Reflection Rules!

Author

Kelsey Smith
October 20, 2023

Still have some (or all) of your $200 professional stipend to spend and don’t want to buy another professional book?

Consider spending your money on technology like a PowerPoint clicker, a portable microphone (think of the dramatic whispers you could do!), or a webcam for your personal computer.

In other tech news, I just discovered that my Dell office computer has a camera! It’s a rectangle on the top of the screen that I can push in and voila! a camera pops up!

I would like to take a moment to publicly apologize to the Office of Digital Humanities Computer Support Team for thinking less of them for the past two years—Why doesn’t this computer have a camera?! It’s 2023 and I don’t have a camera! This is so dumb! I need a camera! Mea culpa!

“And they govern themselves”

In September, when President Reese gave his back-to-school devotional, “No Coincidences,” he spent some time discussing BYU’s newly updated, principle-based dress and grooming code.

Well, as you have likely noticed, some students’ principles of dress and grooming are different from BYU’s code.

In a conversation with Academic VP Justin Collings, Husband Jon, co-chair of BYU’s FAC, asked what the administration was hoping the faculty would do to support the dress and grooming code. Collings said the administration is not expecting faculty and staff to single out and/or enforce the dress and grooming code.

But the administration does hope that we will teach and encourage students to abide by the code’s principles.

How do we do this? I suggest we follow our WRTG 150 order-of-assignment guidelines: inquiry before advocacy.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

When Amy Williams sent us the graphic on reflection the GE created for UNIV, I couldn’t help but say to myself, “That’s gold, Jerry! Gold!”

Reflection is gold—and I am determined to teach reflection often and in a consistent, helpful way because it’s a win-win: it helps my students become better learners and writers, and in turn, their reflections help me as a teacher.

Right now I’m revising my WRTG 150 final. Part of my final will be a reflection, based on Amy’s three “a-ha moments” reflection prompt (Amy’s “Adjunct Reflection Training” PDF, p. 30). I’m already looking forward to reading what my students will have to say (a dang nice feeling to have at the end of the semester)!

 

Stuff for your calendar

Calendars are starting to percolate! Take a few minutes to check out The English Department Calendar. 

OCTOBER

October 31: Last day to spend your $200 stipend! You can spend it two ways: (1) checking out a credit card from the department for an in-person purchase, or (2) sending an email to [email protected] with a link to the item you’d like and a one-sentence explanation of why the item will help you professionally (then just watch for an email announcing its arrival—voila!).

NOVEMBER

November 24: Student Ratings Start! Be sure to encourage, beg, bribe your students to complete one for your class! The more students who complete their student ratings the better picture you can get of what’s working and what’s not working in the classroom!

Last Week of November: The Adjunct Faculty Book Club. If you signed up, watch for an email to vote for the day and time!

DECEMBER

December 1: Withdraw Deadline. Be sure to have conversations with failing or close-to-failing students before December 1. Struggling students often feel like they can’t withdraw, so a conversation with them about their options can go a long way.

December 1: The English Reading Series—featuring Darlene Young, a Fellow Adjunct Faculty Member!—@ 12 pm in the HBLL Auditorium.

December 15: Student Ratings End

December 15: Adjunct Faculty Annual Review Prep @ 11 am in B032 JFSB! Make sure your annual review—due February 1!—hits all the right notes with help from Amy Williams, UW Coordinator. And fear not—hitting all the right notes does not mean more work and stress! Just come! It will be a good time!

December 15: English Department Christmas Lunch (aka You Survived the Semester!) @ 12-1:30 pm in 4088 JFSB. Fa la la la!

December 29: Grades DUE by noon

Our makeshift website

As I’ve noted before, Ansalee Greenwood, Greyson Gurley, Kelsey Smith, and I are hard at work writing content for our Adjunct Faculty Website (and we are continually surprised at how much stuff we need to cover!). Until this website is up and running, here are links to some helpful Google docs (which you can also find in your “swag” folder that’s sitting in your mailbox right now):

Observation Opportunities—sign up to be observed or find someone to observe!

Syllabus Requirements: I just added another option—the RWC’s official syllabus statement that you’re welcome to customize!

Write NOW!—want to get some of your own writing done? Write NOW! can help!