Light at the End . . . .

I was walking toward the "man"door to go into the garage from the house when I glanced toward the front room and the light coming through the peep-hole caught my eye. It was late afternoon; no, actually it was early evening since the sun is now dropping and not gone till near 8:00 p.m. and it is going down very much north of here. Our front door faces the north. Anyway, I've never photographed the peep-hole before.

I have been grading student essays ALL day, even stayed home from church this morning so I could get a good run at them. It was near midnight when I stopped and have completed reading all of the "next-to-the-last writing project." I guess I'm seeing some light at the end of the tunnel.

I only have one more essay from each student to read, comment on, and write the grade earned.

This last batch of essays is part of an "assessment" project involving every class in the "Basic Composition" course. We're one step above "Basic Writing" and one step below "Freshman Composition." The State of California requires lots of assessing of "Student Learning Outcomes" (SLOs) to determine whether students are truly learning all that they need to be proficient at the next level.

If teaching had been sufficient in the past decade or two, I don't think we'd be "assessing." Too many students have been award college degrees who are not worthy of them and the same is true in K-12 education. The unprepared students coming to our community college with high school diplomas is appalling. Currently lots of work is happening to correct this problem, but that doesn't help me much at the moment as I read essays that are not very impressive. I do have some quality students, but mostly I have too many students with a consumer attitude, "I paid for these classes; therefore, I ought to be given a good grade." This is not a good attitude for gaining a quality education. Most of them do not want to invest much effort.

So on to the next batch of essays and then, oh boy, summer will arrive. Like a "crazy" person, I agreed to teach the "Summer Advantage Program" students the first two weeks after graduation. It is an hour-and-a-half class for eight days doing an intensive teaching so that students who did not originally qualify can then move right into Freshman Composition course and not have to "waste" a semester of their time in a Basic Composition course. I've been told the summer program has no "prep" and "no papers to grade." Really? I think someone is kidding me. I'll let you know in a couple more weeks when the program begins.

Good night in the middle of this holiday weekend,
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol