It's because I feel this way about the first week of classes that I was so excited to be on sabbatical last fall. You see, the first week of classes at my uni is always the same week as Burning Man. Now, whatever your personal feelings about Burning Man (dirty hippies, drug fueled orgies, etc.), know that for me, it's an important and transformative experience. I come back refreshed, at peace with the world, patient, calm, and willing to take on everything that life throws at me. And until last year's sabbatical, I had to miss this experience every year.
So I've come up with a plan. By next year, I hope to be tenured (chances are high, according to my colleagues), and so marginally less dependent on the goodwill of the students. Our uni also has a real hard-on for innovative teaching techniques and integration of technology in the classroom. And I'll have two teaching assistants. My plan, therefore, is to pre-record my first two lectures and have the TAs show them in class, with breaks for discussion and small group activities. That way, the students will see my face and know I care, and hopefully learn something.
Q: Is this reasonable? Or will I get Twitterized?
[+]
BONUS CONTENT: Student Perspective Just In!
[+]
BONUS CONTENT: Student Perspective Just In!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but I don't think this is reasonable. Either go to class, or don't go to class: there is no "try."
ReplyDeleteAn even more important concern looms here. How is this different from the student who says, "My parents have bought a ticket to a cruise for a family reunion, so I won't be able to take the final exam"?
But then, I'm not the best one to talk. As an astronomer, every year or so I need to skip a week of class, to go observing with a world-class telescope somewhere like Chile or Arizona or the Canary Islands or Hawai'i. But I almost always bring a couple advanced students along, and it's for research, the results of which I will publish in a refereed journal.
(The things they'll let me do in the name of science! Getting an observing run in Hawai'i is great. I get to waltz into the Dean's office, look her straight in the eye, and say, "Oh Susan, I need some money to take some students observing. We HAVE to go to HAWAI'I." You should see the look on her face, it's great.)
I’m still not the best one to talk. Did you know that astronomers can predict where and when a total solar eclipse will occur, to within a minute, a millennium in advance?
A total solar eclipse is when the Moon completely covers the Sun's bright surface, or photosphere, always for less than 7.67 minutes. The Moon therefore casts a shadow on Earth, and it's a focused, dark shadow. They are rare, with one occurring somewhere on Earth less often than once per year.
It’s not for nothing that a total solar eclipse has been called nature’s most awe-inspiring phenomenon. One looks and feels like the end of the world. For a few minutes, the day sky becomes an eerie twilight, nearly as dark as night. Bright stars and planets become visible. There are weird sunset colors all around the horizon. There is a temperature drop of as much as 15 degrees F. People scream. Dogs howl. Birds come out and sing afterwards, since they think it’s morning. One can see the hot gas escaping from the Sun, the solar corona. It looks like a dragon eating the Sun, so it’s no wonder this myth is so common around the world. If you beat on drums or smash pottery, the dragon will spit out the Sun and go away: it works every time. As no less than Brian May has observed, “The first time you see totality, you really understand where you are, on a piece of rock hurtling around the Sun. It’s an awesome feeling—a life-changing experience.”
The next total solar eclipse in the contiguous 48 United States will be on 2017 August 21. I already have my hotel reservations, in a small town in the semi-desert of western Oregon. I intend to bring as many students as I can. So, what’s the problem? It’s that this will probably be on the first day of class for fall semester.
Worse, this isn’t really for research. I don’t intend to publish any observations of this eclipse in refereed journals. I do intend to get high-quality photography for it for my astronomy textbook, and maybe also to be published in popular-level astronomy magazines. Still, the main justification for skipping class will be for education, but not research.
One way to fix this would be to bring a large telescope and ask a student to do something publishable in a refereed journal, such take deep images to the side of the Sun to search for Vulcanoids, which are hypothetical asteroids that are always closer to the Sun than Mercury is. This will need to be automated, since I hate to have a student observe her or his first total solar eclipse through a viewfinder. In 585 B.C., two armies at war in what now is Turkey stopped fighting during a total solar eclipse, since they saw it as an omen from the gods. Yes, they are that spectacular!
Back to the point: this won’t be a vacation. This will be a real, scientific expedition, in which I will be doing the Indiana Jones thing once again. Can you say the same for your trip to Burning Man?
(And as a disclaimer, my attitude on naked hippie chicks and orgies has always been HOT DAMN!)
Oh, for God's sake. This is embarrassing.
ReplyDelete"I'm going to videotape my lecture *to show I care* and then blow town to go to Burning Man."
ReplyDeleteWhy do people say things like this out loud?
Dear professor,
ReplyDeleteMy mental well-being is buoyed by immersion in hippie music fests. My spiritual health demands that I attend Burning Man, which unfortunately conflicts with the first week of class. I'm writing to let you know that I care about your class, but I won't be able to attend the first sessions because there's somewhere else I'd rather be. My roommate has agreed to attend class in my place and to record your lecture for me so that I don't miss anything important. And because I know how important class participation is, I will pre-record some comments on my webcam and send you the files so that you can play them for the class at appropriate moments in the discussion. Thanks to technology I can show I care about your class but still indulge in selfish irresponsibility. Thanks for understanding!
Dipshit McHopeless
Sorry, but no. Still not professional.
ReplyDeleteBut does Burning Man last over the weekend? Maybe once you're tenured you can avoid Friday classes and fly out to attend after classes Thursday.
I've been an active member of a particular hobby group since 1977. Alas, its annual big event is always right after school starts. I just have to miss it. Once I am tenured I hope to do the same thing, avoid Friday classes and fly out on Thursday afternoon.
I, for one, have never heard of a sabbatical before tenure.
ReplyDeletesome places have "junior leave" to allow young faculty time to research sans all the teaching/grading.
DeleteProffie A doesn't get hir vaccinations or flu shots, doesn't eat well, lives in squalid conditions, picks hir scabs, rarely brushes her teeth, rarely goes for check-ups even though s/he has health insurance, and just generally doesn't take care of hirself. S/he gets sick during the first week of class. Real sick, not fake sick. S/he stays home. The students don't see hir. Hir classes are cancelled. The students have nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs.
ReplyDeleteProffie B takes care of hirself and is never sick. S/he loves Burning Man. It rejuvenates hir. It makes hir feel like life is worth living. It prevents hir from killing herself. It inspires hir to be a better teacher/researcher/colleague. S/he goes to Burning Man. And s/he plans for months in advance to have useful activities for hir students while s/he is gone.
Proffie A is entitled to stay home for the entire first week of classes; s/he is not breaking the rules. But I'd rather have Proffie B at my school.
Proffie A is unprofessional for not scheduling a substitute for her classes.
DeleteProffie B is unprofessional for putting her personal hobbies ahead of her professional obligations. She doesn't get a substitute, which is the bare minimum required. If Proffie B is with us only because she attended burning man, then Proffie B needs to get help.
Plus, Professor A is a logical straw man.
DeleteProffie B is taking care of their health (mental, emotional, and otherwise) first, which makes Proffie B perform with more vigor and stamina to excel and truly inspire students throughout the academic term.
DeleteProffie A makes a mental note to drag himself or herself out of bed everyday. Proffie A's lecture are as electrifying as the popular "Clear Eyes" commercial. Proffie A should learn about better selfcare and honing skills for better longterm performance.
I'll choose Proffie B anyday, because I know the class will truly learn, rather than pay for a university education, only to be bored to death.
I will be so delighted to explain to my students that they are paying tuition so that I can do self-care on their dime, because it makes me so electrifyingly excellent behind the podium! I'm sure they won't mind, even though they are graduating tens of thousands of dollars in debt and their parents have taken out a reverse mortgage to send them to college!
DeleteI have no idea what your field is, but at my PhD school the art department had a class where part of it was making art to burn at Burning Man. Can you make it educational in some way?
ReplyDeleteFrenna, I teach Advanced Hamster Management at a professional school, so no. I suppose I could come up with some research agenda to "justify" the trip (Interpersonal Relationships in Alternative Communities, or something like that), but I'd consider that cheating. I'm not going to invent a professional reason to go on what is, at heart, a purely personal journey. Plus, I'm a firm believer in keeping my personal and professional lives separate - nobody knows that I spent my semester off last year meditating in the desert with blissed-out hippies.
ReplyDeletePaddington - yep, it's unusual. But at my uni, people in my field automatically get a semester off from teaching a year or two before they go up for tenure, so they can focus on research and build up their publication record. My school is really accommodating - they actually WANT all their junior faculty to get tenure, and provide lots of opportunities for professional development to help us get there. It's actually pretty awesome, and I am so thankful for it.
You're still "cheating" if you use the excuse of employing a new pedagogy so that you can go on vacation. You insult educators who try to improve their teaching using new pedagogies and you undermine your school's commitment to allowing faculty to try new teaching strategies.
DeleteIs your approach actually a good method of teaching? If there's literature citing the absence of a professor benefiting students, show it.
If you want to phone it in during the first week, why not sign up to teach an online class that meets on a different schedule or allows you to communicate with students online from the festival?
You have a job that many other faculty would desire. You work with colleagues who likely don't skip class so that they can go on vacation. The position of faculty member is subject to the goodwill of our society. Do not open yourself (and us, by extension) to the criticism that you care more about your vacation than your job. Otherwise, you'll never have to worry about missing class again if you go to Burning Man.
You knew the deal when you signed on to teach: total freedom during school breaks, no vacation flexibility during the school year. Suck it up or do something else for a living.
DeleteExcept it's NOT just about YOU. It's about your students and your colleagues.
DeleteBTW, I looked. Burning Man does go over a long weekend. You could teach your class and attend the end of the event.
Wait. Did I read this right?
Delete"... [N]obody knows that I spent my semester off last year meditating in the desert with blissed-out hippies....
"[A]t my uni, people in my field automatically get a semester off from teaching a year or two before they go up for tenure, so they can focus on research and build up their publication record."
So you've already abused the incredible flexibility of your position and taken university paychecks while tending to your bliss for a whole semester instead of focusing on research and writing. In a just world, this would permanently eliminate your scheduling conflict between the first week of classes and Burning Man.
Nope. Another nice try, but nope. Among other things, taping your lectures might encourage people who think taped lectures are just as good as the real thing. You would be failing to maintain solidarity with the MOOC resisters of San Jose State. Also, even with tenure, you don't really want to give your administrators the idea that you can be replaced (or at least replicated) by a taped lecture, do you? Tenure can be revoked if a whole program is canceled in a "restructuring," you know, and even tenured professors can be turned into glorified TAs (and/or supervisors of mass armies of TA-like adjuncts). If you want the centrality of your role as active, engaged, real-time professor to be recognized, then act on that belief.
ReplyDeleteI can see following this plan mid-semester (once you've set an agenda/tone, and have verified that the TAs know what they're doing) in order to go to a conference (or a mountaintop in Hawaii if legitimate research reasons take you there). I can also see doing it on a one-time basis for the first week of school if there were a true emergency (for instance, your parent, spouse, or child were in hospice care and, a few weeks prior, you strongly suspected his/her final days would come close to the first week of school). But Burning Man just doesn't count in my book. Self-care is important, yes, and aspects of Burning Man are unique, but I suspect you can put together a similarly rejuvenating experience out of events that take place during school breaks.* Besides, think how much you'll appreciate it if you can only attend once every 7 (or so) years.
*I'd also support a restructuring of school schedules such that the possibility of having the fall or spring semester off, and teaching a full semester's load during the summer, existed. I'd love to have some variety in seasons off (well, at this point, I'd love to have a full season off, period, but, with a recent raise, I'm hoping to get there in a few years).
Damn! Another year, and again my U failed to schedule Fall Break to coincide with the Folsom Street Fair.
ReplyDeleteTruthfully, I think this would be okay, but not in the first week of class. And only if you give the students the equivalent in online/face-to-face instruction.
ReplyDeleteI taught over the summer. Only online classes. I traveled around and visited folks. But I was tethered to my computer. Grading every day. Answering emails, reading rough drafts. It's just that since I taught online I could be three states away from my college and do it.
Because of the weird scheduling of a conference, I have to be away for a week's worth of school. Well, what am I supposed to do? We don't have teaching assistants. I'm not going to bother my colleagues to try to babysit my classes or cover content. The classes will be online that week, that's all. They will all have a series of exercises to complete in lieu of class discussion. Exercises I will have to read and grade.
So hypothetically it could be okay if you make sure that you challenge and require as much from them while you are gone, and you work just as hard. But on the first week, in the face-to-face, no.
Beaker Ben and Contingent Cassandra, you're absolutely right to call me out on the tech thing. Watching a pre-recorded lecture can't be nearly as effective as having the prof there in person, and it is "cheaty" of me to point to my uni's SuperTechnologyExcitement to justify this (that said, I haven't seen any evidence that the admins who are pushing for SuperTech think it's actually pedagogically valuable - mostly they just think it's Cool and What The Students Want - blerg). So I'll take my lumps on that one.
ReplyDeleteAs to some of the other comments ("get help" in particular gave me the sads) - look, folks, I'm a decent person. All I'm trying to do is find a way to participate in an event that's important to me (and that I can honestly say will make me a more effective, direct, and understanding person for the rest of the semester) without dicking my students over in the short-term. If that's not possible, then I'll find some other way of dealing. Why you gotta be so mean?
And Southern Bubba, let's have a drink.
It's not just Cassie and Burning Man. Suppose Leslie K's daughter decides to get hitched to that boy she's seeing, and the wedding date is set for Leslie's third class day of fall 2014. And it's all going to happen on the other coast (or even another continent). Are we all really going to admonish LK and tell her that it will be unprofessional for her to go to her daughter's wedding (and the rehearsal dinner and all the other festivities in the surrounding days)? WTF? I'd say to LK, "Hey, just plan ahead, get one or two of your trusted colleagues to cover for you during the first week of classes, and go having a fucking blast at your daughter's wedding." We all love Leslie, but she's not absolutely indispensable. Wonderful, yes. Divine, quite possibly. But not always indispensable. Who wants to work at a school where the people hold a gun to your head and tell you that you absolutely must not miss the first week of classes? Those would be the same people who would prohibit any proffie from having sex on New Year's Day because they might end up having an inconvenient, complicated birth during the first week of fall semester.
DeleteSure, Cassie, let's have lots and lots of drinks.
Except that I have never known anyone who was related to an educator who would actually do this. In my family, two teachers just got married (only one of them was in my family before that) and all the events were scheduled around the school year.
DeleteI'll join you there if you also record MY first week lectures. Actually, one option (maybe not realistic, now that you're up for tenure) is to move to a school like mine that is on the quarter system.
ReplyDeletePS. We haven't started school yet. Then again, we don't get out until end of June.
DeleteWhen I join you and Bubba for drinks, you can brainstorm how you intend to deal with this year after year - because it's not like it's a one-time thing.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, I've missed classes for reasons others would take issue with..but I didn't disclose, equivocate, or seek approval.
Personally, I care more if you inflate your grades, vote to create a separate teaching stream, or bake cookies.
For Catholics, and plenty of other Christians who follow the same liturgical year, Advent is supposed to be a time of introspection and renewal, of removing distractions from your life and retreating into silence and prayer to prepare for Christmas. At pretty much every university in the country, including at least 99% of the Catholic ones, it coincides with final exam/term paper period. Every year. There was a point at which I decided to become an academic, while concurrently being a Catholic, that I realized I was just going to have to deal with this.
ReplyDeleteCan I just scream it: YOU ARE RUINING IT FOR THE REST OF US. Christ, the whole of the U.S. thinks we are lazy assholes who do no work, and perhaps they are right about more of us than I thought. Meanwhile, I am not allowed to miss classes except for extreme illness or pre-arranged, by-permission travel to go to conferences or give lectures, and even then not more than 1 class for a T/Th class or 2 for a MWF class (we have 10-week quarters, so a week is 10% of the course). If I do need to miss for anything but an extreme last-minute emergency, I must either find a colleague willing to teach for me (not bloody likely) or get a colleague to watch a grad student teach for me and write up an evaluation (even less bloody likely). If I can't get this arranged, I can podcast a lecture and do extra-extra office hours for 1 class session.
ReplyDeleteI've been teaching for 20 years. I've canceled classes for illness exactly twice. Otherwise I've hewed to the letter of this law. I took care of my dying mom and my small child simultaneously, while showing up for each and every class session. Why? Because everything else I do is fungible: I can miss most meetings, I can not do my research, I can fail to read dissertation chapters or get them read late, etc. etc. etc. We have the most time-flexible jobs on the planet, we who are on the tenure track, except maybe psychics.
Don't abuse it. Sorry, but I think this question is obscene. And don't ask why I gotta be so mean. And don't think your students will think you care about your actual job, or them. They'll know you're cool like them, which is a laughable thing to be.
And now I have to go to the emergency room for this aneurism.
See? Look what you did! You made me spell aneurysm wrong.
DeleteWon't anyone say how great that graphic is!?!?!?!
ReplyDeleteThanks for saying it, Darla! Happy to think of you soaking up time with your little one!!! Hope you were able to take 12 weeks off!
DeleteFor some social science, theology, and art proffies, Burning Man can be far better than a conference. If I were Cassie's dean, I'd consider funding her trip.
ReplyDelete