Re: conlanging during class (Re: Grammatical Summary of Kemata)

On Wednesday, December 12, 2001, at 11:56 , Dan Sulani wrote:

> On 12 Dec, Yoon Ha Lee wrpte:
>> <nod>  It really depends on the "withitness" of the teacher.  Frankly, in
>> a majority of even high school classes, the teacher will check to see
>> that
>> your pencil/pen is moving at appropriate moments and that you're looking
>> up at the board or him/her, or at least not looking somewhere
>> "irrelevant.
>
>     In my day  (late '60s, USA), the philosophy of colleges and
> universities
> was that students were there on their own initiative. No one kept track
> of attendence or what you did during class, and if you could pass the
> exams
> (Without cheating, of course:  the exams themselves were usually
> monitored!)
> without going to class or listening to the prof, well, more power to you!
>
Heh...I can remember a couple classes that were *definitely* like that.
(And I had a friend at Brown U. who never bothered going to his comp sci
classes--he just got everything by remote login and website.  Then again,
this guy was TAing comp sci as a freshman and was the hacker supreme at my
high school, so what can I say?

>     In fact, I once had a (required freshman) course where it was
> _impossible_
> to pay attention to the professor: he'd been _dead_  for some years
> before I
> even came to the university! He'd videotaped all his lectures and they
> simply played them  on overhead TVs to auditorium-sized collections of
> students! Talk about tenure!  ;-)
> (Tests were given and graded by [bored] teaching assistants!)
>
Oh my...<laugh>  Now *that* is bizarre!  Were they out of professors?  <G>

>> "  Of course, I'm anal so when I teach, I go around and look at *what*
>> the
>> students are writing.  (Fortunately for those who like to write notes in
>> pink gel-pen I just ask them to put the notes away and get to work...<G>
>> )
>
>     I also taught (one of my sections was large: over 100 students).
> Those in the back row used to drink coffee and read newspapers during
> my lectures. It never bothered me: if they didn't pass the exams, I felt
> no
> guilt about failing them! (Better they fail out, than somehow  become
> speech-language pathologists without adequate training! I wouldn't want
> to be responsible for putting people's dysfunctional language ---
> with all the personal problems it can cause --- in the hands of someone
> who didn't care to learn the profession!)
I hear you.  :-)  Unfortunately, public schools are a little more anal
about getting the kids to pass.  I'm student-teaching at a high school
that hasn't managed to raise its test scores, and this is the 3rd year of
a 3-year plan; it seems likely they're gonna get rid of the entire
administration next year and bring in entirely new people as mandated by
law, and the teachers will likely be the next to go if the poor
performance continues.  :-/

ObConlang: one of the things we've been reading about in math curriculum &
instruction is Wiggins & McTighe's _Understanding by Design_, which talks
about "backward design"--you start with what you want students to know,
determine "acceptable evidence," and *then* design the curriculum.
Whether you like this paradigm or not, it makes me think about how I'd go
about teaching one of my conlangs (assuming there were any takers; though
even if not, the intellectual exercise is worthwhile in itself).  I
*started* doing teach-yourself pages for Czevraqis, though that project is
on hold, and I can pretty much see where the rest will go: introduce basic
verb conjugations, more noun cases, hit the morphology, etc.  I haven't
the *faintest* clue on how I'd write teach-yourself pages for the weirder
Tasratal with its random combinations of connectives.  Well, if the
eventual goal is to be able to use the !@#$ connectives, perhaps introduce
them triad by triad in some coherent manner, saving combinations for later.
..<pondering>

Yoon Ha Lee [requiescat@cityofveils.com]
http://pegasus.cityofveils.com

7% unemployment is no problem, according to 93% of the population.

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