A Drupaling I Go

I'm in the process of setting up a new site that I think will become my primary academic blog now. I'm not quite ready to let go of this one. I've got a big learning curve on Drupal. Come on over and give me some tips on how things are done in the Drupaler's world, though. As soon as I get back from visiting my family and get caught up a little on grading, I'll get some discussions going...

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Cs

Patti and I almost missed our plane to New York because we spent about an hour sitting in traffic on the Pontchartrain bridge. They were working on the bridge, of course, given that about a year and half ago it was just a little snack for big, bad Katrina. I've been living in this reality where things happen differently now all this time, but somehow I forgot. Last year I did a much better job of planning my trip to the airport. Last year I knew things were bad and not getting better. This year I forgot. I've had so much normal life force itself upon me lately that I forgot we still can't force Katrina's aftermath into any kind of normal routine.

Then we got past the bridge and skirted the city to make our way to the airport. I knew that things were in shambles. I'd spent a lot of time looking at the shambles. Still, the plowing up of one person's shambles while someone else's still just sits there empty and irreparable is almost too hard a thing to take in. Even Walmart is abandoned. Walmart. I don't know why that bothers me so much, but you have to know that if Walmart can't bounce back the little guy doesn't stand a chance.

I had only recently returned from a conference in Biloxi where it was the absence of a beachfront Waffle House that irked me. Don't ask me why. I'm just weird that way. I've always been drawn to the things that were a little out of place to begin with, and I loved that Waffle House that looked out at the water in one direction and the antebellum homes in the other.

People like to talk about the sense of place in the South, and I can tell you that when absolutely every familiar landmark is gone or changed or damaged, it physically disrupts every fiber of your identity, every ounce of being in you that understands who you are. I no longer have an accurate map in my head of entire towns I've known my whole life. It feels like amnesia.

I was glad to meet Daisy in New York. I very much appreciated her discussion of Katrina and the New Orleans bloggers--the way the blogs filled in where the mainstream media failed, the way people have continued to blog as a means of healing and of activism.

It's so easy to forget. If you even drive a few miles away where things are better, you can forget just how far New Orleans and many other coastal towns have to go. It's far easier to forget than to remember, but we can't afford to forget. Next year CCCC will be in New Orleans, but it will be in an area that will appear to be okay, mostly. "The Isle of Denial," people are calling it. Don't let it fool you. Don't come and go from New Orleans without getting out to see the real story. It will, even a year from now, be far from over.

The Horror! The Horror!

Looks like people are noticing and talking about (whining, lamenting, bemoaning) the heavy teaching loads at community colleges. Scott Jaschik's Inside Higher Ed piece is interesting to me in that I see from it I'm at the shocking edges of the shock zone of out-lying difficult-to-believe statistics. Now I know why people always gasp when I say how many sections and students I teach each semester.

Not only has the norm started to greatly exceed desirable levels, but
significant numbers of instructors are teaching well above the mean. The
survey found that more than 20 percent of writing instructors
at community colleges teach between 111 and 130 students each semester.
And 9 percent report teaching 131 to 150 students a semester.

These numbers sound just plain easy to me.

Of course this is a travesty. Of course the students are not getting the best instruction they could. Of course we need to all be fighting to bring the course loads and class sizes down.

Yet.

It's also interesting to me that the very people who teach argument are often the first to address an issue from only one perspective.

There are factors beyond the ideals of the best possible instruction. This is also an economic issue. Who/how/where do the funds come in to accomplish reducing work loads for instructors? We're not talking about chump change. Not only would my school need to hire more people to bring down class sizes, we'd also need new facilities. Lots of expensive new facilities, buildings which would in turn necessitate the aquisition of new property.

Of course that money should be invested in our community colleges. Of course it's worth it to build new buildings and hire new teachers and adopt more technologies and bring our numbers closer to ideal or even to average.

Yet.

It's a poor area, a rural area in which many students struggle just for gas money to get to class.

Do we want to increase tuition? Do we want to reduce salaries? Do we want to increase taxes?

Out of which turnip do we extract the blood to make our preferred move?

Part of the mission of the community college is to bring education to the home grown, to those who might not otherwise be able to afford a college degree. We have to consider the economy of this reality even as we reach to improve the circumstances through which we teach.

Community college teachers for the most part, I believe, are very grounded in their realities, and they work very hard to give their students the best education they can in the conditions they have. Like my colleagues, I too like to vent about my lot in life, but I am constantly reminded that this is the life I chose. I serve my purpose, and I do my job, and I do the best I can where I am and with what I have to work with. It's hard work. It's often frustrating because I know I can't always do things the way I think they ought to be done, and I don't always have control over decisions that I think ought to be made one way or another.

It's also very rewarding, though, and people who don't see it that way should probably choose to do something else.

Work for change. Work to raise awareness. Work to promote proper funding for our community colleges. Just don't whine about the stupid administrators who don't understand how they ought to be staffing our classes without stopping to consider the financial difficulties involved.

The Cs

I had a great time in New York. I went to lots of sessions, back-to-back, marathon style without even stopping for lunch. I hope to be blogging about them in the coming days, but for now I'm recovering, catching up on grading, and trying to find my focus for the jobs at hand again.

It was especially good to see the bloggers--Mike, Joanna, Dennis, Bradley, Clancy, Daisy, Timna, Lanette, Sharon (the other), et al. And does it count that I saw the back of Collin's head while I listened to Clancy speak?

I also got to see a little of New York. This is a pretty big deal for a woman from South Mississippi. Let me just say about this that I challenge any of you to keep up with Nell Ann Pickett. She might be 72, but those little legs keep going and going. I think we walked through all of Manhattan on Saturday. Then we went to the Metroplitan Museum and kept walking at the end of the day. A good time was had by all.

See You in New York!

If I've managed to successfully set myself up with free file hosting, you should be able to click here for a pdf of my Cs handouts--or what I have as of now.