As per always, I have taken on more than I can do and am simultaneously trying to re-read a book to write a review on it by the end of the weekend and get ready to go mentor my student teacher in Newark. Yes, I have made an art (in my own mind) of the ability to dry my hair and read something at the same time. Not caring so much about how your hair will turn out helps. How can I be so behind and swamped and drowning (too many metaphors)?? It’s just the beginning of term — as Dr. Joolz   would say — is it even possible to be so behind already? I was reading her blog this morning and picked up a mention of an eduBlogging group on flickr that I want to join — and speaking of flickr, I have *yet* to download our photos of Quebec and set them up and I still want and need to set up a link on this blog to my flickr page….

argh! I want and need more hours in the day — more hours to do the fun things, like play with my photos and talk with friends and colleagues. I can give up the hours I spend deleting spam and filling out paperwork just fine, thank you. Anyone have a spell I can use?

Had a migraine today that turned everything upside down, canceling one class and putting the other on their own in the computer lab — seven hours later I am *just* beginning to come back to myself enough to login, check email, talk to the world. I really hate losing whole chunks of time like that, where I can’t teach, deal with Willa, even talk. So right now I am watching Wife Swap (why are all computer nerds unattractive? Can’t you like computers and still be physically attractive?) as Chris and I joke and fitfully do work on our respective laptops. The nerd comment was in regards to a family on Wife Swap, but yes we are too. I admit it. *grin*

In one of my classes, which is about reading and writing and thinking, we are reading Fast Food Nation and one of my students asked the question: Is fast food good for the U.S. or not? We’ve gotten to the part of the book (which is excellent, fact-filled and important although sometimes difficult for students to follow) that has to do with slaughterhouse practices, among other things, and the going is tough. Before reading all of that, I wanted all of us to think about the question Jackie asked because I think it’s the right one — is McDonalds, as just one example, good for our country?

I think I have to say no, not anymore. Once upon a time, when it was just another restaurant in a series of them, I think there was no harm in cheap food served quickly, just off the highway. But the restaurant grew to a chain, then a multinational corporation and now more children recognize the Golden Arches than any other symbol — including the cross. We lost any sense of balance and what was one food option is now a whole way of making money that destroys the environment, keeps the minimum wage low, drives out local business, and ruins our health.  And we can’t seem to get enough of it — whether through choice or, like in many urban areas, because it’s the only quick, cheap way to feed a large family. McDonalds has become a symbol for how the U.S. does business — who cares about the competitors, customers, or environment. Bottom line is bottom line and despite the many negatives, the company continues to feed billions of us each day.

I’m with the people who say this has gotten out of control. One business should not have this much impact, and capitalism should not function without checks and balances. The very fact that the U.S. government continues to subsidize these companies through tax breaks and refusing to increase the minimum wage as just two examples speaks to how out of control this is. It’s a restaurant. Not a god or a business plan or the only way to be in the world. There are better burgers and cheap, while important, isn’t everything.

I want that balance back. How?

I am really slow to get back to my writing and thinking about college students and new literacies it seems. While I have been reading plenty, like the Spellings report (too early to figure out where the link is — will fix later) on higher education, my own thoughts seem slow to come up here. I know what I see in terms of the technologies the students use all around me, just walking across campus or logging in to a library computer to check the catalogue I come across them. Students are text messaging each other, checking their MySpace and Facebook pages, using a variety of media to talk, keep tabs on, and think about each other and themselves. Many of these technologies are not only new to many faculty but worlds different from the ones they use to teach a class — often a more passive watching of PowerPoint slides or getting links to readings off Blackboard. Usually the most intensive is posting to the course discussion board, which I know from experience usually ends up to be at least slightly stilted, occupying this nether world between a written paper and a rehearsed comment made in class.

Why the differences? There’s an authenticity, immediacy, and engagement to their uses of technologies that I want students to experience in their academic worlds as well. Not to coopt their MySpace pages or text message their assignments in, but to build bridges between the tasks and goals they see as essential and courses that seem distanced from reality. Not only do too many students come in to college not ready for the kind of immersive work we require (80% of colleges, Harvard included, offer remedial classes) but many don’t know or understand the tasks involved in “academic literacy.” Hell, I’m having a hard time even figuring out a definition for that one in my field, and we’re the ones who’re supposed to know. Give students new technologies and connectivity, though, and they’ll develop a host of literacies and practices — learning how to use tools and language to talk to, learn about, and define one another. Where did this disconnect come from? What can be done to bridge it?

One of the things I asked one of my classes to blog about this week was the questions they had, for this class and in terms of their teaching (it’s a secondary/middle literacy course). As they’re doing it, I realize it’s important for me to do it too — to think through the questions I’m asking myself this semester in terms of my teaching and research and learning. So here goes.

One of the questions has to do with using blogs in my classes. I think they make much more sense in many ways than the Blackboard discussion area because a blog becomes something that is yours — you get to name it and make the colors and write and add comments and it’s more yours than it is mine. I don’t have the password to their blogs — they do, and that’s important. But why? What is it about that ownership that I think is important? More importantly, how am I going to weave the blogs into class and use them so as to make them more and more important to what we’re doing?

Another question I have concerns my research and writing. I love teaching and spend the majority of my time on it — prepping class, reading things that relate, talking to students, reading their work. Thankfully my research has to do with my students, or at least college students more generally — how they use technology — but I’m still not setting enough time aside to work on it, or to get more writing done. How do I find more time? How do I juggle it all? What do my successful colleagues do? Something to discover.

Those are just two questions to begin with — there will be more, I assure you.

The beginng of the semester is a time that is so full — so much going on as I get three classes together (and this semester I also add to it an independent study and supervising a student teacher in Newark) that it’s hard to take a breath. Then we added a puppy to the mix — a four-month old teething puppy who can go from mellow to nothing but teeth like the  flip of a switch. I know, I know — if I was teething like that too I would be chewing on everything I could — this would include soda cans, Bella the downstairs pug, Chris’ laptop, Spenser (who shot out of Willa’s mouth like he had been launched from a cannon). It’s not easy to do work and entertain a baby at the same time, as I am learning well. Yet she has brought such happiness here — Chris and I can’t help but laugh at her wiggly body and broad smile. She knows nothing but happiness. There’s something very right there.

And classes are good, and full. I have plenty of students — two classes of students preparing to be teachers and a reading and thinking class I am very excited about — a challenge for me to get them as excited about reading as I can be. Wish me luck and give me suggestions — I want them to love it too.

This is our new baby! She is a pound puppy, a half lab, half schnauzer (giant schnauzer perhaps?) and 30 lbs at 4 months. She is all love and big, fuzzy paws.

TIME.com: The Myth About Homework — Sep. 4, 2006 — Page 1

In a story that should not be as surprising as I have a feeling it probably is, researchers have found that too much homework actually makes John and Jane do less well on tests and hate school. Well, duh. As Buffy might say, Bored. Now. This should not be new news, yet more parents and schools that want higher test scores are piling on more work, at a rate more than 50% higher than 20 years ago. Are we doing nothing right? We know so much more about how kids learn and read and think and yet everything we are doing now works against what we are learning — high-stakes testing, pressurizing and tracking, standardizing everything, segregating schools through urban flight, and so many other things. We’ve gotten farther from the dream than we were in the days right after Brown v. Board of Ed.

Tell that to Ruby Bridges’ grandchildren.

It’s spooky, how today is just as blue-sky clear as it was five years ago, when the towers collapsed. Chris and I were just talking about it, since he was 12 blocks away when it happened and watched, and then evacuated as the situation grew more and more dire. In the weeks afterward, he lost his job, became engaged and changed his entire life around. Now, five years later, so much is different for both of us. As I write this, I can hear the bells tolling, commemorating the time of the second plane crashing into the buildings.

For me, literally everything is different. I live not in Tennessee, nor even in New York, but New Jersey. I am no longer married — a change that shifts almost everything about your life. I have finished my doctorate and work now at a job I love as an assistant professor, but I have learned not to believe that anything can be forever. Some days are tougher than others, but I am so glad just to wake up on most of them (not counting the ones where I want to roll over and sleep longer).

For the rest of today, 9/11 will be everywhere and I know that. We’re so close here, and I’m sure everyone in the city is hearing and seeing even more. Perhaps some of my students lost family or friends in the tower — this county in New Jersey was one of the hardest hit in terms of losses, I’ve been told. There’s a commemorative park at the top of the hill near us, with a clear view of the Manhattan skyline and a distinct sense of how it has changed. On this day five years ago, I struggled to still teach my class (Vanderbilt decided not to cancel classes) while seeing nothing but the images from the television burned into my mind. It would take until late that night before we knew everyone in the family who lived in the city was home safe, and another few days until all friends were accounted for. I know we were lucky. Today is a day to be there for those who weren’t.

I’m alive and well and back after a nice vacation up the Maine coast and into Quebec. Will post more, but I have to get syllabi done since tomorrow is the opening day of the university. I do want to blog more and lots about the trip — we went to Salem, Mass, then Ogunquit, Maine and into Quebec with a stop at Lake George NY on our way home last night for Christian’s birthday dinner. It was the best week I have had in a good, long time and the perfect way to move from this tough, hard summer into my favorite season of all — fall.

So look for more, hopefully tomorrow and maybe even a picture of Chris posing with Frankenstein. Does it get any better?