Tag: Education

The Worst of Times: Thoughts on Teaching

On By VickieIn WritingLeave a comment

Last month I reflected on the best days of my 25-year teaching career. You can read about that HERE.

But it should be no surprise that not all days were great. What might be a surprise is that the worst days had absolutely nothing to do with my classes or with my students. The worst days were thanks to administrators and fellow professors and instructors. Those were the days of charges of racism and sexual harassment, of lawsuits, of spying, of cruel gossip, of corruption. That, however, is a subject for another day. 

Right now, I want to focus on my four worst days in the classroom.

Continue reading “The Worst of Times: Thoughts on Teaching” →

The Best of Times: Thoughts on Teaching

On By VickieIn Education, teaching1 Comment

Watching the current protests occurring on university campuses has gotten me thinking back on my own teaching career and the controversies and protests that I lived through at my own campus.

I spent 25 years as an English professor in Los Angeles, and when I moved to Chicago in 2019, I stepped back in my career and sought a part-time position at a community college in the Loop. Unfortunately, a month and a half into my first semester there, politicians imposed the “14 days to stop the spread” lockdown, which ultimately lasted for multiple semesters. It also resulted in my decision to permanently walk away from teaching. 

I have no regrets. I simply refused to teach under the circumstances given to us during COVID lockdowns. Remote teaching for an at-risk population with limited resources, such as at Harold Washington College, was useless. Maybe not for all classes but certainly for a developmental English course. So I refused to participate. 

Continue reading “The Best of Times: Thoughts on Teaching” →

Thoughts on What We Say to Young Adults about the Future

On By VickieIn Current Events, Education, politics, Self DevelopmentLeave a comment

Screen Shot 2019-01-23 at 3.19.17 PMYou can accomplish great things in this life.

That’s it. Now you just have to believe it. Unfortunately, it seems that our media and our educational system is hell bent on convincing you otherwise. And so many of you are taking that to heart. I want to say “Stop that.”

I’d been a college professor (with a brief stint of teaching middle school thrown in for fun) for 25 years when I quit last year. I am not sure if I will ever go back. I’m not sure I want to. But I know academia. It’s my niche. I lived it, and I follow academic news stories in the media somewhat obsessively. One of the reasons I am so interested is that much of what is occurring on a national scale at colleges and universities today are things that already happened at a small community college in Los Angeles, where I was a tenured English professor. I taught there for a total of 16 years, back in the nineties and in the first decade of the 2000s. So what I am witnessing is not all that surprising.

Continue reading “Thoughts on What We Say to Young Adults about the Future” →