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Brief Update

Well, I’ve been quite busy over the last few weeks, not updating here a whole lot. I’ve mostly been alternating my time between teaching, making lesson plans, and working at the teaching center. I’ve done very little of “my own” reading, and nothing at all for my dissertation. My class is almost over (I’ve got 2 weeks left) and thus far, I’ve really enjoyed the experience. I think I’ve been a good teacher - the feedback I’ve been getting thus far from my students seems to confirm that - and I had two “early submission” papers that went pretty well, all things considered. I saw points that I had taught showing up in the papers and being developed. We will see more, of course, when the majority of papers comes in, which happens on Tuesday. The questions I asked were tough, and not directly covered in class (the “material” for the questions were, not the answers for them.) Thankfully, I won’t have a whole lot of grading to do because the class is small, which is good because I’ve got a whole bunch of other things to do.

My birthday also passed. I usually write something here on my birthday, but we went out pretty early to a barbecue that was, in part, celebrating my birthday. It was a nice day, though it would have been nice to have part of the day to sit and reflect, but I don’t really feel like I’ve had that time since I started teaching. I definitely enjoy the work though, and think I could certainly enjoy the idea of doing this more often.

2010 08 07 Teaching Comments (0) Permalink

Finally A Teacher

This week, I started teaching. This is my first class - not my first time teaching, I’ve done plenty of TAing, workshops, and guest lectures and such. But it is my first time with my own class, with my own students, setting the curriculum for the class, and really structuring how things will be taught. Class has met twice now, for three hours each day (the summer term is “compressed” so that a full term’s worth of classes is done in half a term’s worth of time). It’s a very small class - just 12 students, which is a bit of a let down in some ways (it feels a lot like much of the TAing I’ve done). At the same time, it’s nice in that I don’t have a whole lot of grading to do, and I actually can pay a good deal of attention to anyone and everyone in the class.

I felt a bit uncertain about my first class - it was just an introduction to the material - I had them do a bit of reading in class, and we discussed “how to read philosophy” as well as the value of philosophy, and ethics in particular. I was a bit bummed about how small my class was that day - I think many deregistered when they saw the book list for the class (even though they are doing no more reading than normal - I actually got a bunch of cheap books rather than an expensive textbook to save them money). I was also worried that I would lose more students. That didn’t end up happening, though - the second class went well, everyone came back, and I felt like I did some good teaching. I didn’t do a whole lot of checking in with them - there are 2 students who seem like they really do “get” this stuff. The rest seem to nod and accept things - getting them to participate is more difficult, but they are getting a bit more comfortable, I think. The intensity of prep for the class is somewhat difficult though - I’m essentially prepping 6 hours worth of material per week. I did a bunch of pre-prep lesson plans, which I think will make my life a bit easier, but I’m still going to need to re-read things and revise and add to my notes for each class week by week.

I’ve got a bunch to do for prep this weekend - I’m going to have to start making their mid term questions (They should get the prompts next week, I think, and hand them in by week 4.) I’ve also got to start thinking about reading quizzes, etc. But we will see how it all goes over the next few weeks, if my long road to become a teacher looks like it will actually pay off or not.

2010 07 16 Teaching Comments (0) Permalink

Lost Opportunities

Yesterday, I went out and purchased a few artist anatomy books (as well as a novel). The anatomy books are meant to help take the place of figure drawing in my slow and halting road to artistic rehabilitation. I think they will be helpful - I’m going to go through them, starting with the head and face, then the torso, limbs, and hands and feet, then work on putting it all together. But I feel consistently amazed that despite going to art school for what feels like an eternity ago, I am only just now learning how to learn to draw.

Back when I was younger, I was a fairly good artist - probably the best in my class of 30 in grade school, and among the art group in high school, holding my own (but certainly not the best).  In Art school, I would say my talent was probably ranked around 50% of the people there, perhaps a bit lower (so more than half of the people there were better artists than I was.) Part of the problem was sheer laziness - I had been a natural “talent” when I was young (in that I didn’t have to try too hard to be good) and I expected that to carry me through. But that was not the only difficulty - and part of it was that I didn’t know how to learn in art. I just kept drawing, doing basically the same things, and in some cases trying to copy things that I saw. It’s only recently that I’ve really come to appreciate that in order to draw something, you need to understand what you are drawing.

This stands out especially in thinking back on my figure drawing classes. I had quite a few of them - but I mostly spent that time trying to make drawings that looked good, rather than learning about how to draw the figure. I did learn a bit, but it was almost accidental - in repeated attempts, I realized that to do x, y, or z made things look better. However, the time would have been much better spent if I had realized (or, shockingly, been told) that the point of these classes is really to learn to understand the structure of the human body so that you can draw it without looking at a model. To use the time with the model to see and understand how the body is put together, the structure, the shapes beneath the visible contours, the structure behind the play of light and shadow. I think that if I could take a figure drawing class now, I would vastly improve in my drawing of the human figure more than multiple classes over many years was able to provide. Alas, I have neither time nor money for that, and so those years were mostly squandered - adding to my bitterness at my experience in art school. They employed people who may have been great artists, but few of them were good teachers (there ws one or two that stand out as good, though).

So, as it stands, I will try to do more with less - study and draw from my anatomy book, and see how far that can take me. Perhaps in a year I will be done my dissertation, and rehabilitated enough to pick up where I left off drawing, and perhaps take a few drawing or even painting classes (I think I would really love to paint) - of course, I’d need space for that as well (especially with oils, which are horribly smelly and whose fumes aren’t healthy to inhale.). In the meantime, I will continue to teach, philosophize, and write.

2010 07 04 Art Comments (0) Permalink

Not Captain Amazing

Yesterday, I took a walk down to campus mail to pick up a package I had ordered last week. I got there, picked up the package, and opened it, and suddenly, everything in the world got a whole lot clearer. You see, yesterday I put on my first ever pair of glasses. I have a mild vision problem - never enough to require that I wear glasses, but I have vague recollection of eye doctors in the past always being somewhat on the fence about my needing them (ultimately opting for no). A year ago, I got my eyes checked, and heard the same thing - I could use glasses, but don’t need them. I got the prescription, but given the high cost of glasses, I decided, ultimately, to go without, though I saw in the doctor’s office that there was definitely a noticible difference in my vision with them.

So it went for a while, until about a week ago, when an online distributor of glasses was running a promotion where the first 3000 pairs of glasses they sold that week would be free. After some encouragement from my wife, I decided to get a pair - ultimately for $13.00 (the cost of shipping). Yesterday they arrived, and I’ve been pretty happy wearing them since. Looking around, the edges of things are crisp and clear - I noticed it especially looking at trees and clouds (with the clouds, this even had an impact on my depth perception). The walk back to my office on campus was especially amazing - just seeing the world in a whole new way. The crispness is enjoyable, though the fact that my vision is now “framed” - and my peripheral vision is much less present is a bit weird and difficult to get used to. But I think I’ll be wearingthese pretty regularly now, because it’s nice to be able to see things clearly.

I will, I think, have to exchange the frames that I got, however, because they are just a bit too snug for me (the arms hug my temples). But all in all, I’m happy I’ve got them.

2010 06 25 Health Comments (0) Permalink

Lesson Prep

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been hard at work putting together lesson plans for the class I’m teaching that starts in July. Thankfully, most of the material is pretty familiar from TAing 230 in the past, and there isn’t too much radically new ground I plan to cover. That said, I am also departing pretty sharply for what is normal in 230 at my university - I’m including things like Kierkegaard and Marcus Aurelius - which should be fun and interesting. One of my primary concerns has been to work on synthesis of what the students will be learning - making multiple connections to each concept and between concepts, so that they might actually retain the knowledge. My plan is to constantly refer back to previous readings, getting the students to recall stuff from the past and hopefully keep using it over and over again. I really want the material to make an impression, and I know that I only started remembering this stuff once it started to be systematically integrated - once I could use it in different ways and make connections to it in different contexts. Assuming that my process of understanding isn’t unique, this should be helpful (I hope) for my students. We shall see in a few weeks, though.

I’m also really hoping to apply a lot of what I’ve learned at the teaching center for making lesson plans, etc. I really would like to try to make these lessons interactive. As much experience as I have making interactive lessons for my work at the teaching center - this does feel “different” in a pretty substantial way. There is a lot of content that I hope to cover, and it’s difficult stuff to figure out, and there is a strong temptation to just put it all out there in lecture form and hope that they get it. But I don’t think that people learn much that way, and what they do learn is less likely to be retained, so I’m really going to try to resist the temptation. Still, it is difficult to think of interactive exercises they can do to make this stuff clear - so much of it is at a high level of abstraction.

I’ve not really gotten any further on my dissertation, given that most of my “work” time is going into lesson prep (or else at the teaching center, etc). It is frustrating, but I’m also going to be stuck until next summer anyway at this point, because my supervisor will be away for that long. I’d like to have a pretty refined version of it when he gets back though, so I don’t have to worry about revisions as much, and can go right on to graduation and defense within a month or two of his return. But, of course, we’ll see when the time comes - I imagine he’s going to have a backlog with the other students he is supervising.

That’s about all I’ve got by way of updates for this.  Life marches on.

2010 06 19 Academia
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Return from Pro-D

I am just back from a spring retreat / educational developer’s weekend connected to my role at the teaching center. It was a really good weekend, I feel like I learned a whole lot. There were a number of practical tips for running the workshops that I picked up, as well as some interesting avenues for investigation that I will be exploring, including something called “graphic facilitation” - which involves the use of design and illustration and combines it with planning, taking notes, etc. It seems like an exciting possibility - both for my teaching, and perhaps also for my own personal note-taking. It’s related to mind mapping, and I think it might be a very interesting thing to try out - if for no other reason than to re-engage the drawing part of my mind a bit. Given the quick nature of the practice, it may also help to give me a more confidant, steady line, which would be good for drawing more generally.

There was also space for deeper contemplative reflection in a beautiful natural setting, something that I greatly appreciated. I woke up early every morning to do my meditation outside, right on the side of a lake, and it was a nice change to listen to the sound of water lapping the shore, rather than the incessant sound of traffic and the violent screams of landscaping equipment.  I think that, and the miscellaneous scattered quiet time really helped me to think through some larger issues, especially around the idea of career, and my current work, as well as “vocation.” I haven’t come to anything definitive, but certainly I feel further along than I was.

I also made more of a connection to the community of people that do this work - something I’ve not really done so much in the past, though this is the fourth one of these events that I’ve been to. The people present are a very interesting crowd. Many of them have a long history together in the field of educational development. It’s interesting to see both the commonalities and the differences in personality of the people that choose to get involved with this work. It was fun, relaxing, and encouraging - though it makes me want to “just be done” with my dissertation even more - though I’m also feeling like a living refutation of the maxim “if you will the end, you will the means.”

2010 06 06 Pro-D Comments (0) Permalink

Groups and Community

I’ve been feeling a bit “blah” today - probably a bit of a comedown from last week’s workshop. As exhausing as that work is, there is something that is also energizing about it. It may be, in part, because I am not “alone” in my work there. It’s not simply that other people are around, but rather that it involves engagement in a community. Last year, I was thinking a great deal about groups, and had come to see them as essentially bad things. Community was a sort of contrast case, but at the time, I thought of this as a sort of ideal where the “badness” of groups was just controlled and the group was able to function optimally.

I think now that I may have been wrong about community - that it is something else entirely than a group, which I understand in an almost functional way (a group comes together for some purpose, and functions in a group toward the furtherance of that purpose as an end). My difficulty with groups comes in connection to the Kantian  stream in my ethical thought - because it seems impossible to get together and function as a group without subordinating the nature of the members of that group as ends in themselves. At best, there is no conflict in the members as ends in themselves, and the group’s end goal (it’s reason for being). My exposure to the facilitation community last summer really reinforced that particular view of groups and group process, and I found the whole thing distasteful. Community, on this model, was a group in which no one was violated as an end in themselves.

In the past week, however, I’ve had a different experience of community - which would take the idea of “non-violation of persons as ends” not as an end-point, but as a beginning. I’ve reread Parker Palmer’s “The Courage to Teach” which is no doubt inspiring some of this thought - where he talks about community as extending outward from “authentic showing up”. This authenticity is roughly where we are living in a way that responds to “who we are” and is especially undivided - we do not put on a false public face to appease outside constraints. A community can form around that authenticity, and in Palmer’s model, people draw together for mutual support in that authenticity, then decide to do something about it. The “end” of the group emerges from the community, rather than the community coming together in order to do something.

My experience last week, however, felt like one of community, but where people really did show up for a purpose (to become facilitators). However, the purpose was not one that directed the group in any strong or recognizable way - it certainly influenced the selection of people who came together. After that, however, we let the thing grow - we invited authenticity in various ways, and we all worked to make the space comfortable enough for people to really and truly “show up” - and indeed we all did.  The work came “after” the people in it - though because of how everyone showed up, there was no tension between the work and the people.

Now, I suspect that community is going to be more “unruly” from certain perspectives, than a group would be. Certainly, the “ends” of a community will be much more difficult to influence from outside. For example, a group might meet to “determine the land use” of a certain particular piece of land and come to consensus, dividing up resources among interested parties, etc. However, I think a community could not be brought together for such purposes at all. At best, a community could discuss the problem of land use, but insofar as it was a community, any possible outcome could be available - including one interest getting everything, and none of the other interests being satisfied at all. For example, if one interest was looking to exploit and use land for the interests of a few, the other wanting to maintain it for posterity and natural us, I imagine a community process (if the groups could be brought into community at all) would lead to the abandonment of the aims of exploitation. A “group process” as I’ve seen them arise in facilitated environments would be about limiting the exploitation, but certainly allowing some - all involved being subordinated as ends in themselves to the “end” of coming to a decision about land use. I suspect that genuine community in this sense does not serve the powerful, because its power is from its roots, which are dispersed and spread and tangled.

I think this is a helpful and valuable perspective that I’m going to need to think about more deeply. I’m glad I can, to some extent, see inside this perspective now.

2010 05 24 Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

Training Workshop

I spent the last week in a full week, 10 hour per day workshop related to my educational developer role. I was there as a trainer, training others to run teacher training workshops. It was a long, exhausting week, but also a positive one. I think I did a fairly good job at what I was doing, and had that backed up by what others told me about my work. I think the people I was training will be good at this work, and they along with my co-trainer were all a really fun group to work with.

I learned a few things - one of which was that when I am in any sort of teaching role, I tend to diminish my impact and directness by saying things like “maybe” and “perhaps” or so on, even when giving directions that are not meant to be optional for the class (or phrasing them as questions). My co-trainer challenged me to stop doing that, and I think I did somewhat successfully through the week. I think that this may have caused some of the challenges I had getting my undergrads more involved in the discussion group I ran last semester. I will keep it in mind for July, when my own teaching starts. I do want to encourage intrinsic motivation, but I think I need to be more careful about undermining myself in the classroom. I think that I struck a fairly good balance by the end of the week.

It was an exhausting week though - this work is a great deal more emotionally charged and social than anything else I do. People coming in for this training receive a lot of feedback about their work, which makes it important to build and maintain trust within the group. It also means that people tend to be more “open” and draw closer more quickly - my group wants to meet again soon to reconnect and keep in touch. I do enjoy these social connections, but engaging in that extensively definitely pushes my boundaries. I tend to find socializing somewhat exhausting, especially when there isn’t a good bit of time to unwind and be alone to counterbalance the socialization. I think it is good work for me to do, though - it brings me into the world and not kept up in my own head all the time.

Overall, another good experience that I’m glad I did, and it really makes me take a second look at the idea of “educational developer” as a potential career.

2010 05 22 Pro-D
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Update

I’ve been both busy and not busy over the past few weeks. I’m starting to feel really badly about not having moved at all on my dissertation in more than a month now. It’s difficult to muster the sort of interest in it to do the work I need to do. I have been doing plenty of reading, though. I recently read “The Road” (which was Okay, but I think too much was made of it) and I’ve also been reading Aristotle - I’m halfway through Prior Analytics, which also isn’t the most gripping read I’ve ever done. I’m just about through Aristotle’s logic, though. My original plan was to read Metaphysics, De Anima, and Nicomachean Ethics (in that order) to wrap up my little tour of Aristotle, but I may do the Ethics first, so that I can prep notes for my class at the same time.

Registration for my class is currently full (capped at 30 students), though as far as I know, that number will fluctuate up and down until, and slightly after the class begins. I ran out of steam a bit on my lesson prep at first, because my class had barely enough students to actually run the class at all when I had started my prep. I need to get back into that full swing - I’d like to have most, if not all of my lesson plans done before class starts, so that when I’m actually doing the class, I’ll mostly be re-reading and revising lesson plans rather than creating them on the fly (so it will be almost like I’ve taught the course once already). I’ve already picked the readings, and I have some idea of how the readings fit together, which is good. I’ve also talked with someone a bit about some of the readings I’m least comfortable with, and am now a bit more comfortable with them. It is strange and exciting to think that I will shortly be teaching my own class.

There is other stuff to write about, I suppose. I’ve really felt like I’m finding my “place” in philosophy - connecting strongly with stuff from the ancients, as well as phenomenology (and I realize I’ve almost always been a phenomenologist, given that my method has been to focus on life as experienced, trying to bracket away metaphysical interpretation).  I have some idea of what sort of philosopher I really am, and to no ones surprise, it’s not the sort of philosopher that would find a job in academic philosophy. I’m still not sure what to do, probably some combination of teaching and administrative work at the university until I figure out the next move. I will also try to continue to pursue my own intellectual and creative projects - I think among those will be trying to write a novel, though I’m not going to seriously start on that for a while (perhaps some written “sketches” of characters, places, etc).

That’s enough of an update for now, I think.

2010 05 14 Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

Drawing

I’ve had a fairly productive day, in its own way. I haven’t gotten any work done on anything I’m supposed to be doing, but I did start really getting into working on Aristotelian logic today - I’ve got an “Ancient Philosophy” notebook/journal that I’m actually working in, and I’m taking notes as I work, doing exercises, etc.

I also spent some of today drawing, which went really well. I did a self portrait in my sketchbook which is the first drawing I’ve felt sort of proud of in a very long time. I worked in colored pencil, and the drawing is itself in color, rather than line, which I’ve never really felt especially proficient in, though I’ve always thought that in order to really draw something, I should be able to draw it just using line (and perhaps shading). But I’ve always been much stronger with color and shading - the only place I ever really shone in art school was when I was using charcoals or pastels, because I could think in terms of blocks of color, rather than in line. Thinking about it now, I think my problem has always been that when I try to draw, I try to just record what I see in an “uninterpreted” manner. I try to somehow draw or capture everything that is present, and I don’t make conscious choices about what to capture or not.

When it comes to drawing just using line, however, that is really a highly interpreted act.  To depict a volume - say a cheek on a face - using shading or color, the translation is fairly straightforward because the volume as a volume is represented naturally through variations in color and shade. Now, translating a three dimensional volume in two dimensions is an interpretive act, but I think its less so than trying to depict that volume with line, because line on a picture like often represents a change (on either side of the line) - there is a sort of cordoning off of one area from another, but actual volumes in space aren’t always so clearly demarcated. Of course, line can also do other things (parallel lines can be used to shade, establish contours, etc), but this is again highly interpreted - a gradation is color isn’t a series of parallel lines, and one has to establish conventions in the picture so that those lines are seen in that way.

I think that for my own drawing, I should probably build up a firm foundation in the kind of drawing that comes more naturally to me - using color and shading - and use that to build consciousness of the kinds of choices I can make using line. Line is still attractive to me, it seems more austere, and doing something like a portrait well using line would seem to require a greater understanding of what is going on with what is being drawn - perhaps I like it because it requires taking a path “through” rational interpretation. Ultimately, I’d like to have some fluency in both line and color, perhaps one day I’ll actually try painting again.  But it feels good to connect with this part of myself again, and it feels wonderful to feel like I haven’t really lost my ability entirely.

2010 04 30 Art
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