So my last post sounds pretentious!  No one has accused me of this, mind you.  I’m indicting myself.  Good God!  If I were smart I would probably delete the thing.  But in the spirit of honesty and transparency, I’ll let it be.  I thought it.  I wrote it.  I’m guilty as charged.  How do my friends even tolerate me, my family not disown me, my partner–well, what can I say–she puts up with a LOT!

Seriously now–these are the ways I know I can improve as a teacher!

First, I could organize my composition course around an arc that currently interests and challenges me–rather than sticking with the same old “space and place” theme because it’s easier.  Admittedly, I keep telling myself I’m tweaking and improving the thing–perfecting it even.  And, yes, I had late last semester developed an arc to test drive in the fall, but that was before this grand Asian experiment became a reality.  That progression began with an essay on happiness, continued with one on homelessness and then another on hunger, and ended with a paper on hope.  I was, for lack of a better name, calling it the ” Four H’s”–admittedly that needed a bit of work–okay, a lot.

Secondly, if I were sticking with the space/place theme, I could develop a reading packet that better suits that approach to looking at “issues of social relevance.”  The problem is–I like the Engaged Citizen–it may be slightly agenda-driven, but it’s an agenda I believe in!  So, I’m afraid my own ambivalence may prevent me from integrating readings as well as I might were I using a collection of essays I assembled myself.  And it may be that my personal life as a reader and my self as a writer are not as well integrated as they might be.  This particular form of schizophrenia may not appear in the DSM–but I may manifest a few symptoms of the disorder and inadvertently carry them with me into the classroom.   I’ll have to give this more thought.  It’s not that I mean to imply my approach to teaching composition is diseased in any way and certainly not pathological, for that matter.

Wow–I may have to stop here.  Identifying  these “weaknesses” is leaving me, well–weak.  My pedagogical top 10 may be little more than a top 2 at this point.  But what can I say?  I guess, I’m not a perfect teacher!  OMG!

Today I added photos  to my Facebook page and updated the format of this blog–all of that while I should have been summarizing student evaluations for my teaching portfolio.  Clearly I’m struggling with the latter task, putting it off day after day, dreading the need to sort and sift and distill so much information down into a few short paragraphs.  Many of my colleagues procrastinate because, according to them, the evaluations are painfully mean and negative.  This is not the cause of my delay.  In fact,  if anything my students’ comments seem surprisingly, almost unbelievably, affirming.  Evaluation after evaluation characterizes me as either the best English teacher students have ever had or the best professor they’ve encountered at UK.  Many indicate that mine was the only writing class they have ever enjoyed or the first one that lead them to believe they actually had something meaningful to say.

I suppose my greatest dilemma involves having to characterize my weaknesses as a teacher.  Perhaps, it’s arrogant to say so, but the negatives that students pointed out in evaluations a year ago seem to have evolved into positives in the last semester.  Clearly I’ve worked hard to improve peer work shopping, developing a strategy that involves meeting personally with each student group and coaching them through the process during the 1st several units of the semester.  In evaluations from the fall of 2007 students complained about the process and indicated that it did not benefit them.  More recently, however, students actually suggest that peer work shopping is one of the course components they  like best.  In evaluations from this past fall, students complain about very little and, in fact, come embarrassingly close to raving about the class.  It all seems too good to be true or at the very least too positive to be realistic.  I suspect they just really liked me and responded to my care and concern for each of them as both writers and individuals.  Clearly I connect well.  I establish good rapport.

I don’t know.  Maybe I should give quizes to assure students finish reading assignments.  Maybe I should not allow so much freedom in choosing writing topics.  Maybe I’m just not hard enough on these kids.  I don’t know.  I think the biggest complaint I noticed this past semester involved the lenghth of essays I required students to write.  However, that’s a requirement of the writing  program.  It has nothing to do with me.

This would not be an issue were I not required as part of this process to analyze my weaknesses as a teacher.  Everyone has room to improve.  I just don’t know EXACTLY what I need to change about the way I teach in general or how I can improve my approach to teaching compostion more specifically.

S. is sick.  She’s sick  in a hotel room in Bangkok, alone.  And she doesn’t manage illness  well.  When I spoke with her this morning  she coughed through much of the conversation.  Plus, she looked more than miserable.  Yes, I said “looked”–we do video calling  via Skype–for free.  At least the weekend has already arrived there, so she has 2 days to rest and re-cooperate before returning  to the office on Monday and leaving for Hanoi on Tuesday.  It saddens me to see her feeling so badly, knowing there’s no one there to care for her or comfort her or run downstairs to the lobby in search of  the Thai equivalent to chicken soup.

However, arrival in Vietnam may serve as “Chicken Soup for [S’s] Soul,” since she’ll visit our friend Robin and his wife Luyen who live in Hanoi.  Robin, a Brit, served as senior vice president for S’s NGO several years ago, while S. was creating the organization’s disaster response program.  While Robin was working in a Vietnamese refugee camp during the war,  he met Luyen who had fled the country with little more than her life.  They married and have one son.  Luyen, interestingly enough, works as a fashion designer and merchandiser in Hanoi.  I got to know Robin two years ago when S. and I were  attending an event  at the Bangkok Polo Club to honor the NGO’s then outgoing regional vice president for Asia Pacific.  Robin is a warm, C. S. Lewis like man (at least as I imagine Lewis to have been)–a person whose deep faith is rooted in a social gospel of giving.

At any rate, visiting with Robin, her mentor, will nourish S. in a way a bowl of chicken soup served up this afternoon never could.  Plus, I think Robin and Luyen will orient S. to life as an ex-pat in Vietnam.  We’re hoping Luyen  has connections in Ho Chi Minh/Saigon that can help us locate a suitable apartment in that city–a flat where the next time S. is sick I can cook up a pot of broth that will  feed more than body, more than soul–a soup we will share in a new city, on a new continent, in a hurting world.

Wow, my work week has ended, ended that is,  in terms of teaching and keeping office hours.  Plenty of class preparation still awaits me this weekend, as does the nightmare of summarizing student evaluations for my teaching portfolio.  However, the daily grind of getting up and facing roomfuls of freshmen is over till Monday.  And, frankly, I love the kids I teach, but periodically I want to crawl into bed with laptop and books and escape all forms of responsibility, instructional and otherwise.  Boredom is under-rated.

Gosh, it’s pretty sad when your idea of a good time involves little more than “laptop and books.”  Clearly I need a life!  But then again I never have been hip or even remotely more than nerdy.  Hell,  I’m the one who’ll go to bed before the sun sets and read and blog and Facebook myself to sleep before the evening’s prime time television lineup even begins.  Be afraid of old age.  Be very afraid!   This is what it means to be a member of the “Dancing with the Stars” generation.

S. has arrived safely at her hotel in Bangkok.   She called a few minutes after 2 pm here–2 am Tuesday there–indicating that the trip had been long but uneventful and that it felt good to be back in a city she knew so well, doing work she believes in again.  Needless to say, the  news of her arrival thrilled me.  It’s always been difficult for me to relax knowing that she is in transit to the other side of the globe.  But now that she’s arrived, I feel a bit better, less anxious, less preoccupied with fears of plane crashes and other man made disasters.  My baby is safe and I am satisfied accordingly.

However, I’m now worrying about Ralph, the older and larger of our two dogs, who injured his leg this afternoon while running in the yard.  He circled the fence line at high speed and on the curve closest to the gate he yelped and came limping to me on three legs.  He still, several hours later, refuses to put weight on the injured limb and is unable to jump up onto the bed.  I’m having to lift him.

This concerns me especially, since, as a puppy, he was hit by a car and had to have both hips fused back together.    This makes me think he is both more vulnerable to injury and less likely to heal easily.  If he has not improved by morning, I will have to take him to the vet for examination and x-ray.

Now, however, I’m sleepy and ready for bed–ridiculously early, I know.  Hopefully, I’ll awaken refreshed, and unlike Ralph, will not limp through peer review sessions with students tomorrow.

Our Asian adventure is officially launched with S’s departure this morning for Bangkok.  Right now she is in the Detroit to Tokyo leg of the trip–an excruciatingly long flight of more than 13 hours.  Almost two years ago when I flew that route, I remember landing in Tokyo (Narita) with unusually swollen feet from so many hours in the air–feet down, unable to move comfortably around the cabin.  However, all told, the trip to Bangkok takes around 27 hours, from wheels up in Lexington to wheels down in Thailand.  S. will arrive there early Tuesday morning–just after midnight–and will spend 2 days in Bangkok at her NGO’s Asia/Pacific headquarters, before leaving Thursday for Vietnam–a couple of days in Hanoi and then down to Ho Chi Minh City (the former Saigon).  She will remain in Vietnam until late in the month, when she goes to Jordan for a UN leadership conference on disaster response.

It all sounds exciting, but frankly at the moment I feel miserable and lost, knowing that this chapter in our lives is ending.  However, I’m trying to focus on the positive–the fact that another is beginning–trying to be optimistic.  At the moment though, I feel like I’m in limbo–lost between two worlds–living out this semester until I can join S. is Asia around the first of May.  But basically I’m experiencing an overwhelming sense of dread–two months is a long time apart.  We did six weeks during the tsunami–that’s been our longest separation.

However, I have a wonderful family and friends and students who will occupy me.  My mother returns to the US from Brussels at the end of this month.  I look forward to that.  I only wish she were going to be back in time for my birthday.  Gosh, that sounds childish, but frankly I’m feeling fairly toddler-ish at the moment, trying to get my feet under me and regain my balance.  This whole learning to walk on two legs thing is not all it’s cracked up to be.  I’m like my nephew Reeves, who we feared for a while might crawl down the aisle to his own wedding.  But he has recently learned to get around all too well on two legs–toddling toward two–vertical all the way.

My students’ papers  about problematic places on campus are alerting me to university issues that genuinely concern me–the blatant unfairness of the meal plan all  campus  residents are forced to buy, not to mention the health hazards and abysmal living conditions that are epidemic in the dorms themselves.  And frankly I feel that something must be done, but I don’t know how to even begin addressing the innumerable instances of  disregard for students’ welfare.  I’d like to contact the local news media–the Lexington Herald Leader and, perhaps, channel 18, but suspect I should wait till the end of the semester to do so.  Someone clearly must take action on behalf of these kids.

However, in addition to realizing the university’s culpability in making life difficult for students, I did teach two great classes today–sessions during which we analyzed drafts of essays on overhead projectors.  In both instances the kids suggested that that kind of class activity proved instructive and asked to do more.  In my final class, both students whose papers we were supposed to discuss did not show up for the session.  This unfortunately derailed  each activity I had planned for the hour, so I let students leave early and instead met with a few one on one to discuss progress on their  drafts.  I only hope this interaction  was as helpful as the peer review sessions done earlier in each of my other classes.

At any rate, I’m now too tired to write anything more even remotely interesting, so I’m going to wrap this up and go to bed.  Insomnia is clearly not an issue for me these days–or nights, for that matter.

After spending the day with students in the library, running errands, and fighting with a  moody copy machine in the English Department, I’m tired and struggling with a headache.  I’m more than ready for this week to end.  Fortunately tomorrow is Thursday, my last day of classes till Monday.  Probably I sound pathetic–probably I am pathetic–not to mention irritable and bitchy and so, so sad that S. is leaving  for Asia on Sunday.  It’s going to be a long couple of months.  But thank God for Skype!  Without it I wouldn’t be able to survive the separation.  At least, it allows us to talk for free and even see one another via  web-cam.  So, rather than dwelling on the negative, perhaps, I should be thankful for the technology that will allow us to survive 2 months apart.

However, I don’t have much meaningful stuff to share tonight.  I’m too tired to create or use words inventively.  I need to call this quits and allow this to be my least inspired post to date.  It’s okay, right?  Will you try reading again on another day, when I feel more human and less like a neaderthal near death?

Today S. visited my classes at UK, as she had never seen me teach.  Plus, we realized this week would be her last opportunity to do so for quite some time–for over a year, at the very least.  She leaves for Bangkok and Hanoi on Sunday and won’t return to the US until I come back with her in early June–well after the spring semester has ended.

And although I’ll be beyond sad to see her leave, I thoroughly enjoyed her visit today.  I wanted her to watch me do what I do,  day in and day out, the routine of it all, the mundane details that in their ordinary way take on a charm and beauty of their own.  Plus, I so love what I do.  I revel in each and every student success and feel saddened by their setbacks and defeats.  Certainly, it’s not necessary or even normal to love students as thoroughly as I do.  However, I can’t help myself.  Clearly, I’m doing what I do best, the work I feel most passionate about, the job I enjoy so much, it hardly adds up to labor no matter how you do the math.  No matter the multiplication or division involved, teaching is always worth the effort.  Hopefully I’ll carry my abacus with me into old age and tally students successes for decades to come.

Yesterday I attended a family brunch that allowed my siblings to say goodbye to S. prior to her upcoming departure  for Bangkok and Hanoi this coming Sunday.  We gathered at Furlongs, where most ate eggs Benedict, omelets, or bananas foster French toast.  Because of my ongoing diet, I ordered none of the above, but enjoyed instead a grilled chicken salad with Cajun blue cheese dressing.  I’m learning to resist culinary temptation in social situations–something I feared myself unable to do two months ago.  For at least the first month of my eating and exercising regimen, I refused to enter a restaurant, afraid that I would devour forbidden foods,  fall off the dietary bandwagon  I’d strapped myself to 4 weeks before.  Since then, however, my resolve has intensified.  I’m determined to succeed.  I’m able to touch the forbidden fruit and not partake. 

At any rate, in addition to eating we discussed the benefits of brunch as social gathering– that no one needs to cook and that the event is limited to a couple of hours, at most, allowing one to fulfill other social obligations later in the day.  Plus, brunch is a semi-celebratory occasion.  It makes me feel I’ve done something special, something  “Sunday-ish,” maybe even semi-spiritual, if only in an out-to-lunch kind of way.

However, S. DOES leave on Sunday, which means we WILL be apart for 2 months, 2 months until I can join her in Hanoi at the end of the semester, hopefully during the first few days of May.  I look forward to the Vietnamese adventure itself but certainly not the two months home alone, away from the woman I love.  This coming Sunday will be brunchless, a far from celebratory occasion, as it begins an entirely other deprivation, one that only the arrival of May will satiate–no Cajun blue cheese dressing for me, plenty of blue, perhaps, but no cheese whatsoever on the menu.