Black Like Me

I re-read the book a few weeks ago because I am teaching it this semester. I have issues with, but I think it can be a valuable text. Who's read it? Anyone wanna discuss it? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Your Resident Sistorian

Saw this at Mai'a's and had to repost. Of course I, your resident Sistorian, find this to be just about the the coolest thing ever. Of course I do!



Following the Tumblr chain, I think I need to give credit to this post.

An Observation on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day

"WHY IS IT THAT MLK IS CELEBRATED SO MUCH, BUT MALCOLM X IS SLOWLY SLIPPIN OUT OF OUR MINDS, HE TAUGHT US HOW 2 STAND UP, AN FIGHT THE MAN WIT THERE OWN SHIT."

I often decry the sanitizing and beatification of MLK, Jr., because it makes him all conveniently palatable and ripe for consumption. It makes him safe for white people to admire and accept and celebrate.

But I don't often mention the flipside of what that means for his image. The quote above was written by one of my cousins. I've heard the same derision repeated by students in my classes. They think of MLK, Jr. as obsequious, unreal, too willing to compromise, the polar opposite of their image of the fierce, uncompromising Malcolm X (and I should talk about the construction of him at some point). They claim to respect MLK, Jr. and his work, but they feel that he could have gone farther and that he too easily said "what white people wanted to hear."

And, after a mental eye-roll and side eye, I ask them, can't they imagine, given all they've learned over the course of an "African American History from 1865 to the Present" class, that there would've been people who thought of him as uncompromising? Who didn't want to hear his messages of social and economic justice and equity? Who thought of him as a threat? I also ask them to define militant. Is it a term that has to be rooted in the willingness to take up arms?

Typically, I can at least get them to re-consider. But the idea that I, as a "progressive" historian, am considered the ridiculously "revisionist" one?

I think, in the future, I will have my students spend a few minutes juxtaposing my cousin's quote, their own perceptions, and this article by Fred Grimm, which notes:

The icon of the national holiday, the Disneyfied hero celebrated by school kids, a replica of the original made into someone palatable to business and civic leaders across the political spectrum, hardly resembles the righteous rabble-rouser who inflicted so much discomfort on the American establishment.

[snip]

[M]odern powerbrokers, in their prosaic tributes, tend to forget the Martin Luther King Jr. whose causes would have a stinging resonance in 2012 America.

After a year when some political leaders have tried to gut public worker unions, they might find it a bit inconvenient to recall the Martin Luther King who was gunned down in Memphis in 1968 during a campaign to organize the city garbage workers.

In a time when the American middle class has noticed that the one percent was scarfing up an ever greater portion of the nation’s wealth, while its own relative buying power has been frozen since 1970, King’s demands for economic justice might seem just a bit too contemporary. (Someone might also notice that his movement’s Resurrection City, the shanty town protest against economic disparity, erected a month after his death, might as well been called Occupy Washington.)

Amid so much apprehension over the lack of judicial restraint in the use of roving wiretaps and other surveillance authorized in the Patriot Act extension signed by President Obama, our political leaders would rather forget about the Martin Luther King whose home, office and hotel rooms were bugged, for years, by the FBI. (J. Edgar Hoover explained the “unshackled” surveillance of King as a way to track, “the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.”)

After a decade of war in Afghanistan, with that long, bloody, pointless diversion into Iraq, it’s doubtful that the we’ll hear our President or congressional leaders from either party quote from King’s anti-war speech in 1967, when he called the United States, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

Certainly, the politicians behind the coordinated campaign in 14 states (including Florida) to enact new voting restrictions, would be vexed by the Martin Luther King who fought to bring voting rights to the disenfranchised.

And I will remind them that King himself acknowledged and accepted the fact that, in his time, he was considered "an extremist":

...though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. [...] The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? [...] Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

The one-dimensional, heroic caricature that we have made MLK, Jr., into does a disservice to the legacy of our creative extremists and the work of dissenters in shaping and re-shaping this country.

What I'm Reading

Good morning, sunshines! Back at it again. Thinking about blogging ideas and as I stick my toes cautiously in the water, my ever-faithful cousin sends me topics. I've read a lot about the so-called "slavery" math problems and the proposed boycott of the Girl Scouts/Girl Scout cookies by a cisgender girl and her adult supporters who are appalled that the Scouts accept transgender girls.

Read and SYDH along with me.

Weekend Crises

I graded papers this weekend. That created the first crisis. Roughly 20% of the students in this small class plagiarized. Another 50% percent did their own work, had great ideas, but lacked the organization, details, and analysis to make their exams good.

This class has turned out to be a lot more difficult than I anticipated because quite a few of the students came in not ready to do the work required in upper division classes. Grr.

But here is the main crisis. Crisis One facilitated an emergency moscato-run. I returned home to find...

MY CORKSCREW WAS NOT WORKING.

And so I was reduced to this chisel-and-shove game involving a paring knife, a steak knife, and, as my need and desperation grew, a small hammer.

You know how sometimes you say f*ck it and just push the cork down into the bottle and swill down cork with your deliciously sweet wine? Well, yeah, no. This one wouldn't budge. I swear we worked on it for an hour.

Finally, the bottle just cracked and off popped a smooth piece of glass. My niece looked at me, ready to toss it.

"Girl, get my glass," I told her.

Notes from the Academy

My colleagues and I talk a lot about students’ sense of entitlement and (depending on where you teach) privilege. Some of the things they ask demand are unbelievable.

I want to share a story with y’all, a bit of what I alluded to at the beginning of this post and here. I spent quite a bit of time talking about the freedom movements of the 1950s and 1960s in my post-45 class. I heard by way of one student, that another older, white, male student liked my class, but since he’d “lived through all of that,” he’d really wanted to hear more about Sputnik and the space race than I’d offered. The student who relayed the story to me said that she asked him, “Did you look on the history site and see what her specialties are?”


I was glad for her little nudge, but this is something I’ve encountered repeatedly, albeit not always so nicely worded. In my first set of evaluations eons ago, I had a student say, “She’s a good teacher, but she talks too much about race.” I also “focus a lot” on gender. I get related comments often—if not in bulk (one or two a semester, at most).

Those comments used to get under my skin. I now take them as a compliment of sorts. Somewhere along the way, I had a moment of clarity. I won’t say that students can’t help determine what I teach—I love when they ask to hear more about a subject, for example. And I try to give examples that are relevant to where they are (Texas)—in my survey, when we talk about other ways PoC tried to better their conditions during the Depression (since they were so often left out of the New Deal), we spend a nice amount of time on the San Antonio pecan shellers’ strike and the revitalization of the NAACP in Texas during the 1930s.

But for students to think that they can demand that I, a black woman historian, teach in a way that excludes or doesn’t “focus a lot” on race or class or a number of other factors, when my syllabus lists as an objective “To enable you, as a participant, to… recognize the role factors such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ability have played in shaping policy, institutions and relationships within the U.S.” is ridiculous.

In a sense, they are asking me to teach a history that disappears me.

I'm starting to think that my life in the academy will teach me as much about race and gender privilege as my life in a rural, southern town.

Feeling Sort of Meh...

A combination of things:

1) Post-holiday down feeling

2) A touch of homesickness

3) Writing a syllabus and school starts next week!

4) Feeling the upcoming semester already:

---- MWF classes for the first time ever, which takes away my long weekends (during
which, I actually do get work done).
---- Will it be hard to trim down to a 50-minute class?!?!?!

---- Teaching an honor's class, had a special project outlined that now I'm worried about. Thinking of ditching it in favor of a longer paper--but don't want their project to be "just" a paper.

---- My son has after-school extracurriculars out the ass--choir, skippers, Spanish, basketball, and maybe math tutoring. He wants to take guitar lessons--I'm thinking of looking into it because I want to encourage any interest in music. Can any one say frazzled single mom?

5) Presenting at the OAH and I want to seriously re-work that paper.

---- My department will reimburse me for some of the trip expenses, but have I mentioned that I'm not just rolling around in the dough yet?

6) Dee's wedding! Two months to go, and it's the little things that are stressing me.

7) Time to finish revisions on what I hope to be my first article. Really, it just is.

8) Feeling pressed for time and unable to keep up with blog-worthy topics at this moment.

9) Just finished "The Wire." Post to come. DRAINING.

10) The month of March--that's wedding, a panel I'm sponsoring, OAH, evaluations time. My spring break that month will be irrelevant.

Making that list made me feel better.

Send/leave me links to things you think I should read!!! I hope to be back up in the next couple of weeks.

Television Marathon Followed by Grading Marathon Reduces a Usually Somwhat-Agile Mind

I've been watching "The Wire," right?

And, I temporarily gave it up yesterday so that I can grade exams by Friday's due date.

So, I have "The Wire," provocative, clever, astounding, on one side of my brain, and students waxing-pretty-damn-poetic (on the limitations of the early Civil Rights Movement wrt women, the urban poor, etc. or the construction of race in the U.S. in the last 140 years or why black power was so threatening beyond, "OMG, scary black men with gunz!!!" or challenges African Americans face in the 21st century and how they are linked to the myriad issues we discussed this semester) on the other. And you know what I keep thinking?

I'd really, really like a doughnut. And not just any doughnut; a warm, way-too-sweet Krispy Kreme with hot chocolate or chocolate milk. I've even gone so far as to call to find out when will the hot sign be on again. However...

the temperature is 45 degrees and falling, with an expected low of 35.

You know how this dream ends, right? No doughnuts for me. No "The Wire" for me. Only essays stretching far into this cold, dark night.

Thank You

We don't know if the donors came from this blog or from one of the other blogs that linked our request or simply from browsing the site, but mrs. o's proposal has been funded.

Thank you, so much.

How Not to Teach Middle Schoolers about the Middle Passage

When I took an African American literature class as an undergrad, my teacher tried to demonstrate to us physically the nature of the middle passage. Nothing in a well-lit, comfortably-temperatured university classroom can suffice, but she tried anyway.

She had all of us who would gather into a corner and move closer and closer to each other until the girl nearest to the wall asked that we stop. Many of us were visibly shaken, unable to put words to our feelings when the professor asked.

It was a voluntary activity and I still have mixed feelings about it (she did not tell us that we would be closing in on ourselves).

And we were, in terms of age, adults.

k8 sent me this article about a similarly-minded teacher of middle-school children:

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. – A white social studies teacher attempted to enliven a seventh-grade discussion of slavery by binding the hands and feet of two black girls, prompting outrage from one girl's mother and the local chapter of the NAACP. After the mother complained to Haverstraw Middle School, the superintendent said he was having "conversations with our staff on how to deliver effective lessons."

"If a student was upset, then it was a bad idea,"* said Superintendent Brian Monahan of the North Rockland School District in New York City's northern suburbs.

Well.

There are so many levels of wrong in this that I won't pretend that I can address or even see them all. It's not a matter of being age inappropriate (my point above was that I don't know if such activities are appropriate for any age in a classroom setting). But I am struck by the fact that the teacher called on two teenagers, two girls who, like so many teenagers, may have been inordinately self-conscious of being the center of their classmates' attention in what they perceived as a negative light.

And then she thought it was okay to BIND them. To tie their hands and feet. With apparently no thought of how traumatic that may have been, no knowledge of any experiences these girls may have had that BINDING them might trigger, no thought to how absolutely powerless and vulnerable and scared it makes you feel when some one else strips you of the ability to control or move your own body.

She also did not think about what these girls' perception of slavery was. So many black people are taught that it was shameful for slaveowners and the enslaved. That the whole identity of our ancestors was subsumed by the designation "slave," because so much of that history comes from the slaveowners. That there must have been no pride, no dignity, no agency, no self-definition.

And always, beneath the surface, is an unspoken accusation of almost-complicity--that people of African descent accepted slavery and the Jim Crow aftermath meekly until the 1950s. One of my comps questions was about the "lack" of what would commonly be called slave uprisings. One of my white male students in my African American history class asked me, when we discussed Redemption, "Why didn't black people do something, stand up for themselves?" and none of my responses was enought to change his opinion or stop the dismissive shake of his head.

I have heard black people my whole life say, "I couldn't have lived back then, because I would have..." We are ashamed because we were taught the "happy darkies working in the field and being beneficently cared for" lie so long. We are also taught that our "honorable" history begins and ends with the Civil Rights Movement.

And she asked those girls to assume all of that in a classroom:

On Nov. 18, [Eileen] Bernstein was discussing the conditions under which African captives were taken to America in slave ships. She bound the two students' hands and feet with tape and had them crawl under a desk to simulate the experience.

If her point is to teach that the middle passage was devastatingly traumatic, why would she want middle-schoolers to re-enact it?
_____________________________________________
*Emphasis mine, because I didn't realize there was a correlation between students' " upsetness" and the determination of whether or not something is a "bad idea."

I've Found the Solution

...to the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Call your best friend and talk for almost an hour about a little bit of everything and a lot of nothing.

Laugh a lot.

Get the validation you shouldn't need, but, ah, well.

Get over yourself. I want to be the perfect teacher already. I'm enjoying my "small" African American history class, but the students in my large survey--which is primarily lecture interspersed with brief discussions (usually analyzing various audio and visual clips)--just aren't engaging like I want them to for the most part. Some days they ask the best questions; some days they look like zombies.

Initially, I worried about it on my own, not wanting to get ideas from my colleagues because I am so determined to appear like I have it all down pat. But I talked to a couple of people in my department and found 1) other people are trying to figure out how to best teach and reach students in the large classes 2) I'm not the only young(er) woman to have to pull a white male student aside and say, "The way you are addressing me before class is not appropriate and it will stop now" and 3) I am not the only new professor ever to have to write lectures for classes further on in the semester--honestly, I made it up to the Depression during the summer and I did teach post-45 in the spring so I can cull from and expand upon some of those (I'm good for the social movements of the 50s and 60s and the early Cold War, for example), but I still need a stronger WWI lecture, a good WWII lecture, and I want to write some killer ones on society and culture in the 80s and 90s.

I know this is not news for most folk, but it's hard for me to reach out for help and advice--always conscious of being "one of the only-" and so I don't want to admit weakness. But that shit was killing me and I'm so glad I did. Turns out, there's a slight chance that people aren't expecting me to be perfect!

And the last part of the solution--go to sleep, so the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day can become a memory.

While Typing My Syllabus...

...I realize I have two versions of the primary document reader for one of my classes. One has more documents than the other. Not sure which one is going to come with their bundle. Aargh!

...My son is standing behind me reading. "You're an assistant professor?" he asks.

"Yep"

"Who do you help?"

...One of the monographs is not in the box I packed which means its on my dresser in Louisiana. Getting my parents to mail more than an envelope is like pulling teeth. Bookstore, here I come, sigh.

...Haven't had breakfast or lunch and my niece keeps trying to feed me because I haven't eaten anything today. She eats at regular intervals--she's diabetic--and I know I drive her crazy.

...I'm loving Quinn and T even more for their help.

...I'm turning over and over in my head a lunch invitation from some other WoC faculty--I'm both appreciative and nervous.

...I'm realizing I need to buy parking decal because I have orientation coming up!!!

OK, back to work. I'm procrastinating on writing the course descriptions--I hate those as much as the "objective" on resumes.

Struggling To Meet the Standards...

I have been a teacher for the past eight years and I have come to one of many conclusions-It is a very thankless job. I put in ten to twelve hour days that involve dealing with my students in one aspect or another. Much of my time is spent trying to get them to realize the importance of education, getting them involved in extracurricular activities and then riding them like horses to keep their grades up to stay involved, trying to keep them from getting arrested or abused, both physically and mentally, or just watching them stretched out in my living room studying or getting help with homework because my house is a safe place. I do all of these things because I love my students regardless of their skin color, socio economic background, religion, sexual orientation or any other obstacles that many human beings use as barriers to keep from forming relationsips with each other. I also realize that barriers are more permeable than in larger areas-I know/grew up with my students' parents, am often kin to them, go to church with them, and everyone knows where I live or what my phone number is.

During my eight years as a teacher here in Smalltown, USA I have attended many professional development workshops and conferences where improving school scores is always at the top of the list. They give these grandiose ideas they have sat in their expensive offices and dreamed up in their world, which by the way usually does not reflect my student's world, and tell me that if I do exactly what they say, my school's scores will shoot up and all will be hunky dory at smalltown high school. I listen and try my damnedest to accompish all of the things the "SUITS" tell me and yet although my school's scores have improved every year it has not been enough for the higer ups in Baton Rouge.

Friday we were informed we had become a school of choice. This means parents of our students can now send their children to two other local schools deemed more academically suitable. We missed our score by three tenths of a point. A school score includes your test scores, attendance, dropout rate, and how many certified teachers there are at your school. For each student that drops out you receive a zero for that students-we had eight students 9th-11th grade to drop out. We also have a problem with attendance. I am constanly amazed at the excuses parents give us when their children miss school. I have heard everything from "she had a hangover", "he doesn't like to get up in the rain", and one of my favories, "he/she needed a break from school." The parish I teach in is POOR! 82% of my students are the FIRST in their families(mothers, fathers, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins included) to graduate high school. Out of 66 parishes we rank 61 in pay. So attracting highly qualified and certified teachers is a job in itslef. What we usually get are teachers who get hired in our parish, get certified throught the parish, and then leave to go to another higher paying parish.

I say all of this to say I AM SO UPSET, TIRED, DISGUSTED, and SAD because it seems as if no matter how hard I and others like myself who teach at smalltown high school work it is NEVER ENOUGH. I correspond classes with high risk studets through LSU in an attempt to get them out of school so that they do not dropout. I take them on college visits, senior trips, and do job shadowing with them, so that they can see how much the world has to offer them if they are willing to work hard for it. So I work hard for them and as I sit here writing this post I am crying because with all of the work I put in year after year striving to get my students into colleges,(because of course we have no high school counselor- so this is another task I do for free)I feel useless and defeated and sad because the state has decided that my school is not up to their standards which means the work I do is not good enough.

Above, I mentioned that the world of the department of education officials/curriculum planners is not that of my students. Let me give you a glimpse--we are a school for which there is rarely enough. When we run out of the most basic supplies--like bulletin board paper--we are told there is no money for more, but we are still expected to "make do." To finish my example, bulletin boards are required, whether the school provides paper or not. And reimbursements? Please!

Parental involvement is next to nil--not because parents don't care, but because they work jobs like poultry processing and are worn out when they get home. If I am honest, teacher morale is not what it could be, either. It's hard to face a class of 33 sixth graders in one room. It's hard to teach active fourth graders in a tiny, temporary building that is not well lit or particularly roomy. It's hard to meet the needs of 20+ kindergartners who all want attention urgently but there is no regular aide. Student morale is low as well, as many are tired and don't see the point. My kids are often expected to cook, clean up, take care of younger siblings, and supplement parents' income. School is not a priority.

As I get ready to start another school year on August 18th, I will wipe the tears from my face, and pray that this year be the year we meet our standards the state of Louisiana has set for us. There will be less money from the state and we will be expected to work miracle after miracle to see that little Johnny/Jane has that extra quarter or dollar needed for breakfast and lunch so they will not be hungry-because it is hard to concentrate on what is being taught when your stomach is growling--to help students with their FAFSA's, provide them with paper and pencil, and, in so many cases, to love them. I will pray for the strength and guidance I need to keep traveling down this road of hope that continues to be just out of my reach.

This Week's Inspiration for the Teacher in Me

I read about Karen Salazar at Jack's earlier this week.

Yesterday while listening to Democracy Now! I heard about Karen Salazar for the first time. She is a high school teacher who was fired from her position at a school in LA because her curriculum was too “Afrocentric” - instead of, you know, the usual Eurocentric curriculum that’s delivered to American students on the daily. From a letter by Salazar posted on the Vivir Latino site:

I am being fired because I am trying to ensure that my curriculum is relevant to my students’ daily lived experiences, and in the process, create a space for them to be critical of Eurocentric society and curricula that only serve to reinforce their dehumanization, subjugation, and oppression …

Then tonight, I read a post on the Quaker Agitator in which Dave provided a link to a a magazine called Radical Teacher. Dave's post included the magazine's definition of a "radicalteacher," which begins with these beautiful, basic precepts:

1. One who provides student-centered - rather than teacher-centered - classrooms; non-authoritarian.

2. One who shares rather than transmits information.

3. One who aids in student growth and empowerment by drawing out what is already there and latent.

4. One who respects students.

There are 12 more wonderful items in the list. I am really, really looking forward to exploring this magazine.

Alive and Kicking...

But I have lots of plans for the holiday weekend, so I'm super busy!

In other news, my dilemma resolved itself--I won't be teaching this summer. I have mixed feelings. I'll enjoy the break but I had plans for the extra money (two conferences I wanted to attend plus I gotta start moving at some point!).

Another Dilemma

So summer school registration is way down. One of my classes was canceled (only one student) and the other only has six (it was capped at 20).

Not surprisingly, I love the small class. Already. But, when enrollment in a summer school class is below 16, we're paid on a scale. With six students, I'll earn around $800. Here's the problem. I drive probably 70 miles round trip per day. That's a tank of gas per week, which is approximately $60. Factor in tax and the chunk of money Louisiana Teacher's Retirement will take and I don't know if it's worth it financially.

Really, it's not a dilemma because today by five is the last day to add and I didn't warn my students. If I back out now, they wouldn't have time to add another class in the place of this one.

But grrrr.

Another Reason I'm Loving My Post-45 Class Right Now

Now that it's been a little while since we've bid President Kennedy a bittersweet adieu in this class, I can present them with these quotes:

Over the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.

...

I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.
-Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg

And these similar images:



And briefly parse and discuss.

They're going to get the similarities and the spirit behind Caroline Kennedy-Schlossberg's quotes immediately. But I want them to think about what we've discussed about the Kennedy legacy versus the Kennedy legend and re-evaluate the comparison and what it might mean to and for Senator Obama. There are some other ways I want to go with this, too, but I have to work out all my questions for next week.

Connections. Relevancy. A history teacher's dream!

I Heart My Post-45 Class

You know what finally got them super-chatty? Discussing the FBI, the CIA, United Fruit in Guatemala, Fidel Castro, etc. As a group, they lean left. They talked about how the American government is sometimes hypocritical and (get this) how United Fruit was like it's own "little colonial power" (one of my students' quote!). I could barely get in a word--or a question--edgewise.

They also liked discussing student movements in the 60s--no surprise there--especially SNCC and the SSOC. They had a big debate over SNCC's politics--particularly the expulsion of white members and the conflict between men and women. One of my students asked if I thought Stokely Carmichael's positions on the role of women and white involvement in the movement led to SNCC's demise.

So, in the last few weeks, I've finally gotten the participation I longed for.

Did You Know...

...Under Ulrich Zwingli, New Hampshire became the first Protestant state outside Germany?

...Transubstantiation is when you burglarize the church?

...Martin Luther had more than 95 Theses; it's just that only 95 would fit on the door?

...said truncated theses primarily critiqued the Church's selling of 1) Bibles or 2) alcohol?

Brought to you by "elle's Tales from Western Civ."

Teaching Woes #2

From Historianess:

Yesterday I gave a quiz in my survey class. I like quizzes; they're a good way to measure how well students are picking up basic facts and patterns, and they're a good way to see both if the students are reading, and how they are doing the reading.

One of the easier questions was "Name two Puritan colonies." Based on my notes, they had three options there: Massachusetts Bay, New Haven (I would accept Connecticut as an answer), and Providence Island. I figured some students would answer with Plymouth or Rhode Island, which would give me an opportunity to remind them that the Pilgrims were Separatists, and that Puritans considered theologically-liberal Rhode Island to be a den of iniquity.

Instead, about two-thirds of the class answered with "Jamestown" or "Virginia."

ARGH! I'm sure that somewhere in a lecture I did talk extensively about how Massachusetts was a Puritan colony and Virginia was *not* a Puritan colony.

From elle's best friend, a high school teacher:

Girl, I'll be up there, thinking I'm teaching my heart out. And they seem to be listening, they ask questions, we talk... then they take the test. And girl!!!

No, she didn't need to add anything else.

From elle herself, after recent exam results in one of my classes:

My God, are they in the same room I'm in?

Seriously, like most professors, I work really hard to give fair exams and quizzes. The vast majority of the time it goes well.

But sometimes, I get results that send my blood pressure through the roof. I don't worry inordinately about really, really low failing grades--those are typically earned by students who don't come to class and/or who admit that they didn't prepare.

Nope, it's the 50s and 60s that really bother me. It's as if there was some effort, but something just didn't quite click. A lot of questions run through my head: What didn't they understand? How could I have presented the material in a different manner that may have stuck with them? How could I have helped them make connections? Was it a "good" exam?

Of course, there are the questions that bother you deeply, the ones that are hard to face--about your ability, skills, and effectiveness as a teacher in general. For example, I can honestly say that I believe I am a "good" teacher, but there are areas in which I want and need to improve.

And that is one thing that has been difficult for me--sitting down and developing goals and plans for how to improve and continue to grow.