summertime

I would also have accepted "What is the temperature in ricki's office right now?" as the question for that answer

(Alex, I'll take "miserable retrofitted crap buildings" for $800, please.)

The air conditioning in the faculty-part of my building is apparently hosed. It slowly crept up last week, and was 31* C (I have a thermometer in here I swiped from my lab and it's all in Celsius, so I always have to run the temperature through Google to convert it). (Truth be told, it's dropped a whole degree C since this morning - perhaps because I opened the window).

We currently are fighting with the physical plant and the health and safety people over several issues.

We still do not have functional smoke detectors, and NOTHING (neither fire nor smoke) in one part of the building (first-floor faculty offices). This is surely a violation of some law.

We went out and bought smoke detectors but were told THAT was a violation of the law, that if we put them up, we would be liable (I suppose, if one fell down and hit someone on the head?) and that they weren't hooked in to any centralized system, so "no one would know" if the building caught fire (My response: Oh, and ten faculty and staff members standing out in the parking lot, calling the local fire and rescue on their cell phones isn't notification?)

We were told "there is no money in the budget" for this.

Again, I observe: this is surely a violation of some law.

I don't tend to go all activisty about a lot of things, but I've already warned my secretary that if fall semester starts and there's no motion towards us getting smoke detectors, I AM putting a statement in my syllabus warning my students. And I don't care if I catch flack for it - the students deserve to know.

Hey, it's down to 29.5* C. Dare I hope they actually fixed the a/c, rather than (as they have said about eight times before) "We're waiting for a part to come in." (Okay, I can believe that the first time. But the second time - six weeks later - and the third time - even after that, no. If the part takes that long you SEND someone to go get it. [and I doubt our system was made in Mongolia or somewhere, even given the tendencies to low-ball state funded projects]).

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All that said - I do enjoy teaching in the summer. The students seem more alert (Could it be that most of the students I have this summer - most summers - have merit scholarships or are high school students wanting to get a leg up on college, so they're not working a 40 hour week to pay off their new truck?). They also seem younger, but that's fun - especially in my non-majors class, they're not afraid/not too cool to laugh at the corny jokes I make. And they seem to enjoy the demonstrations, and they ask questions - and I just generally feel more of a rapport with them.

And I gave a short test the end of last week and had more perfect scores (on that first test) than I did ALL of last semester.

And today, I did a short demonstration to model a cell process, and I overheard one of the girls in the class (and this was one of the 17 year old high school students, so I think I can get away with calling her a "girl") say that "I never understood that before! Now I get it!" So that's good.

And again: student attitudes affect faculty attitudes. I'm a lot more willing to keep knocking myself out with activities and demonstrations and looking-neat-stuff-up when the class responds, than I am when I'm met with:

a. 1/3 of the class failing to show
b. people looking bored or rolling their eyes
c. people sending text messages in class even though they're supposed to be discussing

I am really coming to believe, more and more, that class attitude has at least as great an effect on class outcome as prof attitude does: I taught my two classes last semester Exactly. The. Same. as I had in the fall, and yet - in the fall I got moderate to lousy evaluations. And lots of complainey comments: "the demonstrations in general bio were juvenile" (oh, please, get over yourself. If you can't enjoy being a little juvenile in the name of making learning interesting, there's probably little you enjoy). "Too much work" "Expected too much of us" etc., etc.

In the spring - changing VERY little - I got really good evaluations. "Wouldn't change a thing about this class, it was great" "I learned a lot" "It was fun"....those kind of things.

Which actually is a valuable lesson for me - I tend to live and die by student comments. I have actually put my head down on my desk (after closing my door and making sure it was locked) and crying quietly after a few comments I've read.

But if I can go from "The worst prof I've ever had" (not an actual comment but what I felt from some of the past ones) to "This class was so great, I can't think of anything to change" (which WAS an actual comment) without my changing anything substantially...well. Maybe I don't suck so badly, after all.

(I tend to be excessively self-critical. So much so that I was wondering, recusively, about the really GOOD students I've had in the past - most of whom volubly expressed how much they learned, how good the class was, how interesting a teacher I was [and this was after grades were in, so it wasn't just softsoap] - whether it was just that they liked learning so much that they'd be that positive about anyone. Or, on the other hand, do I weight their comments more because they're the ones who really care? Or is it that they could learn and enjoy a class even if it were taught by someone with a voice like Peter Lorre and an attention span like Cookie Monster?

I don't know. I tend to go back and forth between: Pay attention to what the outstanding students say, because they really care and Discount what they say because they are really enthusiastic and probably love all their classes.)

But - if comments can vary that much between two semesters where everything else is mostly the same - maybe it's NOT me after all. Maybe I'm a decent-to-better-than-decent teacher, and some years I just get stuck with a few people whose attitudes tend to drag the class down.