Among the myriad things we, teachers, do in July one is (re-)reading the set texts for the coming academic year and, in some cases, seeing the corresponding film adaptation (on DVD, self-financed) to check whether it might be of use to complement the book (also self-financed). I personally enjoy very much doing research on film […]
This cruel month of May is turning out to be quite peculiar in my academic life as regards doctoral dissertations. Today is 23, and in the three weeks of May I’ve gone through: an examining board for a dissertation supervised by someone else, the defence (or viva) of the second PhD dissertation I’ve supervised, the […]
A student in our Department has bragged (in a classroom, before a teacher and classmates) that he has passed an English Literature subject (mine) with a high mark without having read any of the set texts. How? Quite possibly, he has attended classes regularly, seen film adaptations and downloaded guides to the set texts. Yes, […]
Three of my first year students were supposed to offer a dramatised reading of Pygmalion’s Act IV. In it, after her successful impersonation of a lady at a posh party, Eliza quarrels bitterly with her teacher Higgins because she thinks he’s not considered in depth what’s to become of her once this odd experiment is […]
This is a regular teaching day for me this semester: 8:30-10:00, 20th Century Literature (compulsory), I face my sleepy-eyed, unmotivated first year students: 50% attendance, of those in class 50% don’t take notes (apparently they don’t even bring paper to class) and 50% don’t even bother to conceal their boredom (the ones not taking notes […]
I spent 4 hours last Friday in a seminar on formative continuous assessment applied to university teaching. The seminar, run by Joan Simón, a Pharmacy senior lecturer at UB (http://joansimon.nom.es/cms3/), was very good, and served partly as a therapy session, which we, first year teachers down in the trenches, need badly. As usual, though, I […]
One of my first year students eats during my class and I scold her publicly. I tell her this is rude, she should have had breakfast before 8:40. The class goes well but I must stop now and then to ask for silence. I have two clever-looking students who oscillate non-stop between chattering like old […]
I read on the train –how/where else?– John Berger’s brief novel From A to X: A Story in Letters (2008) and I’m moved as I hadn’t been in a long time by what I can only describe as its exquisite prose. Some readers, as I see in Amazon, are annoyed by Berger’s vagueness about where […]
An angry student comes to my office to tell me how badly I do my job because, in her view, her paper has been unfairly awarded an appallingly low grade. Yes, a 2 is low indeed. I agree. As the temperature in the room rises I try explain to her, not as calm as I […]
Remember my last post? Now, this is what happens on my first day of the second semester this year 2010-11, third of the global financial crisis. I find that I must teach my first year 20th Century Literature class in a gigantic classroom which holds about 40 more seats than required (88 students registered, actual […]