Friday, September 19, 2008

After a meeting with a sales rep at the museum to order some inventory that will help me build up a section in the store focused on helping people tap into their own creativity (sketching and watercolor kits, that sort of thing), I headed to school. Pretty much finished grading papers and turned them back to students. The assignment was an unusual one (I'm following the assignment sequence laid out by the UVU writing department), and I think I made it more confusing than it had to be. I'm feeling a bit unsettled about that. I had the students write about Martin Luther King Jr.'s rhetoric in excerpts from his I Have a Dream speech. How did his word choices, what he focused on, the way he organized his ideas and the tone and style of the piece reflect his point of view and purpose? It seemed fairly straightforward to me, but my students didn't understand what I wanted. I'm not feeling like a very good teacher this week. I'm not feeling much good at anything. And don't try to talk me out of feeling this way. I need to wallow a bit. And I really need more sleep.