- I hate teaching a Monday night class. There. I said it. No, my Mondays are not my Motherfucking Tuesdays of last spring. But Monday night is garbage. I won’t see them again for two weeks because of MLK day. Did they learn anything today? Who the fuck knows. But even if they did, with two weeks before I see them again? What will they retain between now and then? And the turn-around from Monday to Tuesday totally sucks (9 pm to 9 am is not ideal). Sigh.
- In other news, I’m sort of pleased with the Monday night class, in that I really do think that I can get them on board and that they will do well. I’ve got one former student who is an active participator, and tonight I had them do some group work stuff and there seemed to be buy-in overall. This is a dramatic improvement over what happened with my Monday night class last semester, in which so few of them had any buy-in. So I’m hopeful.
- I had an epiphany today, in thinking about my bullshit evaluations from last semester, that I need to remind my students of how much work they are supposed to be doing and how much time they are supposed to be spending outside of class for a college course. A consistent comment that I get from students is that I expect them to read too much. This is annoying, as I think I’m actually really reasonable about the amount of reading I expect of my students. Let’s say you read 30 pages an hour. If you spend only 6 hours of time in preparing for a class, that means you can read 180 fucking pages a week. That is not a crazy amount to expect in a fucking ENGLISH class. And typically I only assign around 150 pages a week, unless it’s a terribly hard text, in which it’s more like 75 pages, or unless it’s an “easy read” in which case it might be more (250 pgs or so, which let’s note is still less than spending three hours per credit hour of the course).
- As much as the turn-around time between Monday and Tuesday is crap, I really love all of my Tuesday/Thursday classes, and I am excited to teach everything on the syllabus for these courses to my students. I love what I’m teaching, and that makes such a HUGE difference.
- You know what else is exciting? That The Dude digs this band (at my introduction) and that we will be going to see them play live!!!!! I am super stoked!!!!
- Also exciting, really, is that The Dude has not dumped me, and that I have not dumped The Dude. Seriously, I think this is a record for the both of us. We are both filled with love, and we both think that this is disgusting. But WOW does he make me happy
- The writing I’d planned for the break didn’t quite happen, but a lot of thinking did. I have high hopes for this month (and a lot of plans).
- Now it’s time for bed. A long day tomorrow awaits me. A day of Food (as a theme), Love (another theme), and a course that begins with the first tampon in British literature and the most recent tampon in British literature. I can’t wait!
RBOC: First Day of a New Semester Edition
January 14, 2013 by Dr. Crazy
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Is it possible that poor or inexperienced readers read a lot slower than 30 pages per hour?
It is. But I’d argue that this is a totally reasonable standard for a college level class. I mean, a half-page a minute? On, say, a Vintage paperback? (So not some giant book.) Assuming they don’t annotate (which they don’t)? I read approximately 40 pages a minute ANNOTATING. And it’s worth noting that I don’t assign that much *every* week, so in theory they could be reading ahead (ha!).
Point is? A college education should (in theory) require you to spend time outside of class on the material. If you’re not spending that time, then you shouldn’t expect to do well. And if you’re expecting to read a novel without dedicating time to do that – so, like, you read with constant interruptions and with everything else being your priority – then, yeah, you probably won’t earn an A. But that’s not because I’m a bitch: it’s because you didn’t EARN an A. DUDE.
I’m not expecting them to read expertly or carefully. I’m expecting them to READ. Period.
(Worth noting: in graduate school in English, students typically read around 600-800 pages a week, if they are doing fiction. And this in addition to reading “supplementary” criticism and theory. So expecting undergrads to read about 200 pages of fiction in a class a week is really not crazy, given that they have courses in non-reading-heavy disciplines as well.)
I want to hear about the first and most recent tampons in Brit lit!!!!
I think reading 200 pages of fiction a week is quite reasonable. Especially for English majors, who have self-selected to study a reading-heavy topic.
I think it’s a great idea to remind them that college classes are planned with the idea that students will spend 2-3 hours outside of class per hour in class. I know they often don’t, but they should!
I’m with Bardiac: where are all of these tampons in British novels? Please do fill us in. Virginia Woolf! Barbara Pym? Maeve Binchy? Zadie Smith?? Who???
Also: you are completely right to assign that amount of work. I might even say that it’s a little low. I assign 100-150 pages of history books or articles per week (monographs, not boring textbooks, but still very challenging) to undergrads in upper-div. courses and 250-350 pages a week to seminar students and grad students.
Do you ask your students to write a weekly precis or journal entry of what they’ve read, or otherwise show they’ve done the reading before class? I find that that really works to keep them on track and to hold them accountable for the work. (I know we’re training them to read for different things, but it still might work for you.)
I am totally an outlier and probably not the ideal commenter due to my lack of being an academic in the humanities… but what you’re describing sounds completely reasonable. Have you considered shaming the children? You might compare their outside class workload to certain other majors, where specific production is required? (Not that English is ‘easy,’ far from it, but it’s tangible proof is… different.)
I did my undergrad in architecture at a top tier school, and for every unit in my major we had h o u r s of coursework outside of class, plus outrageously difficult theoretical readings (I have a love/hate relationship with anyone who brings up Michel Foucault). Point being, what you’ve described above sounds downright delightful. In my college days they gave us keys to our on campus studio, because we didn’t have — weren’t supposed to have — enough time to go home to sleep!
Your undergrads have no idea how very lucky they are.
*its tangible proof is…
It was inevitable.
40 pages an HOUR annotating, I assume?? Per minute seems… scary!
I find that pre-med, business, and other students in highly competitive pre-professional programs don’t complain about their work for those classes as much. But they do complain about their “gut” humanities classes because they don’t take them seriously. At the same time humanities major, who do not (generally) compete to take our classes and who for the most part won’t be going to grad school also complain.
I don’t know. I have English majors in my Shakespeare class who are taking Brit lit 2 and American lit 2 at the same time as Shakespeare. They have a lot of reading. I’m giving them a Shakespeare play and an article every week and a half and I had someone drop because of the work load. (A nursing student, actually.) I always try to keep in mind that 1. They don’t read as fast as I do, 2. They aren’t as comfortable with the language, 3. This is not the only class they are taking. I do tell them to watch the movies, too, which takes extra time. It will help them with the reading, though.
I also want to know about the tampon thing. There’s a quote I’ve been trying to track down FOREVER and that would probably be the key to unlocking it…
Tampon #1 = Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook.
Most recent tampon = Zadie Smith’s NW
Oh, and Fie, don’t get me wrong: I do have compassion for my students and understand that they have other courses and other demands on their time. I’m just frustrated because I’ve seen these complaints go up in direct proportion to tuition increases and negative public discourse about higher ed, and frankly, I don’t ask them to do that much. I for the most part don’t teach literature that has a big learning curve in terms of how language is used, and I really do try to be reasonable about how much reading they can possibly do in a given week. But at a certain point, and I think I’m at that point, you need to take a stand that you can’t relax things any further.
Thanks for the tampon intel. And yes, hold the line. We all get the students we deserve.
I like the idea that you’re holding the line, but it is frustrating, especially if you feel like you’re the only one doing it. In that context, you (that’s the generic “you”) do start to come across as “the unreasonable one.”
I just added an extra week of reading to my senior seminar (to replace a writing week), and was wondering whether it was too much. I’ve decided it’s not. Of course, ask me again when *I* am the one having to do an extra week of reading just as the semester is heating up. Hrm.
I find that the more I assign my students to read, the less carefully they read. I usually go no higher than 120 pages per week, and the average is 90-100 pages per week. They usually have assignments to do post-reading, though (reading journal, tracking passages of interest, prepping discussion points, or something similar). I can’t ask them to do much with the reading if I just care about their having moved their eyeballs over the page. That said, we also don’t do surveys where I am (though I do faux surveys because I believe, pedagogically, in the purpose of the survey…but that’s another story)–so there is less pressure for me to hold the line re: assigning lots of reading every week in my dept.