Filed under: teaching
I am so glad I am not teaching an inequality class next school year. Group dynamics and research methods. The reason for this celebration? Honestly… cause teaching all of this inequality starts to get damn depressing. Staying constantly updated on everything, dealing with students who tell me that I’m “playing the race card” and knowing they feel pleased cause they remember a term I taught them (and them failing to realize that they just proved the entire point of the semester)… it wears on me. And, yes, I realize that my ability to feel this way (predicated on some idea that I get some sort of escape from all of this) is a reflection of my many privileges (white, heterosexual, ambiguously religious…). But, I still feel that way. And, to drive it home, a great news story from Rachel Maddow:
This constant awareness about how much the world sucks… I doubt I can shut it off. I know I’ll still read, write, and discuss issues related to race, class, gender, and sexual inequalities. I can’t help but be happy that it won’t be my job to do so, at least for two semesters.
Blue shared this with me:*
What I find fascinating is what is “feared.” Boys fear physical contact with another male. But the fear for females is not the same. Instead of showing women kissing other women, they show “masculine” females. Of course, women having sexual contact with other women has become, in a way, normalized — as long as it is done for male consumption.** It reminds me of this coverage of gays in commercials by Bryan Safi.
“I kissed a girl and I liked it… because I am a Lesbian.”
I originally found this from Soc Images. If you watch the video they have up, I have one question — Can you IMAGINE what Glenn Beck would do with this? “The Liberal Media is trying to turn us ALL GAY!”
*I wrote this during my scheduled email/reader time for the day.
**I am aware that the Onion is a satire of news. Yet, humor often reveals underlying assumptions, norms, etc (in fact, I do a whole class on humor, culture & norms in introductory level courses). Just thought I should say that before I get comments from people who search for “Lesbians Hot” and decide to let me know that the Onion isn’t for reals.
Filed under: teaching
Even if they are REALLY asking for it?
You think by the fifth week of school, and the first exam, students would understand that they are supposed to be doing the reading and HOW to do the reading. I have two books. I have explained over and over again how to tell which book is which (and it’s freaking obvious, I might add)… and I still get a question at the review today: “So the test is just going to be over lecture, right? We don’t need to do the reading, right?”
Right. You’re exactly right. I just put it on the syllabus so it didn’t look so empty.
15% of my students plagiarized on their final exams (take homes / summer course). I’ve dealt with plagiarists before, but my role at that time was a teaching assistant. All decisions about how to handle it and what not was up to the professor in charge. Largely, confronting those students was up to the professor in charge. Now I’m in charge.
What shocked me this time was my response to their plagiarism. My emotional response. I feel sick about it. Mostly, I feel betrayed. Like some bond between us has been broken. But it’s this abstract bond. There is this implicit trust that these students broke. And when this 15% broke it, it was gone between me and my entire class. I became paranoid that all of my students were cheating. That they are all trying to pull one over on me.
I know, on an intellectual level, that they were doing nothing to ME. It wasn’t really about me. But my feelings say otherwise.
I have been fighting to keep my teaching innocence. To not conclude what others that have gone before have — that most of these students don’t care, just want the credits, just want to finish. I’ve been holding on to the one or two students who I know are really invested. Those who do care, try hard, want to learn. This makes doing that even harder. Perhaps it wouldn’t have done if my class was larger and the students who did this were anonymous forms in a 90+ student classroom. But I had a small class. I remember the questions these students asked, their interest in the theories… At least one of the 15% had me believing that he/she was one of those few who do care.
How do you handle the battering that our students give us sometimes? How do you keep the faith when students continually beat you down? Not turning in assignments, making up excuses, not showing up, not doing the homework and (worse of all) cheating?
I was surfing around looking for a good text and/or reader on intersectionalities (race, class, gender, sexuality…) and found this website for the Race and Pedagogy Project.
From their own description:
This site presents diverse scholarship and opinions regarding race and pedagogy. The site is an academic resource intended to provide teachers, students, researchers and the interested public with on-site articles and theoretical analyses, policy documents, current legislative updates, and an annotated bibliography of research and teaching materials.
They review articles, have teaching resources (such as talking about Hurricane Katrina, Beloved, lesson plans, and film reviews). It appears that they stopped doing this in 2006, but still it looks like a very useful site.
One of my oldest and dearest friends (Mijum!!!) is in school to become a pharamacist. I emailed her and asked her about what she has covered in terms of social structure, race/ethnicity and health. She sent me a video about this board game: The Last Straw. It stresses economic inequality, but brings in gender, race, and sexual orientation. I’ve put the youtube summaries below. Anyone played this in class?
