I was asked by the English Speaking Union to come out to NEST and judge the final debate of their middle school competition yesterday. Seems like a good way to end the semester. The middle school debates by the MSDP are always of a good quality (I’ve judged a couple before, one at the Hackley…

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So incredibly relieved that I no longer have to deal with my Modern Rhetorical Theory class which was in every sense a total failure. I thought I would feel happy about the end of the term, but the only feeling I have is relief. Relief in the sense that something you were close to is…

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This semester has been the worst semester I’ve had in my whole career.  When I started teaching in 1997, I thought I didn’t do a very good job then. Makes sense, since I was new. But that year looks amazing compared to the dumpster fire of shit teaching that I have accelerated this semester. I…

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University students are dying the death of a thousand rubrics. From daily blog posts, to discussion board questions and answers, to short papers, to quizzes, to exams, to the ultimate capstone, the 20 page research paper due at the end of the term, students are immersed in thousands of small tasks that have very firm…

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Much has been said and written about the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and their sudden and violent non-consensual entry into the national gun control debate. Many were impressed, surprised, confused, and pleased with these students’ incredibly composed, organized, directed and well-articulated claims that the government had failed in its basic duty to…

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Attempts to mediate the experience of  debate are troubling. They are not troubling in the good way of troubling that can be appreciated – creation of static in a clear picture, the presentation of uncertainty as a good, the celebration of questioning over answering. The trouble that these mediations present is one of too clear…

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There’s a lot of excitement and interest in flipping the classroom – the idea that the class time should be used for practice in groups and homework should be where the lecture lives, on digital video – but what does flipping the classroom do for students and teachers? The biggest barrier to education in any…

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Thinking about the university and how silly it is that we maintain the arrangement of course to professor to knowledge centered around terms and ideas that are generated independently from anyone involved in the course. Sometimes a professor says to herself, “It would be really great if we offered a course on X.” And she…

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As a side note, and on the side here, I really like how I’ve figured out how to embed what I’m currently listening to into the blogposts. It is sort of a throwback to my LiveJournal days of 2001, 2002, where I used to post koans and various poems and commentary to it and treated…

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The last Motion Debate in New York city was the first to include an expert on the topic as a speaker. This was really wonderful in terms of giving the audience a great perspective from a professional researcher and advocate on the topic. But it throws into question the idea of the role of debate…

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