. Writing a paper of any length can provide difficulties, and dissertations are no different. Difficulties abound. Spending day after day working on something relatively complex (and not necessarily straight forward, as my writing style for some reason requires) can be a taxing experience mentally. There needed to be some way that I could relax my mind (not necessarily my body) in order to keep productive, high quality work emerging through … Continue reading →

Morning Storms

My family and I had lived in Texas for half a decade until two months ago. When we left they were experiencing a terrible drought while much of the rest of the country was suffering from flooding due to all of the rain. My family has been fortunate to avoid either disaster (as we didn’t deal with crops or encounter any flooding). Having returned to the Midwest, we find ourselves in a rather lush environment that has recently been getting its fair share of rain. You know how the weather can affect your mood? I’m normally happier on days when … Continue reading →

Revisions

I’ve recently been working on my dissertation proposal. Fear not, it is in a wonderful state. I’m learning loads about what I want to do with it and how I want to frame it and what I specifically want to focus on. I’ve even been testing out some of the exercises I’ve been devising in the classroom and at home. It’s wonderful stuff. Revisions, however, are hard. No one likes getting a lengthy paper back with a good deal of notes and a lot of questions. There are two ways to look at those notes though: as something negative or … Continue reading →

Approaches to Studying

One of the final sections of my qualifying examinations has got me thinking about how students can process a great amount of material in a relatively short amount of time. I have been given the task of reading nine books in areas I wasn’t taught and didn’t specifically study. I will sit in a room with professors from these disciplines and they will expect me to have some amount of knowledge about these nine books. How can one approach something like that? It seems to me that there are two basic options (and blending them would take more time and … Continue reading →

Impress Your Teachers

For better or for worse I’m around a lot of teachers this time of the year (and throughout the coming year). This is the time when most teachers are preparing their courses. They sit and create outlines. They type up their syllabi. They consult the required textbooks for the course they are about to teach. In all of this preparation (something that most take very seriously) there is an underlying anxiety that is manifested from horror stories and past experiences of teaching. This anxiety is expressed normally as a joke to lessen the sense of unease these teachers feel as … Continue reading →

The New Public Speaking

I often talk about finding information online, reading that information, clicking endless links and reading more. This truly is a good way to learn more about any subject your mind might be interested in. This is a particularly good tactic for doing research when you’re in classes. Whether you’re going beyond what is offered in the classroom or diving deep into a particular and specific subject the internet is a great place to start (and sometimes even finish). However, with all of this reading I’ve actually realized another benefit that I hadn’t thought of before: public speaking. Watching recorded speeches … Continue reading →

End of Semester Woes 2

Earlier this week I posted part 1 of “End of Semester Woes” and I continue that here. If you haven’t read the first part it might be helpful to read that here. At any rate, these are my feelings at the close of the semester as an instructor and an student. Today I’ll be focusing on screwing up as a student, seeking forgiveness (maybe too late), and what to hope for. It’s a peculiar fact of life (it doesn’t have to be a fact but it seems to be) that students, no matter how much they are warned, don’t do … Continue reading →

The Magic of “No” Part IV: Honesty

If you haven’t caught up with Parts one, two, and/or three you should do that now. Today is the conclusion to our little story. Onto the telling… The WOMAN woke up that morning and peered into the room housing her cans. She saw the gleaming little eyes of the rats who had taken up permanent residence in her waterlogged little room. She clutched her robe closer to her body; now there was a draft. She thought about going to get one of those cans. She thought about defending herself from the rats with a pushbroom. She thought about carefully avoiding … Continue reading →

When Doing Less is More

Today I encountered a moment of clarity in the midst of a cloud of confusion. Suddenly the hazy mist was cleared away and I realized that I needed to do less to do more. I’ve said before in the fatherhood blog (and probably even this education blog) that I’m addicted to technology and productivity blogs. There are too many to name but just do a web search for “productivity blog” and you’ll get the idea. Somehow, over time, all of these influences coalesced and finally sunk in. Recently I’ve been reflecting and ranting about technology difficulties in the classroom and … Continue reading →

Attitudes and Responses in Education

A teacher’s attitude towards their students can have a serious affect on students and not always for the good. Recently I was talking to a friend and she was telling me how at the opening of a rural high school, the school library had no books. Why? Because the teachers at that school had decided there wasn’t a lot of point. Their view was the students of that area wouldn’t use them. The teachers had already made up their mind about what the students were capable of and what they weren’t. They’d dismissed them as being young people who’d end … Continue reading →