Señora Cummins' Reflections

My mom asked me once if my college gives a "Mother Hen Award." She was implying that I mother hen my students.  She's right.  I care deeply and I have the luxury of teaching a relatively small number of students each semester.  I do "mother hen" them a bit. Other awards I would win: Most likely to refill the water in the faculty coffee maker. Most likely to take her guitar to class. Most likely to have a broken guitar.  (I allowed a student to play my guitar this semester.  My kindness was rewarded with a broken piece and not realizing it until I took it out to play in class. Most likely to discuss fashion in class.  We study clothing & shopping vocabulary.  I also think fashion is really interesting.  Most likely to decorate her office for the holidays.  Yes :)

This semester I'm allowing my face to face class to take their quizzes and tests in person.  I have so many online sections that it's easier on my end for all my classes to use the online proctor when they take quizzes and tests.  Added to that, former students in my face to face sections told me they preferred taking the quizzes and tests online because they could take them at home, it was easier to focus, etc. My own son is in a dual credit class that requires online proctoring this semester.  It's going fine now, but getting it set up was a headache.  I wanted to offer the option to my face to face students to avoid the online proctoring.  We discussed it as a class and they agreed that they preferred to take the quizzes and tests face to face. Here's what I'm finding:  grades are about the same.  Students seem more nervous on our class review day because they know a quiz or test is coming at the end of class.  If they miss class they have to m...

This semester I'm launching my SPAN 1300 course:  Conversational Spanish.  I'm glad we can offer it.  People have asked for this class ever since I began teaching college Spanish classes. What I'm noticing is that I allow more freedom in this class than I do in my SPAN 1411, 1412, 2311 & 2312 courses.  In those courses I know the students may be going on to the next level of Spanish and I need to be sure they are prepared. However, in 1300 there's this lovely freedom that what the student puts into learning is their choice.  We don't have quizzes or tests.  How freeing for me as the instructor. But what I'm noticing is that as the instructor I have to be OK with students choosing not to give as much to the class as I think they should.  I worked hard to create a class that teaches them how to use Spanish in conversation at a basic level.  Some of my students are putting 110% effort into the class.  Others aren't.  And that's their ch...

As I'm building my Spanish conversation class, I'm thrilled that our librarian helped me find an amazing resource.  It's videos of Native-Spanish speakers telling about specific topics:  numbers, food, colors, etc.  The videos are very short and easy for beginning students to understand. They also already have CC in English and Spanish.  This resource is fantastic.   Hooray for wonderful OER resources!

 I'm in the process of creating my 5th class using OER materials.  Whew.  That's a lot. This time around, I'm creating a class I haven't taught before.  When I redesigned my 1411 class I had already taught it numerous times with 2 different curricula, both excellent.  I knew what the class should feel like.  I switched over to using different materials, but it wasn't really new to me.  The same was true for the other 3 classes I redesigned. This time around I'm creating a conversation class.  I'm at the point now where I have the scope and sequence complete and each chapter has a summary of the vocab we'll be studying.  I'm now building out the drill assignments.   When I build assignments I like to label them as "drill" or "apply."  With a drill assignment, students know they are practicing the information at a very basic comprehension level.   Today I wrote a drill assignment and just wasn't sure if it was good....

Today in class we wrapped up Ch 1.  Ch 1 Quiz is later this week. I have found that many students have test anxiety.  I have weekly announcements I send out to my beginning classes that give study tips.  Hopefully this helps them feel more prepared as we go into quizzes and tests.  This point of the class is a natural time to discuss ethical usage of AI. Today we discussed ethical usage of AI with Spanish.  It was a great discussion.   A student pointed out it's helpful to use AI to make practice material to study.  This was new for me. I give them a chapter 1 summary that has everything on it.  In my mind, use that to study the material.  Make flash cards.  Practice them. I'm unsure how an AI can improve upon that, but if a student has found a way to learn the material, fantastic.