26 septembre 2006
job hunting
i wonder if i should start job hunting again... i'm bored and i want to do teacher education, not undergrad babysitting...
19 septembre 2006
blah
why am i not writing here? because i don't know what to think. i feel so much like a graduate student, still. i teach 2 days a week, and the rest of the time, i go to a few meetings here and there and i work in my office from time to time... i am not sure what i'm doing, actually. i still have tons of things to do to get settled here, like getting a new driver's licence, new licence plates, parking permits, health insurance, car insurance, home insurance, stuff like that. i guess monday is my "real life" day. tuesday, i try to work in the office. wednesday, i prepare my courses and do nothing. thursday and friday mornings i teach, and then in the afternoon i try to work in the office. that's about it.
i drove to school today, instead of taking the streetcar + subway. it's much faster (15 to 20 minutes instead of 30 to 45 minutes) but i paid $12 for the parking!
ok, on a happier note, i found two nice photographs (tulips) to hang in my office. i'll also bring my huge world map and maybe the guggenheim museum picture too... it feels so... dull, still. and yesterday, i was down in the big liberal arts office to give my transcript to someone and took this opportunity to ask about getting some "stuff" like enveloppes, paper clips, etc. because i have nothing at all in my office... and the nice person gave me the bookstore catalog and told me to choose the stuff i wanted and he'd go get them for me! pencil sharpers, file organizers, tacks, post-its, markers, book holders, note books, staplers, erasers, ... ... it felt like christmas :)
one last thing: yesterday i sent an application to tesol to be on the publication's committee...
i drove to school today, instead of taking the streetcar + subway. it's much faster (15 to 20 minutes instead of 30 to 45 minutes) but i paid $12 for the parking!
ok, on a happier note, i found two nice photographs (tulips) to hang in my office. i'll also bring my huge world map and maybe the guggenheim museum picture too... it feels so... dull, still. and yesterday, i was down in the big liberal arts office to give my transcript to someone and took this opportunity to ask about getting some "stuff" like enveloppes, paper clips, etc. because i have nothing at all in my office... and the nice person gave me the bookstore catalog and told me to choose the stuff i wanted and he'd go get them for me! pencil sharpers, file organizers, tacks, post-its, markers, book holders, note books, staplers, erasers, ... ... it felt like christmas :)
one last thing: yesterday i sent an application to tesol to be on the publication's committee...
11 septembre 2006
job
i think that with time, i'll be able to make a difference in this program. i see now some of the limits, some of the restrictions i'll have to work with, but maybe within my department, with the courses that we do teach, at least, i'll be able to change a few things. i am not thinking that my job will be horrible or anything. i'm just disappointed because i realize that the people who hired me had no idea why they hired me (not me in particular, they just didn't know why they needed someone). the people i work with are nice, my office is very confortable, my teaching load really light, the benefits are excellent... and when i think of job offers some of my friends got, i know that i'm very lucky.
however. there's a big however. i want to be in teacher education. that's my specialty, my expertise, my research, my passion. so one day, i'll have to get a new job...
things i must work on:
- article for TQ about my dissertation (due this december)
- book about teacher education (due ?)
- small article for ET about caucuses (due in october)
- state-of-the art article for language teaching (due in march, not even started...)
- and now a book review, haha :) (due in january)
ps. i'll make this blog "private" very soon. so if you want to keep reading it, let me know, at misslulu at rogers dot com except if your name is xiaoye or kiara (you'll get some odd invitation from blogger and hopefully it'll work) ;)
however. there's a big however. i want to be in teacher education. that's my specialty, my expertise, my research, my passion. so one day, i'll have to get a new job...
things i must work on:
- article for TQ about my dissertation (due this december)
- book about teacher education (due ?)
- small article for ET about caucuses (due in october)
- state-of-the art article for language teaching (due in march, not even started...)
- and now a book review, haha :) (due in january)
ps. i'll make this blog "private" very soon. so if you want to keep reading it, let me know, at misslulu at rogers dot com except if your name is xiaoye or kiara (you'll get some odd invitation from blogger and hopefully it'll work) ;)
08 septembre 2006
day 2
the weird thing is that it's hard for me to think of myself as only a teacher and no longer a student. yesterday, when that lady was being stupid about starting class at 11:00, i should have acted as a professor, not as a TA. i should not let people give me orders, i should not be intimidated by people, i should not shut up during a meeting with the dean of engineering when the topic is esl students and i'm the expert. i must find a way to see myself as "just as good as they are." it'll be a long process.
i also feel that for now, i've been hired as an "image" of something but i'm not supposed to really do anything except teach and publish. my job description talks about leadership in this and leadership in that and revising the curriculum and upgrading the course and blah blah... but really, i don't think the esl instructors see me as something else than "just another esl instructor who knows nothing about nothing" and every time i make a suggestion, they say "oh, no, we've been doing things THAT way for many semesters and..." and they won't change. their excuses are either that "it works" so why change it, and also that "it's not university policy" so we just can't change it. for example, we all have to have exactly the same assignments at the same time, and we need to grade everything exactly the same way. i want to add an extra chapter? no can do! i want to penalized my students if they come late to class or miss class? no can do. i want to use different examples than those in the (british!) textbook? no can do!
something else is highly disturbing: the esl instructors see all their students as cheaters and liers. for example, we can't assigned them to write essays at home because "they'll ask someone else to write the essays for them." so we have to ask the students to write each essay (it's a composition class!) IN CLASS and then we initial EACH PARAGRAPH before they leave class and then they can revise the essay at home once and we only grade the revised essay. forget about the importance of revision! we can't ask them to revise the ideas but only to revise grammar. why bother about the ideas, the organization, the sentence structure, etc.?! another example is, we MUST all have our exams on the same exact day and we can't have exactly the same exam (but then we're supposed to grade the exams exactly the same way!) "because they'll memorize the questions on the exam and they'll tell their friends in other sections." etc. etc. etc. it's not like everyone is innocent until proven guilty, it's everyone is guilty, period! i absolutely hate that. on the one hand, we have to "treat them like adults" so we can't take attendance, and on the other hand, we treat them like kids and can't even ask them to write an essay at home because they'll cheat. right. this is so screwed up.
i also feel that for now, i've been hired as an "image" of something but i'm not supposed to really do anything except teach and publish. my job description talks about leadership in this and leadership in that and revising the curriculum and upgrading the course and blah blah... but really, i don't think the esl instructors see me as something else than "just another esl instructor who knows nothing about nothing" and every time i make a suggestion, they say "oh, no, we've been doing things THAT way for many semesters and..." and they won't change. their excuses are either that "it works" so why change it, and also that "it's not university policy" so we just can't change it. for example, we all have to have exactly the same assignments at the same time, and we need to grade everything exactly the same way. i want to add an extra chapter? no can do! i want to penalized my students if they come late to class or miss class? no can do. i want to use different examples than those in the (british!) textbook? no can do!
something else is highly disturbing: the esl instructors see all their students as cheaters and liers. for example, we can't assigned them to write essays at home because "they'll ask someone else to write the essays for them." so we have to ask the students to write each essay (it's a composition class!) IN CLASS and then we initial EACH PARAGRAPH before they leave class and then they can revise the essay at home once and we only grade the revised essay. forget about the importance of revision! we can't ask them to revise the ideas but only to revise grammar. why bother about the ideas, the organization, the sentence structure, etc.?! another example is, we MUST all have our exams on the same exact day and we can't have exactly the same exam (but then we're supposed to grade the exams exactly the same way!) "because they'll memorize the questions on the exam and they'll tell their friends in other sections." etc. etc. etc. it's not like everyone is innocent until proven guilty, it's everyone is guilty, period! i absolutely hate that. on the one hand, we have to "treat them like adults" so we can't take attendance, and on the other hand, we treat them like kids and can't even ask them to write an essay at home because they'll cheat. right. this is so screwed up.
07 septembre 2006
day 1
first teaching day today. i was so sick to my stomach this morning, i almost arrived late!
13 students showed up (my roster says 25), 8 of whom are from iran! i hate first weeks, when students come and go and you start building something with the students and then you have new students coming at the end of the second week... so far, the students seem nice.
the schedule is one 50-minute course one day and one 110-minute course another day. so we start at 10:10 for example, and end at 11:00. and today, first day, a b*tch came into my classroom at 10:57 and screamed "my class is starting at 11:00, you know, you need to get out of here!" i said "no, your class starts at 11:10 and my class ends at 11:00." she said she needed time to get her stuff ready and waited right next to me while i was finishing my class. i felt rushed and couldn't even answer my students' questions at the end. how rude. she'd better not do that again!
teaching 2 hours, tomorrow, will be tough. i've never liked that, and we have so much to cover i don't know how i'll do it.
13 students showed up (my roster says 25), 8 of whom are from iran! i hate first weeks, when students come and go and you start building something with the students and then you have new students coming at the end of the second week... so far, the students seem nice.
the schedule is one 50-minute course one day and one 110-minute course another day. so we start at 10:10 for example, and end at 11:00. and today, first day, a b*tch came into my classroom at 10:57 and screamed "my class is starting at 11:00, you know, you need to get out of here!" i said "no, your class starts at 11:10 and my class ends at 11:00." she said she needed time to get her stuff ready and waited right next to me while i was finishing my class. i felt rushed and couldn't even answer my students' questions at the end. how rude. she'd better not do that again!
teaching 2 hours, tomorrow, will be tough. i've never liked that, and we have so much to cover i don't know how i'll do it.
04 septembre 2006
odd stuff
there are tons of weird things at my university. one is that the course numbers do no mean anything. usually, 100-level courses are to be taken first, and then 200, and 300 and 400-level courses are for junior and senior undergraduates... and 500-level courses and above are for graduate students... but here, freshmen can take geography 690 their first year of school, and then the next course in the sequence could be geography 248. oddest thing in the world. numbers are assigned completely randomly.
another strange thing is the "service departments" that they have. the regular departments offer minors and majors, and you can graduate with a degree in information technology management, for example. but then they have 13 (THIRTEEN) service departments that offer course but not degrees! one of them is english! others are maths, history, psychology, geography, computer science, physics, etc. these departments only offer courses to students from other departments. for example a student in arts and contemporary studies has some options, like french or history or english options, and then they take courses in the french or history or english department. so basically, these service departments are seen as "secondary," and way less important than other, "real" departments, which means less money, less space, less respect, less power, etc. oddest thing in the world.
another strange thing is that they have "prerequisite" courses, like everyone else in the world, but they also have "antirequisite" courses, which means that if you take, say english 423 you cannot also take english 863 and vice-versa. which means that some courses are basically the same, which sounds like a waste of resources to me... except when you remember that there are between 60 and 150 students PER SECTION in those classes... i don't know why they wouldn't simply have different sections of the same course, but then maybe it's because the teachers who will teach those sections want to do their own stuff... oddest thing in the world.
these 60 to 150 students per section is another odd thing. they have the most complicated (dis)organisation of teaching assistants, marking assistants (we don't give GRADES here, we give MARKS), and other assistants whose names i can't remember (those who assist with exams, etc.). they have scientific formulas that take into account the number of students per sections, the number of assignments, the number of credit hours, the number of textbooks used, the number of sections, and the age of the teachers (nah, i'm kidding on that last one) and then they're given a certain number of hours when they can use assistants for certain things. so they don't have a system like in the us, where graduate students become teaching assistants and teach hundreds of students on their own so that there can be more sections of the same course with fewer students in each section. craziest thing in the world!
and THEN, teachers who can have assistants must actually post their job offers online through a special system, and people from our university but also from other universities and the community can apply for the position and the teachers have to read tons of CVs and interview the potential assistants and hire them and that's another big mess because some are our own students but some are not. the reason why few of the assistants are actually our own students is because less than 2% of our student population are graduate students and few teachers want to hire undergraduate assistants. craziest thing in the world!
ok, last one for tonight: in the us, people say "bilingual" as bye-lin-gwal, in 3 syllables, but here, in canada, they say bi-lin-giu-al, in 4 syllables. haha! funniest thing in the world!
another strange thing is the "service departments" that they have. the regular departments offer minors and majors, and you can graduate with a degree in information technology management, for example. but then they have 13 (THIRTEEN) service departments that offer course but not degrees! one of them is english! others are maths, history, psychology, geography, computer science, physics, etc. these departments only offer courses to students from other departments. for example a student in arts and contemporary studies has some options, like french or history or english options, and then they take courses in the french or history or english department. so basically, these service departments are seen as "secondary," and way less important than other, "real" departments, which means less money, less space, less respect, less power, etc. oddest thing in the world.
another strange thing is that they have "prerequisite" courses, like everyone else in the world, but they also have "antirequisite" courses, which means that if you take, say english 423 you cannot also take english 863 and vice-versa. which means that some courses are basically the same, which sounds like a waste of resources to me... except when you remember that there are between 60 and 150 students PER SECTION in those classes... i don't know why they wouldn't simply have different sections of the same course, but then maybe it's because the teachers who will teach those sections want to do their own stuff... oddest thing in the world.
these 60 to 150 students per section is another odd thing. they have the most complicated (dis)organisation of teaching assistants, marking assistants (we don't give GRADES here, we give MARKS), and other assistants whose names i can't remember (those who assist with exams, etc.). they have scientific formulas that take into account the number of students per sections, the number of assignments, the number of credit hours, the number of textbooks used, the number of sections, and the age of the teachers (nah, i'm kidding on that last one) and then they're given a certain number of hours when they can use assistants for certain things. so they don't have a system like in the us, where graduate students become teaching assistants and teach hundreds of students on their own so that there can be more sections of the same course with fewer students in each section. craziest thing in the world!
and THEN, teachers who can have assistants must actually post their job offers online through a special system, and people from our university but also from other universities and the community can apply for the position and the teachers have to read tons of CVs and interview the potential assistants and hire them and that's another big mess because some are our own students but some are not. the reason why few of the assistants are actually our own students is because less than 2% of our student population are graduate students and few teachers want to hire undergraduate assistants. craziest thing in the world!
ok, last one for tonight: in the us, people say "bilingual" as bye-lin-gwal, in 3 syllables, but here, in canada, they say bi-lin-giu-al, in 4 syllables. haha! funniest thing in the world!
03 septembre 2006
last days
classes start on tuesday. i'm enjoying my last days without anything to grade or worry about... except that i am not ready at all to teach my first class. the good thing is that i only teach on thursdays and fridays... but we have our first esl meeting on tuesday, and since i'll be the "chief" of this thing, i should really try to prepare something so i don't look too much like an idiot.
ok, story time: a couple of weeks ago, there were two big "placement days" for our part-time (community) students. representatives from all departments were gathered around tables and students would go around and talk to the people in the departments they were interested in taking courses from. very often, they were given placement tests and then were assigned to different classes and levels according to the test results. there also were people from the esl sub-department, placing students in our grammar, writing, culture, and pronunciation courses and i was helping. i was sitting next to mary at a table and learning as much as i could and then tentatively helping with the "easiest cases," and other esl people were sitting at other tables. at some points, when there were fewer students to take care of, some of the other teachers would come and talk to mary about certain problems... and each time, mary would introduce me, since i'd never met any of the other esl people before. ...
... and each time, these other esl teachers would say, when mary introduced me, "oh, you're dr. lulu?! i thought you were just a student helping mary..."
as soon as i get my next paycheck (in 2 weeks, dammit), i'll have to go spend a LOT of money on clothes that look a little more professional, and makeup, and i don't know what else... because right now, i look like a freshman right out of highschool and that's NOT good!
ok, story time: a couple of weeks ago, there were two big "placement days" for our part-time (community) students. representatives from all departments were gathered around tables and students would go around and talk to the people in the departments they were interested in taking courses from. very often, they were given placement tests and then were assigned to different classes and levels according to the test results. there also were people from the esl sub-department, placing students in our grammar, writing, culture, and pronunciation courses and i was helping. i was sitting next to mary at a table and learning as much as i could and then tentatively helping with the "easiest cases," and other esl people were sitting at other tables. at some points, when there were fewer students to take care of, some of the other teachers would come and talk to mary about certain problems... and each time, mary would introduce me, since i'd never met any of the other esl people before. ...
... and each time, these other esl teachers would say, when mary introduced me, "oh, you're dr. lulu?! i thought you were just a student helping mary..."
as soon as i get my next paycheck (in 2 weeks, dammit), i'll have to go spend a LOT of money on clothes that look a little more professional, and makeup, and i don't know what else... because right now, i look like a freshman right out of highschool and that's NOT good!
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