User talk:Stevenarntson/self assessment archive

=2010=

Winter
The most notable event of this quarter is that it turned out to be my last--as a part timer, I'm now subject to the vicissitudes of the wax and wane of student population, and received no classes for next quarter. It's a strange feeling to suddenly be without work after working constantly for the past ten years. As I write this on a Saturday, I'm thinking what my state of mind would normally be, about now: frantically getting curriculum together, saying goodbye to my break, etc. But come Monday, I will not be riding down to school as I have in the past. I have mixed feelings about it, to be sure. But in some ways, I think I'm ready to move on. I've been at the same job now for perhaps too long. I'm interested to see what's next.

I did the major assignment with my English Composition class this quarter, posted here.

=2009=

04fall
I made a big decision this quarter, which is that I'm going to begin teaching only part time starting next quarter. The full-time schedule I've been in for the last nine years had begun to wear on me. I'm spending too much time teaching, not enough time doing art, and I have no "free time" to speak of. So next quarter I'll teach three classes instead of five, and after that I'll get table scraps. I'll be making considerably less money, and my health insurance will obviously change, too (which is one of the reasons I've hesitated this long). But I'm very happy with the decision for now. I'm looking forward to doing more writing and music, and I'm also looking forward to being able to focus on fewer classes, and perhaps do a better job as a teacher (knock wood).

I decided to post my Always Wanted To assignment this quarter according to the template of the class, here

Classes
Developmentally, my most significant class this quarter was Analytical Writing, in which I continued my experiment with a large form group assignment. I added a workshop element this quarter, as well as a mid-quarter assessment, in the hopes that added structure would improve the final projects. Largely the quarter went well, I felt, with many wonderful conversations transpiring in and between groups, but in the end some of the final papers didn't realize the potential those conversations suggested. On the last day of class, we discussed the assignment, and the view of the class, generally, was negative, for a host of reasons I'll not detail here.

Suffice to say, I've tried in the past couple days to strategize a workable large-format group assignment that would be more successful, especially considering some good suggestions made by the class on that last day. As of this writing, I'm not seeing the light at the end of the proverb, however, and am considering abandoning the large format project and returning to a more "typical" formula for the class, involving individual papers, modeled after a literature class. It has occurred to me to create a hybrid between individual and group work, and I'll spend more time during the break considering this option as well.

It's always painful to have a project not work out as well as one hopes, and it can be discouraging to have failures pointed out. But after those feelings, hopefully creative solutions can flourish--Freire's notion of approaching an untested feasibility by first identifying a limit situation strikes me as appropriate here.

Always Wanted To
My Always Wanted To goal for this quarter in GE100 was twofold.
 * 1. Read six contemporary young adult novels. I read the following ten:

half of this one: and am currently reading these three:
 * The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud
 * Gods of Manhattan by Scott Mebus
 * Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi
 * The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
 * The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
 * The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flammel by Michael Scott
 * The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
 * The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
 * The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Nicholas Selznick
 * Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
 * How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
 * The Ear, The Eye and the Arm by Nancy Farmer
 * The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation volume I: The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson
 * What the Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth-Fairy by Gregory MacGuire


 * 2. Learn "The Bumble-Bee" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov on the concertina. This goal I quickly realized was too large, and I downscaled it to learning the first of the two pages. I accomplished this goal by dint of considerable practice, and intend to learn the second half next quarter. Then, the quarter after that perhaps, I'll work on playing the piece well, which may require some much-needed repairs to my instrument.

02spring
This quarter was a narrowly averted disaster, as I began it having contracted a flu that matured into pneumonia. As such, I missed the first week of all of my classes and the second week of two classes.

I'd been especially looking forward to a well-organized deployment of the wiki system for all of my sections, but as I wasn't present, a substitute unfamiliar with the system introduced it, and some confusion resulted. None of this was avoidable, of course, and once classes took up normally with my partial recovery in the third week, things proceeded apace, and I find myself at the end of this quarter looking forward to finally doing a proper startup with the wiki in summer. The fact that it succeeded as well as it did under the circumstances was encouraging. The other item of note that occurred this quarter had tangential relevance to my classroom, which is that my children's book was accepted for publication. As writing is a large part of my creative and academic life, it's tremendously validating to have my work published. It gives me some confidence that my methods aren't totally cracked (which sometimes I worry about).

The group work component on which I'm continuing to base my writing classes (Analytical Writing this quarter) continues to be largely successful, but with some hitches. I'm still struggling to reintroduce an individual component, and to develop tools to transform these complex pieces into math-based assessments. Though I continue to have deep reservations about math-based assessment generally, it is the system under which I labor and I must do my best with it. My goal for next quarter is to iron out both of these issues in my writing classes that employ group work.

For my "Always Wanted To" assignment this quarter, I had a goal to record The Emerald Arms, my next album for solo concertina and voice. I completed the project, recording out on the Kitsap Peninsula with inphase.

01winter
Much of my effort this quarter went into establishing the use of this wiki system for my classes. Generally, I've been very encouraged by the result, although I also had a steep learning curve, which has resulted in my stockpiling many ideas for next quarter as this one progressed. I am still very excited about the possibilities inherent in the MediaWiki system--both for promoting public discourse and for creating a forum for collaborative learning.

My biggest lessons this quarter were learned with regards to my two writing classes: English Composition and Analytical Writing. I established a group learning environment in both classes, in which groups decided on topics that they would pursue until midterm. As midterm approached, it was apparent that I had not given enough time, and I extended the assignment to last the full quarter. As always in these General Education courses, there is an open question about whether it is "Instructor Fault" for not allowing enough time, or "Student Fault" for not putting in enough effort. It's more constructive for me to assume "Instructor Fault" and see what I might change next time. In both classes, we had a dialogue on the final week about what I could do differently next quarter, and the comments generally fell into two categories:
 * 1. More structure
 * Students wished I had included intermediary due dates, early conferences, and benchmarks throughout the quarter.
 * 2. Better wiki tutoring
 * Students weren't satisfied with the quality of my instruction on how to use the MediaWiki. I'm going to create a physical handout next quarter, in the hopes of getting everyone up and running more quickly. Additionally, I thought to give some lab time on the first day during which students can create their own pages and experiment with the wiki environment.

In addition to those writing courses, I taught Humanities I and General Education Seminar this quarter. Both classes are ones that I have curently established to a fairly structured degree, and I ended the quarter feeling good about how they'd gone. Particularly in my Humanities I class, there were some creative applications of the final project that resulted in enjoyable presentations.