Two Feet In | Writing and the Institution

A brief lesson plan for the third paper of the 1303 semester

Dan Pink on Motivation (TED)

I'm already behind on my readings for my courses. I was able to skim through Folklore, completely missed Bibliography's assignments, and rushed through four essays for College Teaching, but managed to hide my lack of preparation there because of the format of the assignment (group summary for class discussion). This weekend I've tried to catch up on readings for Bibliography and on schedule for CT, but Dr Rothman of Bibliography has assigned each student about 6-8 hours of proofreading for a text he's editing, and of course I haven't begun yet. The problem of falling behind isn't one of scheduling, but one of priorities ... I chose not to read my assignments instead of being overwhelmed by them. My teaching sections are on course, essentially, though I'm constantly wondering if they're really learning anything, or are they simply go through some motion of writing, believing that they already know all they need to know and don't consider their learn...

Dear Representative Riddle, I was disappointed to receive your message of Friday 4 September (re: Obama Speech). I feel that your position is ill-founded on several reasons, and I especially feel it is beyond your responsibilities as an elected representative to encourage citizens to ignore any communication from an elected leader. I did not vote for Barack Obama in 2008, but I recognize that he is the legitimately elected president of the nation. As such, he feels he can use his bully pulpit to encourage students for whatever values he sees fit. Previous presidents have done this as well, and yet only now do we have this very irrational outcry, using words such as "brainwashing" and "indoctrination," when some talking heads on television even liken such a speech to Stalin's control of youth during the Soviet era. All is nonsense. I am an educator myself and have been for over six years. One of the concerns that many educators have is the inability of our...