Ouch!

From a student's review of a paper on math education:

They gave a good example using mutilation...

Another example of the failure of spell checkers.

Day 486 -- Summit Park

Here I am at the weather observation station in Summit Park. It's a bit chilly around here. Although frankly, I kind of doubt it's quite this snowy on November 13.

Day 486 was actually yesterday. I got up and ran four miles in what was pretty good weather for November. I was pretty tired, so I was already thinking during the run that I would take today off. And after being up late last night, I had no trouble sleeping in this morning.

And why was I up late last night, you ask? I was giving an evening exam. My usual exam period is 6 - 9 pm, but I don't expect my students to take three hours. Most come at 6 and are done by 7:30 or 8. Some come later. So they can start at 7 and usually they are done by 9. But last night, one student took from 6 all the way to 10. Another student started later, but also stayed until 10. I think that it actually hurt that there were two of them. Each one could say, "Well, as long as that guy is here, I'm not really keeping Professor Jogger late."

The four hour student probably did actually use the time. I know this guy -- he comes in for help a lot -- and he does take a lot of time. Unlike many math students, he can sometimes spot his own mistakes and correct them. So I imagine that he improved his score between 9 and 10. The other student probably didn't. He hasn't been coming to class regularly, and he hasn't been doing the homework, and consequently he didn't know what he was doing. No amount of extra time on the exam was going to change that. But since I didn't want to kick the first student out, I didn't kick the other out, either.

Classroom visitation

We're all busy visiting each other's classrooms at my university, as part of the peer review process. Both of my classes have been visited, and I have visited two other professors' classes. I've been thinking a little about the peer review process.

The first class that I visited was the Discrete Math class of one of my younger colleagues. I've visited his class before, and I expected this one to be good. I wasn't disappointed. It started out fine. I'm making little notes to myself about what I observed, and mentally sorting them for relevance. My philosophy of peer observation is that I don't want to comment on anything that is (a) a reasonable choice, even if not the one that I would have made, (b) peculiar to the particular lesson that I happened to see, or (c) out of the instructor's control. In other words, I'm trying to limit myself to reasonably constructive criticism. Anyway, after about half the class, he started in on a complicated proof of an important theorem. I knew this was going to be tough, and I was simply amazed at how well he pulled it off. He walked the students carefully through it, explained his thinking as he went along, got them to contribute key ideas, dealt with the inevitable side tracks, and just generally did it so much better than I have ever done it that I was amazed. I knew he was good, but this visit convinced me that he is fantastic.

The second visit didn't go quite so well. The professor I was observing is about the same level as I am. In fact, she's got one year seniority. Our relationship has always been tepid at best. And I knew from prior experience working with her that she isn't likely to take any advice from me at all. I'm not sure if she never takes advice from anyone, but she certainly doesn't from me. So I knew going into it that it was a waste of time. I wasn't going to see anything so terribly bad that it would be worth writing up to put in her file, and I wasn't going to come up with any helpful suggestions that she would actually take. The class itself was fine. I did come up with a couple of suggestions that I might have passed on to a different colleague, but with this person, I'm not going to bother.

I didn't think that the two days when I was observed went very well. They weren't total disasters, but I just felt kind of off. Only one of the observers has given me feedback, and it was more positive than I felt. I was flattered, but I didn't really feel like it was an accurate reflection of what I'd done.

So, what is the purpose of peer review? Can you learn much about a fellow instructor from sitting in on one class? You could certainly tell if they were terrible, but we don't have any terrible instructors in our department (at least, not as far as I know.) Can we really tell the good from the great? I don't know. I suppose it's better than never having anyone observed in action, but I don't know if we are really generating a clear picture of anyone's strengths and weaknesses from one visit a semester.

Back to Work

We don't start classes until after Labor Day here in Wisconsin, but today was the first official day of contract, and the first all-day meetings. Somebody at a different college told me years ago that the real purpose of these opening meetings was to wake up the older faculty, so they'd know that classes were actually on the way.

As these things go, they were fine. I long ago gave up on the hope that any opening-day speaker would totally transform my teaching. At this point, I'll settle for being reasonably interesting and not saying anything patently stupid, which these speakers both managed. Each in their own way, they challenged us to think about who our students are and how well we are serving them in and out of the classroom. That's about the best I can expect.

One funny little quirk. The first speaker wore a lapel microphone, so the first thing that she did was to test it, and then to explain to us that for today's students, you don't want to stand behind a podium. She then stood there for an hour and a half, next to the podium, and gave her talk. Well, I'm sure that if there had been any Millenial Generation students in the audience, they would have appreciated it.

Anyway, I have a couple of short meetings tomorrow on technology, and then a couple of days off, then departmental stuff on Friday. And classes start on Tuesday, September 4. I think it will be a good semester. I'm looking forward to it.

Beginnings

Two important kick-offs today.

First of all, today was the day that I start my eighteen-week training program for the Mad City Half Marathon in Madison in May. I'm psyched. Of course, I didn't actually follow the program today. See, the program has long runs on Sunday, and cross training (in my case, the exercise bike) on Monday. But I didn't do a long run yesterday, so it seemed a bit silly. So I ran 5.3 miles, effectively completing a long run of 9.3 miles from yesterday. After all, there was only a little over 12 hours between yesterday's run and today's. Anyway, I promise that I will start the program tomorrow, and that I will do my best to get in a long run (8 miles) on this weekend, and that if I do, I will cross train next Monday.

The other big kick-off was the first day of school. I met all of my math classes, and they went pretty well. I have two sections of Calc II. We mostly talked about what they should know from Calc I, and I did some examples to highlight some places where I'm planning to be picky about the notation. The classes seem to be pretty game for the first day. They participated pretty well, and a few even laughed at my jokes.

The other class I had today was Modern Algebra. That class has only eight students. That will make the grading easier, but it doesn't look particularly good for our deparment. Since this course is required for the math major, it pretty much means that we only have eight majors who are at the right point in their program. That's certainly down from other years. Two years ago, a colleague had something like 30 on the first day. Last year, I was closer to 20. Eight is not much.

Of the eight, I've had five before in class, so getting to know their names won't present much of a challenge. Of those five, I confidently predict that four will do pretty well. The fifth will have a struggle. But perhaps with some hard work and extra help, we can get him through it.

I have one more class to meet for the first time, and that's the Leadership class. I have no idea what to expect from that course. I'll probably post tomorrow about how it goes.