Reality is setting in and it's time to start thinking about the fall semester. My wife and I are going to Santa Fe this weekend to see Mozart's Don Giovanni and eat some proper food. Then some friends of ours are coming in from out of town to spend the better part of a week with us. Then it's off to Cleveland for another friend's wedding. Then classes begin. Since I've been at TTU, the faculty have been required to report the week before classes start: we'd show up on Monday, have faculty meetings, TA boot camp (more on this later), etc. and then classes would start a week later--the next Monday. The week offered a nice transition period from the freedom of summer to the craziness that is the first few weeks of school. This year, we report on Monday and classes start on Thursday.
All of this is to say that I don't have all that much time between now and the first day of school to get my act together. I'm teaching two sections of aural skills III, my current trends in music theory class (more on this later, I hope) and a seminar through the Honors College designed for (non-music major) freshmen (it's called a First-Year Experience course; more on this later, too, maybe) that's an introduction to Performance Studies. I'm really looking forward to this semester for a variety of reasons. I like the classes I'll be teaching quite a lot and I'll only be on campus on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Every year it seems like my syllabi get longer and longer. As a state institution, we're required to put all kinds of language in our syllabi about religious holidays, students with disabilities, the last day to drop a class, etc. My theory pedagogy syllabus last year I think ballooned to about 15 pages. As I see it, this is all good: the syllabus basically acts like a contract between you and the student. If something goes wrong, you can simply point to the syllabus and say "this is what we agreed upon at the beginning of the semester. It says the policy is ______."
This year (for reasons that I won't get into) I'm adding a class participation rubric. Class participation has long been one of the slipperiest things to assess and it's gotten me into trouble on a couple of occasions. It seems to me that participation should be relatively straightforward, especially at the graduate level. Do the readings, analysis, whatever; come to class; talk about it.
I found a rubric online from which I am borrowing heavily in the creation of mine. Here's a link. I like that it incorporates attendance: obviously you can't participate if you're not in class. I also like that it stresses that students must demonstrate these criteria. I had a student once ask me if nodding in agreement with his peers constituted class participation. Now I have something to point to and mark in the grade book. The rubric also distinguishes between students who contribute freely and those who must be called on; it distinguishes between factual recall and analysis and synthesis of the material.
So it's one more page on the syllabus, but hopefully it will alleviate some aggravation (for me and the students!) in the long run.
All of this is to say that I don't have all that much time between now and the first day of school to get my act together. I'm teaching two sections of aural skills III, my current trends in music theory class (more on this later, I hope) and a seminar through the Honors College designed for (non-music major) freshmen (it's called a First-Year Experience course; more on this later, too, maybe) that's an introduction to Performance Studies. I'm really looking forward to this semester for a variety of reasons. I like the classes I'll be teaching quite a lot and I'll only be on campus on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Every year it seems like my syllabi get longer and longer. As a state institution, we're required to put all kinds of language in our syllabi about religious holidays, students with disabilities, the last day to drop a class, etc. My theory pedagogy syllabus last year I think ballooned to about 15 pages. As I see it, this is all good: the syllabus basically acts like a contract between you and the student. If something goes wrong, you can simply point to the syllabus and say "this is what we agreed upon at the beginning of the semester. It says the policy is ______."
This year (for reasons that I won't get into) I'm adding a class participation rubric. Class participation has long been one of the slipperiest things to assess and it's gotten me into trouble on a couple of occasions. It seems to me that participation should be relatively straightforward, especially at the graduate level. Do the readings, analysis, whatever; come to class; talk about it.
I found a rubric online from which I am borrowing heavily in the creation of mine. Here's a link. I like that it incorporates attendance: obviously you can't participate if you're not in class. I also like that it stresses that students must demonstrate these criteria. I had a student once ask me if nodding in agreement with his peers constituted class participation. Now I have something to point to and mark in the grade book. The rubric also distinguishes between students who contribute freely and those who must be called on; it distinguishes between factual recall and analysis and synthesis of the material.
So it's one more page on the syllabus, but hopefully it will alleviate some aggravation (for me and the students!) in the long run.