JCCC Department of English Blog

• Writing Center on the KU Edwards Campus 

Kathryn tells us that we now have tutors on the KUEdwards campus.

Tuesdays: 12 – 3, Jon Miller
Wednesday, 11-2, Cooper Lockwood

If you are teaching a class out there, you might want to let your students know.  We are located in the KU Writing Center.  Students have access to computers and supplemental materials in addition to some great tutoring!

• Ruth Randall Remembers the Start of Her Teaching Career: 

I knew exactly what it was to be a good teacher.  Good teachers have high expectations for all their students, they have clear objectives, they are prepared and organized, they engage their students, they are able to help their students look at issues from new perspectives, they show their students they care, and, of course, they are masters of their subject matter.  These are the things I knew before I walked into the classroom for the first time.  You can imagine my surprise when my students weren’t as thrilled to be in composition as I was to be teaching them.  I had prepared for class like a good teacher, and I had practiced my delivery many times.  For that first 50-minute session, I had 12 minutes assigned for introductions (30 seconds x 24 students).  I would take 10 minutes going over the syllabus, leaving 5 minutes for clarifications and questions.  I thought I would spend the next 10 minutes looking through the textbooks, explaining the importance of reading the assignments, and the next 8 minutes reading from the first chapter.  That left 5 minutes for me to talk about the next classroom assignment and to give them my expectations for the quality of work I expected.

I know all of you are laughing because, of course, we all know that students have very different timetables.  The introductions were more than twice my time allotment since I had asked them for more information than their names!  Less than half the students had textbooks, so I saved time on that portion of my plan.  After the introductions one student asked, “You won’t keep us here the entire class period today, will you?” As those who had more than a pencil shoved textbooks into their backpacks five minutes before the end of the class, I continued talking over the shuffle of papers.

As the classroom emptied and the next class filtered in, I picked up my well organized handouts and dejectedly walked out.  When my husband came home that evening, I greeted him with the announcement that I was a horrible teacher. I had visions of students writing on Rate My Professor, “Don’t ever take this teacher.  She does not know what she’s doing.”  The sad part of that was that I considered writing it myself.

By the end of that first semester, I did not consider myself a good teacher, but I didn’t give up, and I actually had a few students who told me they learned something.  I’m not sure they defined what that “something” was, but I felt hope for the next semester.

I continued teaching, and each semester brought me closer to the feeling that I was a good teacher; however, the definition of a good teacher changed.  I learned that I have to respect that not everyone has a passion for prepositional phrases or objects of infinitive phrases.  I learned that there are no original excuses for being absent.  I learned that when you have extra saliva drip onto the overhead projector, it’s magnified on the screen.  But the most important thing I learned is that if you’re passionate about your subject matter and you genuinely care for the students, they will consider you a good teacher and even share that on Rate My Professor.

From Maureen Fitzpatrick:

Summers & Series

What’s better than finding one fantastic book? How about finding a series of them! A great series can be a tightly plotted trilogy, a multi-volume saga, or a set of books that only ends when the author or main character dies. When we discover a literary world where interesting characters in complex situations make choices that reflect the world where we live (or where we wish we lived), it is a joy to be able to move into that literary neighborhood for as long as the stories last.

And summer is arguably the best season to sit down and read or reread the stories of our favorite fictional characters and communities. For me, few things beat discovering a new favorite mystery series – one with a hyper-observant detective paired with a slightly-slower but well-meaning partner, a twisting plot that keeps me guessing, and a tone that carefully balances the gritty with the witty. Great detective series are being written around the globe: British-style cozies, hardboiled detective novels, and procedurals are being published in almost any country you can name.

A few great series I recommend:

The Emmanuel Cooper Mysteries (South Africa)  by Malla Nunn (start with A Beautiful Place to Die)

Detective Kubu Mysteries (Botswana) by Michael Stanley (start with A Carrion Death)

Inspector Darko Dawson Mysteries (Ghana) by Kwei Quartey (start with Wife of the Gods)

The Karla Trilogy (United Kingdom by John LeCarre (start with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy)

What series would you recommend others spend their summer with?

BTW—if you are interested in international mysteries, join us at Café Tempo for lunch at 1:00 on Thursday, June 21. Read any mystery from any country and come to talk about murder and mayhem.

These are from Gwen Ifill of Washington Week in Review; not all (but over half) political/historical–but things as diverse as The Hunger Games and The Paris Wife.

http://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/content/summer-2012-reading-list?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=fanpage&utm_campaign=pbs