Collecting SOGI Data In The Classroom

 I was handed a stack of forms to hand out to my students. I knew that it had to happen. They were "Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity" forms.

I don't know why the university is getting involved in the collection of such data. I had difficulty remembering several students' preferred pronoun, and I got called out for it. It was a very uncomfortable situation. Now the university is collecting this information. Maybe somebody will come up with a plan to manufacture name tags for each student that indicates his/her/their name and gender identity. That would make my job a lot easier.

I was given no instructions for handing out the forms. Handing them out presented a minefield for me to negotiate. Some students might have felt as though I --- a representative of the university--- was intruding by asking them to fill out the form in the first place.

I distanced myself from the form as much as I could. I announced that I had forms for students to fill out and I placed them on my lectern. 

"Do we have to fill them out?" 

There's always at least one in each class.

--- No. It is strictly voluntary.

Curiosity got the best of them, and so student got up and took a form. 

"Do I have to put my name on the form?"

If I said "no", I am sure that there would have been complaints that I encouraged students to remain in a gender closet rather than proclaim to the world their sexual proclivities. 

--- Do whatever you feel comfortable with.

I left the room, saying that I had to get something. I didn't want to be involved in the ordeal. I didn't want anything that I said to be misconstrued. 

That little exercise took all of twenty minutes for them to complete.Though I didn't read the questions, I saw that that they were numbered. Maybe some of them took the time to soul-search to answer the questions. 

I picked up the forms and gave them to a student to bring them to the office.

"Wait! I want to change an answer!"

Christ on a bike. 

I handed back the forms for everyone to take another shot at it.  Class time was just about over by the time everyone had finished, so I dismissed class as soon as I got the last questionnaire and put in the special envelope with my name on it. 

It has always been difficult for me to guess several students' gender identity based upon outward appearance. Last spring semester, one student resembled a sumo wrestler. Was that student a he, a she, a they, or a personal pronoun that I am unfamiliar with? For the rest of the semester I referred to the student as "that student". I didn't use the student's first name because there were three students with similar homophonic names: Jayden, Jadin, and Jadon, and I couldn't couldn't connect gender identity with the name or outward appearance. Worse, in another class, there was an Ashley, an Ashleigh, an Ashlee, and an Ashli Ashleigh, and it appeared that they represented four possibly different genders. It was maddening.

The federal government should put a limit on currently popular names, and require the name to reflect the person's gender.     

Anonymous Professor Doesn't Give a Flip about Evaluations II

I've said it before. I don't care about evaluations. The process is flawed. One year, a graduate assistant handed out a whole stack of blank evaluations, expecting students to take just one questionnaire and pass the stack on. 

That's not what happened. By the time the stack made it around the room and back to the graduate assistant, half of them were gone. (Only twenty-one completed forms were returned). The graduate assistant  estimated that the class had purloined about fifty blank evaluation forms. That explains how some teachers got five to ten more evaluations than they should have gotten from some classes. After that, pre-counted forms were given to graduate assistants in a separate envelope for each student. Even then, some profs still get too many evaluations from on class. This suggests that there are more  copies circulating around campus. 

Shenanigans aside, the whole idea of giving a bunch of ninnies input into how a class is run and how a teacher performs is asinine. Non-white profs, generally, get poor evaluations from predominantly white classes. The situation is so bad in our degree mill that the math and engineering departments don't even bother with student evaluations because most of the profs are Asians. 

When I returned to class after my sabbatical, I found a memo from Dr. Blipps taped to my door.

                                                 See me. 

I wanted to start the semester off on the right foot, but I didn't want the department head to think that I had turned over a new leaf or that a "new me" had emerged refreshed, chipper, chirpy, and eager to please after a summer and a semester away from campus. I waited a week to go to her office. I didn't want to raise expectations.

"Sit down. Read these," she said and handed me my evaluations from last  spring. "Read them here."

I met most of the criteria on the list.  

It was the comment section at the bottom of the evaluations pages that was so disturbing.

"The best prof ever!"

"I learned so much. I wish all of my other teachers were as      god [sic] as him."

"Easiest class!"

"Nice guy. His wife is s knockout" This was a reference to the enlarged photo of my wife that I put on my office wall. 

"Made me feel accepted."

"I actually learned something in this class."

"Not bad for an afternoon class."

And on and on. One effusive comment after another. 

"Is this a joke?" 

We said that in unison. 

Dr. Blipps wasn't amused. Nothing makes her happy. She quit giving me cr@p about the negative reviews a long time ago. Now she has something else to grouse about.

This is unbearable. Whatever I did in that class last spring I CANNOT repeat.

 

 

 

 

  

Married Faculty

I have mixed feelings about married faculty working in the same department.  Friction at home inevitably carries over to the workplace. 

There are ideological disagreements in the department. That's inevitable. I think that a course in English grammar should be requisite. 

Some subscribe to Noam Chomsky's belief that there exists a "language organ" hidden in the brain and that people "know" the rules of language without the benefit of instruction. Still others believe that students don't need to learn the rules of grammar because by the time they can talk, children have "internalized" the rules of grammar. Whatever that means. (Most of the faculty in this diploma mill's English department don't know the difference between a nominative absolute and a McDonald's Happy Meal).

These ideological clashes rarely amount to anything except an occasional snarky remark in the faculty lounge. I don't think that anyone cares enough to press further.

When the married faculty couples bring their problems to work, it affects the faculty morale. It also affects the power structure of the faculty when the faculty must arrive at a consensus on important department issues. Married faculty vote in blocks that disrupt the status quo. Should there be a coffee pot in the faculty lounge? Coffee with chicory or plain coffee? Should we celebrate faculty birthdays?

These things have far-reaching effects. It's the Butterfly Effect. Over time, they result in unpredictable consequences. Celebrating faculty birthdays transmogrified into the Kris Kringle Lovefest at Christmas time. I could see it coming.  That's why I stay out of the fray when it comes to a faculty vote.

If I can avoid it, I skip the faculty meeting when it's likely that there will be a vote on anything.  I don't like bugs, especially butterflies.

 

The Trash Can In the Faculty Mail Room

There's a trash can in the faculty mail room that's rarely emptied. I didn't give it much thought until I returned from sabbatical. I figured that one of the slacker graduate assistants had been assigned to empty it, but as can be expected, he/she/they/one of them never did. 

No big deal. The coffee pot in the faculty lounge goes unwashed until someone leaves it on overnight and it becomes charred. That's just one reason why I have my own Mr. Coffee in my office.

It's common to find the copy machine on the fritz because the previous user was too lazy to open the machine up and pry the jammed paper out. I bought my own black and white laser printer for this very reason. 

It's so tiresome to work with such inconsiderate people, especially when they are the very ones who proclaim that their roles as teachers is to elevate students' awareness of white privilege, inaccurate gender identity, climate change, and a host of other problems.

Maybe there should be a Jammed Copy Machine in the Faculty Office Awareness Day. That's a much more pressing problem than some of the other things that those damned awareness days are intended to call attention to. 

I was about to fire off a memo to Dr. Blipps, the department head, to suggest an Empty the Damned Trash Can Day when  a first year graduate assistant knocked on my door. She held a gaily wrapped package in her hand. 

"I think this is yours," she said.

--- What is it?

"It has your name on it." She held it out to me with both hands. "I don't know what it is, but it sure is heavy". 

---Where did you get it?

"It was in the trash can in the faculty mail room."

---Really?

"Yes, and the trash can is filled with faculty memos and personal memos to you from Dr. Blipps. Want me to bring them to you?" 

---No. No, no, no, I said.

I didn't want anyone to think that I read memos from anyone. 

---And put that gift thingy back in the circular file with it.

I could tell by the weight of it that it was another fruitcake. I don't need another door stop. 

 

Teaching Kiddie Literature

                                    Note: Any resemblance to persons living or dead may be a coincidence. 

We have too many Kiddie Literature teachers in this department. At the last count there were four of them. At one point there were six. The dean thought that hiring more would attract students to the English program. It worked. We got a lot of pointed-ears-and-no-neck football players who thought children's literature would be a breeze. 

Some of those courses were designed for the six year-old mind, which is okay if we're teaching six year-olds.

But we're not.

We are teaching adults who will graduate and become contributing members of society. (That's a tall order for some of the numpties that I've taught through the years, but that's the assumption).

A few years ago, yours truly taught a course in Children's Literature. I am qualified by the standards of the department: I am a former child, and I read "Peter Cottontail" and "Winnie the Pooh" when I was small. 

Half of the enrollees didn't show for the second class. They read the syllabus, and apparently, they didn't like where Wind in the Willows was headed. The themes scared them off. 

A Commentary on British Society, Animal Ettiquette, Self-Destructive Impulses. 

My favorite lecture was titled Patriarchy and Sexual Innuendo in Little Red Riding Hood. That got the class bible thumpers in huff, but it was fun to argue with them. Those who finished the class may have learned something.

It was a night class, and somebody invited Reverend Flavius  Smithers, the city's notorious God-botherer, to attend. What a blast that was. He said that I was perverting education. 

Nah. Sometimes you have to throw a monkey wrench into the way that people think. Sometimes it hurts, but nobody said that life going to be a weekend at Chuck E. Cheese.

Maybe they didn't like my take on Peter Cottontail. Beatrice Potter's book is the Communist Manifesto for children. 

Mr. McGregor is a wealthy land owner. The rabbits are the oppressed proletariat who barely get by in life. There are so many class power dynamics you'd have to be dead to miss them. 

Or just not show up for class. 

Cluster Hiring and DEI, etc.

Somebody nominated me to serve on a resnearch committee a few weeks ago. It turned out that resnearch should have been research as in "looking for something".

I didn't question the typo because in this degree mill anything is possible. They can search all they want,but please count me out. I won't serve on a cluster hiring committee. I'm not sure that I'm qualified to participate. I avoid anything associated with the word cluster, including department committees and faculty meetings. 

Cluster is an outcome for which the chances of something other than a disaster is 50/50 or less. Granted, the idea behind the cluster hiring is a noble one: to increase diversity in the ranks. I'm all for diversity. We need some fresh blood in this group and some more blood types in this department. 

Let someone else do that and get the blame for a bad hire. 

 

I Was Invited to Serve

I found out about the invitation when I snooped through someone's faculty mail box.  I was on a list of professors who were invited to serve on a snearch committee.

The word caught my eye. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered to read the memo. I was intrigued. There's always something new.

I'd seen that word before. Last spring semester I read about a call for "resnearch" papers. 

Re snearch? To snearch again?  As far as I know, I haven't snearched once, so I don't think I could do it twice. I mean, I could if I wanted to, but it doesn't sound like anything I'd really want to do. 

I won't respond to the invitation because I'll have to explain my refusal to serve, and that will only call attention to myself. I came close to being arrested for observing Talk Like a Pirate Day. It's better to ignore things like invitations to serve on any committee. Around here, committees are dart boards. Targets.  If a committees' suggestions are heeded, but things go wrong, everyone is roasted by another committee of blame throwers.

Thanks, but no. No snearching for me. It sounds dangerous.

 

My Colonized Classroom

                    

I don't understand most educational theories and practices. I didn't study the how of teaching. I studied the what of teaching. There's always something new to challenge the status quo. I'm tired of it.

Remember New Math? Was that a mess or what? 

Lots of self-direction, symbolic logic, and discovery learning. It worked. Some kids discovered that counting in base seven gave them headaches and turned away from mathematical computations more advanced than calculating  the number of days left in the school year. 

Now there's the concept of decolonization. The idea behind it is that the western way of doing things in a classroom is oppressive. Colonial. 

Some educators clamor for an end to it all. 

My classroom is a colony.

My students are held captive. They must show up for class. They must follow the syllabus and complete assignments on time.

I am an oppressor. A veritable despot. There are consequences for poor performance.

But I don't unfairly discriminate against any student.

I treat treat 'em all like dogs.