Thank you very much for your anonymous feedback today! I appreciate your time and input. Moreover, I appreciate all of your kind and supportive comments on how much you enjoy the class. It really means a lot to me. :)
Please see below for my more specific responses:
- Life is stressful sometimes (e.g., being away from family and loved ones, having to balance work and school, etc.). While I am not a certified therapist, if you ever just need someone to talk to, even just to vent and let the stress out, please feel free to come see me. Plus, I have chocolate in my office. :)
- For more professional assistance, if desired, check out our counseling center: http://www.utdallas.edu/counseling/
- I understand that a few of you are concerned about meeting the reading response deadlines due to work conflicts. If this applies to you, please come see me and we will figure out a deadline that makes your life a bit easier.
- In terms of what I am looking for in the reading responses. Basically, I want to hear your thoughts on, or inspired by, the readings. For example, how do the readings relate to other things we are talking about in class? How do they relate to each other? What do the readings make you think about and why? Do they inspire you to look something else up? If so, what did you find and what can we learn from your explorations? The only rule I have is that you do not summarize the readings, because we've all read them. In short, I'd like to hear your thoughts and your opinions. Does this help? If not, let me know and I can give you more examples.
- Please, please, please, do at least one reading responses this semester. They are designed to help your grade, but if you don't do any, you'll receive a zero for 20% of your total grade and that's bad news. In case you don't remember, here's how the reading responses are graded, each accounting for half of all the points in this 20% category:
- Quantity -- If you do 5, you get 100% in this category automatically. 80% if you do 4, 60% if you 3... so on and so forth
- Quality -- Efforts count. I am looking at whether or not you tried to connect the dots either among the readings or between the readings and other things that intrigue you, etc. I don't care about length, so please don't feel the need to drag on unnecessarily long. Instead, I care about your attempt to think critically and/or creatively.
- I don't take away participation points just because you are shy. In fact, I was once a shy student too. The only time I take points away is if I see you distracting your digital devices during class. I do; however, think it's important for students to practice public speaking, which is why I call on students to share their thoughts sometimes.
- For those of you with learning disabilities -- please don't hesitate to come see me if there is anything I can do to help you succeed in this class.
- Doodlers -- please don't apologize. I fully understand its educational benefits. You should've seen my AP Psychology textbook back in high school... :)
- I'll try my best to add female representation in media to some of our future lectures. Please feel free to connect any/all of your reading response to that topic by the way. Not only will I get a better sense of what you'd like to learn, but also we as a class can learn from, and with, you. In fact, I encourage everyone to incorporate anything they'd like to talk about in the reading responses. Since I tailor the lecture to your responses, this is a really good way to make sure we talk about anything and everything that intrigues you.
- I apologize if some of the links don't work. I experimented with all the links before school started to make sure they are functional, but sometimes articles get moved around and URLs changed and there's not much I can do about that. :( Please do kindly let me know if you come across anything that doesn't work so I can update them and share the updated links with the rest of the class though. Thank you in advance!
- I'm glad that you feel like you can handle the stress this semester [*high five*]. If that perception ever changes during the semester, though, please feel free to come talk to me and I'll try my best to help.
- Congratulations on becoming an aunt!!! I'd love to see photos after you get to visit the baby boy. :)
- I keep an extraordinarily meticulous grade sheet (if I, a clumsy Sagittarius, may say so myself) for every class I teach. So, if you are ever curious about how you are doing in this class, feel free to come see me before/after class or in my office and I can tell you everything I know. At the moment, since the only thing I have is attendance and no one has missed more than 3 classes yet, y'all currently have 100%. Yay!
- I believe hunger is detrimental to learning. So, please feel free to bring food/snacks to class as long as they don't have a strong scent (e.g., salmon, lamb, etc.), and as long as we can keep the classroom clean for the next class.
I think this just about sums up everything I wanted to address. If I accidentally left anything out, my apology and please let me know (e.g., leave me an anonymous note under my door, ATC2.509).
Have a nice weekend and see you on Tuesday!
Dr. Lee
No comments:
Post a Comment