Not just a great song/album by Marvin Gaye (brother, brother, brother…), but a partial explanation of why it’s been some time since my last post.

I’ve been busy.

(No, really.  Sometimes I say that, but this time I actually mean it.)

You see, even though the bay is still frozen, my life has been once again absorbed by sailing – and Krista is already a sailing widow for this year.  For 2 nights a week and every Saturday since early January, we’ve had Straight Jacket in a heated chip-truck garage and have been stripping it down, grinding out the cracks, soft spots and former repairs, then cleaning with acetone, then sanding with 100/150 grit, cleaning again, then laying fibreglass, then applying layer after lovely layer of epoxy, sanding and cleaning, then high density West System filler, sanding and cleaning, then medium density filler, then sanding and cleaning, then more than a few layers of ultralight density fairing compound with what seems a lifetime’s worth of 240 then 320 grit sanding of the entire deck and hull – all of it rhythmically punctuated with beer or coffee breaks.

We’re half-way done.

She’s currently being painted at Pelletier’s Autobody.  Soon it’ll be ready to be put back together, something which everyone agrees will be much cleaner (I can’t accurately tell you how much resin dust-infused mucous I’ve pulled out of my nose in the last month, despite the mask) but many times more demanding of our precision and patience.  As it goes, it’s much easier to make the mess than to clean it up.

All said and done (which is hopefully a few days prior to the first Wednesday night race in mid-May), the boat will be a smooth, dry, rigid, and uniformly coloured thing of yachting beauty.  Will we win a race because of our efforts?  I certainly would like to think so, but it’s not likely.  At least we’ll look good trying.  And we’ll be safer, which I guess is a good thing.

What else… I’m waiting to hear back from the deparment on some sessional work for next year – three classes; online Biomedical Ethics, an Intro section, and an online Critical Thinking.  I’m nervous while waiting, partly because we need the money, but mostly because it will serve as a vote of confidence – at least to me – of the department’s faith in my teaching ability.  I taught Social and Political Thought last fall and took some risks – some serious ones, it turns out – in how I taught the class for the second half.

You see, I have some clear views about how university students, specifically, ought to be taught.  Part of my view is motivated by some historical perspective on teaching and learning . The rest of it is motivated by critical pedagogy, something which seeks to reorganize the relationship between teacher and learner, mostly to realize the role of the learner as an active participant rather than the passive receiver.  In SPT, I sought to do this after the mid-term (I lectured for the first half of the course) by puposefully taking the role of a mediator of texts and information, and a facilitator of student-led discussions.  In effect, I stepped back as the traditionally authoritative lecturer, and let the students take up more responsibility in the immediate discussion based on the assigned readings.

The response was, at first, tragic.  The students didn’t know what to do.  It became clear to me after a few classes that the students – for the most part, for there were a handful who eagerly responded – simply could not recognise this format, despite my very clear instruction and constant encouragement.  I suspect that 12-14 years of systematic, asymmetric programming, the concept of a non-authoritative learning environment was, well, nonsense to them. 

This notion was confirmed to me when, noticing the reaction during the first few classes, I gave a ‘traditional’ lecture for the third class.  The response was almost comical – students sitting straight up, quietly taking notes, few questions or comments, and everyone leaving with an air of satisfaction and assurance.  I was amused, but disappointed.

I decided, however, to persevere with my original plan, for at least two reasons: firstly because I felt (and to a degree still feel) strongly that learning is done best when it is participatory (and even reciprocal between ‘teacher’ and ‘student’) and the environment respects the learner and gives him responsibility in that learning – most especially in a philosophy course, a tradition founded on engaged discussion (something that just doesn’t happen, in my experience); secondly because I felt that since I was only a casual sessional, I therefore had very little to lose.  What were they going to do?  Take away my tenure?  What better opportunity to try something new!

But now I’m worried.  As a first try I should have maintained a little more of the traditional format and structure, enough that the students wouldn’t have felt so frustrated and therefore unsure of my capabilities – so much so that some students quietly commented on this frustration to other faculty members, who then brought it to my attention.  It was a problem, explicitly, and although matters have more or less been smoothed out, I fear that some doubts remain which could affect my bid for these new courses.

As for the class, however, things improved each day.  Attendance did not drop or even waver from class to class.  There was more discussion in this class – some of it informed – than in any other class I’ve been a part of either as student or assistant or teacher.  Once the concept began to sink in, the students clearly felt more comfortable and able to express themselves to each other and – most importantly – to me.  If anything I would say that at a few points the class became a little too comfortable, and some silliness ensued.  Lesson learned.  We recovered and kept moving.  As a testament, the final essays were by and large dazzling, and the final exams were stellar.  All in all, a lumpy beginning but a solid success.  Many of the students even wrote some complimentary remarks at the end of their exams, which was something of a vindication for me.  The final proof came just the other week when the student course evaluations arrived in my box wherein all but one were thoroughly approving.  (The one, it should be noted, was a rejection of my abilities expressed so vehemently that wonder if it was a joke…).  Anyway, I handed those evaluations (all of them) to the department as part of my application.  I’ll let you know what happens.