Post Yuletide Blowout Fallout

The warm, grey December weather perfectly suits my recovery mood from the party last night.  We had a great time, but good times require compensation.  So, Kin* and I are watching The Good Wife, Season One, while we wait for the grey to abate.  Our plan for tonight?  Sushi and Dave's with E and Z.  Then, tomorrow, I leave for Huntsville to see my precious godsons and my best friend.  I'll also be checking in with my friends at Tony's Little Italy--some of the best authentic Italian in Huntsville.  I worked there for several months in the spring when I was looking for a job after getting my Master's degree.  An interesting place that is just begging for some fiction writing--something that will be happening very soon.

I'm ready for a break, though.  Ready for some days when it'll just be me and my laptop, writing stories so that I'll be ready for Craft of Fiction in the spring.  Yes, I'll be teaching composition and taking classes--the spring semester will be crazy--but I'm in desperate need of learning something new that will help me focus on writing.  Sometimes we teachers get buried in grading so much that we forget why we became teachers in the first place--to learn and teach--because we can only teach when we learn at the same time.

Speaking of teaching, I received a partial copy of the student evals of my classes today.  I get the full copy when school starts back.  Overall, they were positive, but I wish the students would write more comments than they do.  It's difficult to make the class better when they only answer in the affirmative and not in the why or how.  Unfortunately, that's par for the course these days.  A teacher asks a question, and the students answer the what if that what is explicit.  However, if the teacher asks why or how, the students don't know how to analyze enough in order to answer.  I wish I could teach the students how to analyze and answer more implicit questions, but the students can only learn to do that if they actually read the assignments.  Ah, the life of a teacher.  One of my students actually wrote a paper discussing how teachers should be paid according to how well their students perform.  While I understand his point-of-view in that this might prevent bad teachers from entering classrooms, I told him that he must also account for the fact that teachers can only teach those who wish to be taught.  Now, that's a thought: students in school that actually are there to learn.

Hmm, so this weather does help with writing.  Or maybe it's this format that's helping.  Whatever it is, I'm planning on continuing.  Thanks for listening.


*All names are changed to protect the not-so-innocent.