Intermission - Winter Break

 

searched for the source, but can only find various unattributed uses

For a while that was my argument - it is too late to start. I did the math. It would take 3 or more years to get the doctoral degree, no guarantee of a tenure-track position immediately afterward, so tack on another couple of years, 5 years before applying for tenure, a 2 year process before earning tenure...a solid 12 years from starting the doctoral degree to getting tenure, theoretically the final goal.

That means there is no way I am getting tenure before I am 60, which sounds so incredibly far away, and also pretty close to retirement age.

So, let's give another time cushion and say I am comfortable tenured at age 62. This is the same year I could start receiving my Social Security benefits, so I would be at the level of employment which is the goal in academia in the same year I could first retire.

That sounds pretty weird.

Now, I have colleagues who do not retire until well into their 80s, so I could go 20 years or so as a tenured professor. 

I don't know, though, if that is what I want.

I have to give this some serious thought - at what age do I want to retire? What do I want to do when I retire? 

Right now, a friend of mine is traipsing the globe, exploring all sorts of wondrous places as he goes on cruise after cruise in his retirement. I get to live vicariously through his travels as he posts pictures of glaciers, mountains, deserts, ancient ruins, quaint villages. In retirement I could go to all the places I have wished to visit over the years, see all the architecture I have studied.

Once, I had a retirement dream of opening my own little coffee shop. It would be unique in one, distinct aspect. I would have a library of books available for customers to peruse - and annotate. Annotation would be encouraged, with pencils and pens at each table. As you sat in my cafe and read, you would see not only the words of the author, but the thoughts of other readers.

With no work responsibilities and my children grown and off on their own life adventures, I could dedicate my time to a charity, something I deeply believe in.

In all of these dreams, of course, there is my husband along with me, and his thoughts and interests to consider. The travel idea would definitely be one we could joyously share. I can't see him working in my coffee shop - he doesn't even drink coffee - but the annotated books might appeal to him. Working together for a charity is something I can see.

This all relies on my body holding up and allowing enjoyment in retirement. What will the chronic pain do between now and then? I'd love to think it will go away, that either it will fade on its own or doctors will find a solution. I dreamed the other night that I got a job offer in another country, with an enticement that this country had a successful surgery for my chronic pain.

Not bad, huh? Just a dream, though. It is only speculation - all of it is. Planning ahead relies on so many variables.

So why not plan for the best case scenario, the dream that everything will go my way?

I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Day 14 of Classes - the semester ends.

 Time to celebrate! The end is nigh!

Seriously, every student should celebrate the successful end of a semester. It is no small accomplishment. Semesters are fifteen intense weeks of learning, discovery, and demonstrating that you were present and awake for all of that.

Graduation is tomorrow for my student teachers. I'll be there in my Masters regalia, no doubt thinking ahead to graduation in May of 2026 when I will be able to wear my new Doctoral regalia to celebrate my students. (Yeah, I'm thinking less of my own pending graduation in favor of theirs, but I assure you, looking forward to the day that a colleague of mine drapes that hood over my shoulders is pretty exciting).

But I won't get ahead of myself. I have three spring semesters, two summers, and two fall semesters left before then. I know I will be a different person, having those years of study and growth behind me. One semester alone has left me different.

I did have some doubts in August. Had I made the right choice? Would I be able to balance classes, teaching, momming, spousing, and coping with chronic pain? Would I find the workload overwhelming? Would I actually like any of the people I would be in classes with for the next three years? Would the unexpected come along and thrown me off course?

That last one is still a possibility, but I can definitively say that I did make the right choice, that I handle the workload, that I can balance this new aspect of my life in with everything else. In some ways, I am more efficient than I have been in previous semesters. Knowing that I have my own reading for classes, and my own assignments to complete, I have been on top of grading in a way I rarely am. Teaching writing is wonderful, but I usually procrastinate when it comes to grading. Having so much more on my own To-Do list has made me work a bit harder in all areas of my life.

I joked in my application to this program that one of the reasons I wanted to get the degree was so I could finally stop telling students not to call me Dr. Hyson. I wrote it as a joke, but it was not entirely one. A fellow student presented on the toll contingency has on adjuncts. I almost passed over reading their poster because it was too real in some ways. It's like the way I can't watch scenes where characters severely injure their knees because I know that pain so well.

Will contingency go away after I add that three more letters after my name - Sarah Hyson, MS, MA, EdD? Nope, no guarantee there. Many, many adjuncts have their terminal degree. Some of them are teaching the courses in this doctoral program.

But the ceiling will disappear. I will be eligible for conversion to tenure-track, even if it never happens.

Day 13 of Classes

 I had fun making people angry.

Okay, so it was a righteous anger, and not so much fun as a satisfying result. Poster sessions at conferences are always interesting. Apart from the values of professionals representing a whole bunch of information on a small space, there is always a wide variety of information.

This is one of the reasons I assign something like this to my students (yes, a recurring theme in my reflections this semester). I changed it up a bit for my students this time around. Early in the semester I put them in groups based on their research topics, each group having a thread (or a couple of threads), linking them together. Granted, some of the threads were as hard to see as that spider web on a hike that you walk right through, but they were there. Those groups just had to stretch a bit to find - or wander through the woods of their research before accidentally running into their threads.

When it came time to present, I gave each group two goals - they had to convey their topic and the results of their research while also finding those threads and showing the synthesis of their topics. I love tweaking this end-of-semester presentation every year, so I can definitively say it was the best semester of presentations yet.

So, of course, I was thinking about how I assign similar experiences to my students while a student in my doctoral courses. I like being reminded what it is like being on the presenter end rather than the professor end.

Granted, the presentations at the doctoral level are a little different from what my undergrads present, but I see the same commitment to inform at both levels, the same passion for a chosen topic.

My passion was evident throughout the semester, as I began really working on what I hope will be the foundation for my dissertation. Seeing other people get angry when they saw my poster, saw the statistics, saw the lack of progress over decades, was not just satisfying, it further pushed me to create the change for which I see a desperate need.

Even without classes, my winter is going to be busy.

I'll take a moment to talk about some of that other information I saw from the rest of the doctoral students in my cohort. Several addressed the experience of marginalized communities in varying aspects of education. This included the mental health effects, which was a linking thread to several other presentations (they could have had a panel in my class, too). Other students focused on subject-specific topics: literacy, reading, math, music, play-based learning. Like I said, there was a wide variety, which meant I was able to learn a lot in a short time.

This should serve as a reminder - always stop by the poster sessions at conferences.

Day 12 of Classes

I tend to be wary of self-assessments that ask you to take a quiz and then tell you what kind of person you are. There is an aspect which is interesting - will my existent thoughts of who I am come through in the results of the test? Might the results be skewed because of my self-image projecting onto how I answer the questions, whether or not I am aware of this happening?

In my high school psychology class, we took a test that was supposed to show whether you were right or left brain dominant - right indicating creativity and left indicating logic. The scale of the test was a -20 indicating completely right-brained dominance and a +20 complete left-brained. Our teacher had us form an arc in the classroom, lining up according to our scores. As all my classmates finished sorting themselves out, I asked the teacher whether I should go out to the courtyard and stand there. I had scored a -40. He double-checked my scoring, not believing me initially, but confirmed that I done the match correctly and achieved a score he had never seen before.

I have taken the full Myers-Briggs personality test several times - the full test of over 200 questions, not a set of 20 quick questions on a quiz website - in part because a friend of mine is a certified Myers Briggs practitioner. When taking the test, I can intuit for many of the questions the result each answer leads to. So is it possible that because I see myself as introverted, I am more likely to choose answers which I know indicate introversion? It is certainly possible.

Then there are all the articles out there claiming to debunk such tests.

This was on my mind as I took the Gallup Strengths Assessment, which leaves me wondering whether my internal sense of self had any effect on the results. Taking that one step further, would it matter if it did? After all, my own sense of self could be entirely accurate. Regardless, I found the results intriguing.

No surprise, I ended up being something of an oddball. Most, if not all, of my classmates had their strengths spread out over at least two of the areas, while all of mine fall under Strategic Thinking. 

No matter the validity, or whether any bias skewed the results, I found the answers aligned with what I think of myself. It tells me I crave knowledge and enjoy time alone to read a book, that I see patterns and create solutions to problems, that I am inspired by the future and what could be, that I generate innovative ideas.

Whether or not it is accurate, I would not mind embodying these traits.

Day 11 of Classes

 This post is a little late - but I have a solid reason.

Most of these, so far, answer a prompt for one of the courses I am currently enrolled in. This prompt asks about positionality and networking. My brief comment on positionality - writing about that is easy for me. I write personal reflection regularly, so putting it in the form of a statement regarding my research topic did not cause anxiety or stress on my part.

Networking, though.

Here are my reasons for delaying this post:

1. As an introvert and almost certainly neurodiverse person, I despise networking.
2. Networking events tend to exhaust me, so a little distance makes writing about them easier and results in a piece with less bias.
3. I had another networking event on the horizon - the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) conference.

The event with only the students and professors of the doctoral program was okay. I was lucky to be seated on the edge of everything, rather in the middle of everyone talking, which makes a significant difference when it comes to noise. I did learn from the event that a recent doctoral student in the program wrote a dissertation similar to what I intend. This valuable piece of information will lead me to sources I can use.

The much more difficult networking event was NCTE. I usually avoid conferences - the sound, the people, the food, the lights, my chronic pain. (Seriously, I know it was Tom Hanks speaking, but did the ballroom really need to feel like a rock concert beforehand? I was already excited to see and hear him; there was no need to amp it up.) With all the reasons I find conferences anywhere from uncomfortable to downright distressing, I only go if I have a really good reason - like a presentation I am giving, in this case a roundtable on "Reading and Writing for Social Change."

I enjoy the sessions where I can sit in a smallish room and learn, discuss, engage in some activity. I enjoy getting a chance to talk with colleagues and friends I do not see often. For this conference, I got to see my sibling, who only lives 90 minutes from the venue, which was one of the highlights of this conference. While these things are wonderful, they generally are not reason enough to get on a plane, stay in a hotel, and attend the conference - and pay for all of it (or most, as sometimes my institution covers part of this cost).

Last weekend, though, I ended up accidentally networking, which is the best kind.

Somehow I ended up in a room with several people in leadership roles for NCTE (I was not the only non-leader there). They included me in the discussion, part of which was introductions with what we do professionally. This meant I ended up telling them about my research with the goal of creating federal legislation to protect and support LGBTQ+ students.

And one of the people in the room happens to be an editor for a journal which publishes LGBTQ+ related research.

When I was young, one of my favorite words was serendipity - in part because the first syllable has the same pronunciation as my name. It remains one of my favorites, but more for the concept than the morphology. The unlooked for treasure. Serendipitous moments stand out in my mind, like the one I experienced at NCTE.

One of other favorites is synergy, that idea that the combination of things creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts. I find that it often goes hand-in-hand with serendipity.

I did not attend NCTE looking to network. I planned to meet some author, listen to some amazing speakers, spend time with cool people, check out the exhibit hall, but not network. Networking, though it is a primary element of conferences like this, was not among my expectations. I had no intention of putting myself out there and talking to a bunch of people I don't know. My introversion and anxiety make the idea horrid.

But then I end up doing it anyway. Serendipity and Synergy.

It's the only way I ever network.

Day 10 of Classes

We are just past the week I always describe as the worst week of the semester. In Week 10 it feels like the semester will never end, and then in Week 11 (this week), it suddenly feels like the semester is rushing to an end. Work is piling up for students and professors alike. Those of us who teach writing have pages upon pages of student writing to read. But the fun part... student presentations.

Years ago, I had a student standing in front of class, stuttering their way through a presentation, face turning red with embarrassment. I thought to myself in that moment, I am torturing this poor kid. I decided then that I would change the way I had students present their work. After all, there are so many ways that academics present, why not offer some of those methods to my students?

For a couple of years, I had students create conference posters. I invited other professors to come to their final presentation, see what my students were working on, and ask them questions. Another year, I had students present as panels, sitting before the class in a group, but providing their individual information and answering questions.

During COVID, and for a few classes after, I had my research writing students working on one project as an entire class. The class divided into teams at the end of the semester depending on their strengths and interests, which meant that just a few of them were speaking during the final presentation (which also included some other professors), though all were available to answer questions.

Then I hit on the method I am using now - my presentation café. This year, because of the way I have designed my research writing course, I am calling it the Presentation Market. Each group of students - my Guilds - will set up a table as a group to share their research with the class. They can use tri-fold boards, posters, handouts, or even lead the class in an activity. Whatever they choose, they will work as a group. (Also, since we meet at 8am, there will be BYO coffee and donuts, but I may bake some scones and bring them in.)

I ask my students to present their writing every semester, regardless of the way I do so. Since I ask them to present, they may wonder how often I present, or which methods I prefer.

Oddly, most of my presentations of academic work took place during COVID. Before then, I had presented at the Mid-Atlantic Writing Center Association conference, but did little else. It was during the pandemic that I found I had a lot to contribute. I presented at RECAP with my partner-in-crime Amy about our work combining the expertise of librarian and writing professor to model collaboration in the writing classroom. We are talking now about another RECAP application. I gave my presentation on the current book banning phenomenon to a local audience, for the organization Chester County Marching Forward, and a national audience, for the organization Red, Wine, and Blue, speaking about the history, the current trend, and how to combat book bans.

One week from tomorrow I am leading a roundtable at NCTE (National Council for Teachers of English Conference) on Reading and Writing for Social Change, with a focus on LGBTQ+ students. This one has me a little nervous, as it is my first roundtable, but I know it will go well. I'll be surrounded by my fellow West Chester Writing Project Teacher Leaders as part of this group session.

You may infer from all of this that presenting my words, my thoughts, is a place where I am exceptionally comfortable. To some degree, yes. I have been performing since I was six-years-old. I've performed in musicals, plays (I'm a Shakespeare fan), operas, choirs, vocal ensembles, band concerts, and marching band competitions. For ten or so years I was a model, primarily in hair shows. I am a teacher, speaking in front of people almost daily. I have even led church services - an annual poetry service, an LGBTQ+ pride service, and a service which blended the ideas of historic preservation, biology, and faith (UU churches have some really interesting services). Starting at age 13, I have spoken in front of school boards to counter book banning.

All of this indicates comfort on the stage.  

However, there is significant difference between performing someone else's words, playing or singing someone else's music, speaking in front of your own community, and revealing the huge amount of work you have put into academic studies, especially if you are challenging well-established ideas or speaking on controversial subjects. 

So, yes, I am experienced speaking in front of people. I get a rush from a successful performance or from seeing a student's eyes light up in that "ah-ha" moment. I will always, though, have that last-minute nervousness which comes before I step on the stage, before I teach a class for the first time, before I begin speaking about my research areas.

That nervousness is part of what makes the success feel so amazing in the end.

Image from: https://live.staticflickr.com/2228/2089475191_8e681d0e79_b.jpg

Day 7 of Classes

Research Cartography

That's what I call it for my research writing class this semester. I designed the class to be a quest for knowledge, with a path through the land of Hysonia. 

Linear planning for writing has never felt comfortable for me. Outlines of the sort I had to create starting sometime in elementary school and all the way through high school - you know, the ones that use Roman numerals and Arabic numerals to provide an orderly plan for a paper - always felt unnatural. Creating them was a chore. My brain wanted to skip ahead, to dance backwards, to jump from one spot to another.

The first time I created a concept map was wondrous.

So, as I taught research writing semester after semester, I had my students writing literature reviews - using just two or three articles. I provided those standard linear outlines - two of them with different ways to organize the writing, expecting that most of my students had linear ways of thinking, that it was the dominant form of thinking.

Only they rarely managed to create synthesis - which was the whole purpose (or a primary purpose, anyway) - of the assignment. I wanted to see them question the prevailing ideas on their topic, making connections, finding contradictions, but seeing that in student writing was rare. It was frustrating, but rather than getting irritated with the students, I looked at my own practice. After all, when most of your students are failing to accomplish the task you set for them, it is probably not their fault.

I examined how I was teaching them synthesis and experimented a little. I brought in Epic Rap Battles of History. Using this to demonstrate the concept of synthesis was fun, for me and my students. They got it, they could replicate it, but they did not fully transfer the knowledge to their literature reviews. More showed synthesis than before, but they were still in the minority.

So I scrapped the assignment and decided to approach this an entirely new way. Behold, the Literature Review Poster! I collaborated with my library partner-in-crime Amy Pajewski, and we found a succinct 6-step method for creating literature reviews. I took that and made it a visual project. Students met at the Innovation Media Center (IMC) instead of the classroom. There, we had access to crafting supplies and could stretch out and use large tables for our work.

I had students find the primary themes in their peer-reviewed articles, print the articles, play with scissors (cutting out quotes which they found important), gluing the quotes to large poster paper, then writing and drawing all over it. I had them choose one color for writing connections, places where articles agreed with each other. Another color was for differences, conflict. Yet another was for the questions that came to their minds while comparing the articles. They repeated this with the thesis or purpose statement of each article and their methodologies. Essential in the process - keeping track of which quote came from which article, as they would likely use these in their writing later and would need citation.

A few professors in the English department have seen me working on this project with students, primarily when they come in for observations for my teaching evaluations. At least one asked if they could steal the idea for their classroom - of course! Use it. If you are reading, you have my full permission.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that when we started working on a literature review in my doctoral courses and they told us to map our review with the emerging themes, I was amused. I had even starting my own mapping in advance, as it was already forming in my head and I needed to make sure I captured those ideas before they ran away. I used the concept I created for my students, with only an inkling that this was pretty much what we would be doing for class.

And here I thought I had so been original in my idea.

Unlike the work I am engaging in now, I do not then have my students write a full literature review. They demonstrate their grasp of synthesis and their understanding of the articles by creating the poster. Sometimes I have them create it digitally - pretty easy on Google Slides.

As I gazed around the room last night, seeing my classmates work on easel paper on the walls, I thought of my own students, and how fascinating parallel development is.

By the way, if you want to work on digital mind mapping, I highly recommend LucidChart. My Literature Review mapping in progress: