Chaos Kids as Teacher Metaphor

Yesterday we had our last faculty meeting of the year.  During each semester, we typically have a faculty meeting on the 2nd Friday of the month and a Town Hall on the 3rd Friday.  All employees come to the Town Hall, and there's typically coffee and pastries before hand.  I sat at the meeting feeling a swirl of stuff:  gratitude for a tenure track job, gratitude for the continued existence of humans who are committed to a liberal arts education, the feeling of disbelief that we are almost done with the semester, the nagging worry that I've forgotten something important.

Our school president spoke and talked about seeing a holiday picture, actually 2.  One was the composed picture:  everyone matching, everyone clean, everyone posed and smiling.  The second one was a picture of his grandchild in chaos mode (hair a mess, snot draining from the nose, sticky face) but having a great time.  He said that faculty at this point in the term are like the grandchild picture--we may be feeling like we're a mess, but it means we've been teaching well.

I do realize that he greatly oversimplified, but it made me feel good.  I do realize that one can get to the finish line in a state of chaos incarnate because one made an unfixable mess of one's classes.  But this term, I feel like I did well by my students.

I was needing a kind word because I'd been mad at myself for not giving my students more time for the short research-ish essay #2.  It's always hard to know how much time to leave because some students move more quickly through it than others.

I have spent the week reminding myself that students don't become research experts because of one brilliant assignment--it's a years-long practice.  And I do realize my assignments aren't necessarily brilliant.  I am also less and less sure that knowing how to write a research paper is an essential skill in the 21st century.

The events of this week make me think I should be teaching them homestead skills like cooking without a recipe or how to build a fire.  It's been a week with a huge Microsoft outage, an FAA grounding of all flights for over 5 hours, a building collapse in NYC, a boat plowing into a cruise ship with the cruise ship on its side but all passengers safe.  And then there's the chaos with Nvidia.

I've been very lucky this semester--all of my classes have been great, full of students who are trying their best.  I've been teaching long enough that I know how rare it is, which makes me even more appreciative.