But since it is now my most popular tweet ever, I’m making my guide available for download and use with a CC attribution license. Cornell Notes Quick & Dirty Guide
A quick Google for “Cornell Notes templates” reveals hundreds of online templates. I mashed up the best (in my opinion!) into my version. Cornell Notes Blank Template
Additional Tips:
Keep a 3″ x 11″ strip of cardstock or heavy paper in your notebook or binder to draw your margins quickly on the go.
Need more space for reviewing? Do your note taking on only side of the page. Then, use the back of the previous page for mind maps, sketch notes, questions, etc.
Are you a lefty? You may find reversing the columns more your liking (HT to @DarrinSunstrum for that!)
There’s an expression about how the shoemaker’s children have no shoes. Well, the social media consultant is terrible at her own social media!
I’ve clearly fallen behind in my New Year’s resolution of a blog post a month. I thought I might catch up when I had a month off work this summer, but somehow social media was the last thing I wanted to work on.
But I’m back at work now and busier than ever. In fact, this fall will be the most paid work I’ve had at once since I quit a full time job to go back to school a decade ago.
I’m have resumed my social media work with the Faculty of Humanities at the university and what a difference a year in the job makes! I feel really comfortable in the position, now that I’ve figured out what I need to be doing, and I’m seeing the benefits of the connections and network I’ve been building. I’m really looking forward to the year ahead!
I’ve also been fortunate to pick up several other small contracts to flesh out my hours and paycheque. I’ve just started working with our Centre for Pedagogical Innovation (CPI) where I’m helping out with a number of very interesting projects, including TA training, support for those teaching large classes, and research into the perceptions of the value of teaching. I have a lot of experience as a teaching assistant (TA) in the classroom and even helping professors develop pedagogical resources, so it’s exciting to be thinking and learning about pedagogy from a different perspective.
Finally, if enrolment numbers permit, I may get to spend a little time in the classroom again this year as a TA.
Which relates to the Twitter thread I want to share with you. @atrubek shared this really great thread tonight and it so important! I think when we’re teaching it’s so easy to get caught up in the transmission of content and forget about the transmission of skills. I don’t mean discipline-specific skills, but the “how to be a student” skills.
It’s easy, when we’ve been academics for 5, 10, 15 years or longer to forget that we, too, started someplace. We didn’t enter university knowing everything. Sure, we like to think we were more self-sufficient and self-starting than “today’s students” but hindsight can have a gloss superiority to it.
Our students come to us from a wide variety of backgrounds and face a diversity of pressures that we may not have faced.
In my case, for example, my mother had attended university and I had two older sisters in university as well, so I had lots of support at home in navigating the system and knowing what I needed to do.
But not every student has that privilege. Some will be the first in their families to attend university. Some will be far from home and perhaps struggling to make friends and navigate a strange system with strange titles like “registrar” and “dean” and “chair,” never mind the myriad of acronyms we use without thinking!
High school today is different from high school “back in our day.” Again, students will have had a diversity of experiences and come with–or without– skills we deem necessary.
So @atrubek’s thread is such a timely reminder. We need to not assume that our students know how to navigate the system socially or how to access resources. We need to teach them how to take effective notes, how to use the library, how to identify a scholarly resource, what a database is.
Because after the final exam, the student may very well never think about our course content again. But they will be taking other courses, and we can equip them with the skills they need to succeed there, too–whether it’s something we teach directly, or we direct them to campus resources.
We don’t just teach content, we teach students how to be students.
teaching first-years today? Here are some things my son, starting college today, was never taught:
Too often today, we fail to acknowledge and confront the incredible amount of racism that has shaped the ideas of scholars we cite in the field of ancient history.
…
How can we address the problem of the lily white antiquity that persists in the public imagination? What can classicists learn from the debate over whiteness and ancient sculpture?
…
Do we make it easy for people of color who want to study the ancient world? Do they see themselves in the ancient landscape that we present to them? The dearth of people of color in modern media depicting the ancient world is a pivotal issue here. Movies and video games, in particular, perpetuate the notion that the classical world was white.
…
I’m not suggesting that we go, with a bucket in hand, and attempt to repaint every white marble statue across the country. However, I believe that tactics such as better museum signage, the presentation of 3D reconstructions alongside originals, and the use of computerized light projections can help produce a contextual framework for understanding classical sculpture as it truly was. It may have taken just one classical statue to influence the false construction of race, but it will take many of us to tear it down. We have the power to return color to the ancient world, but it has to start with us.
Some really fantastic classicists got together recently to discuss ethical engagement and classics. Several of the talks were posted on Classics and Social Justice by Jess Wright, Matt Chaldekas, and Hannah Čulík-Baird.
It’s a long a read, but a very good one. I encourage you to read the whole thing, but I’ve copied below a few snippets that particularly jumped out at me.
Classicists are in a particular bind: we must argue for the salience of antiquity to a modern world preoccupied with the effects of European imperialism, and we must do so without resorting to the imperialist argument that the Classics are the foundation of humanistic endeavour….
How does our study of antiquity inform us as ethical subjects? How does our pedagogical approach to antiquity shape our students? Through what strategies and initiatives might we render “Classics” a term that evokes social and ethical engagement, rather than elitist isolation and the ivory tower?
The common idea about the canon is that it is inherently valuable because it articulates the best that has been thought and written or some such. This notion of values is both a stumbling block and a powerful entryway. For instance, is “the unexamined life not worth living” irrevocably damaged as an ideal because of its elite original context? Or should we aspire to democratize the concept through education?
Edelstein cannot have known that his work on the Oath would directly affect the lives of literally millions of people. But here’s the thing: you can’t study any aspect of what many consider to be the foundation of modern Western society and ignore that your work is potentially relevant in modern discourse, even if you are limited in your ability to understand how. Classicists are ethically and socially engaged, whether we acknowledge it or not, and because we’re all engaged in this way, we have at least two tasks…
The first task is to attempt to dissuade modern consumers of our work from using the ancient world as direct precedent for modern legislation, for good or for ill…
Our second task is to recognize that people are going to use our work however they want to regardless of what we say and therefore to be responsible in our research.
While podcasting takes time and preparation and may have a steep learning curve, it is very rewarding. Research interests come alive in a new way when you create and share your ideas via podcasting. Listener responses will help you develop your ideas in new directions. Podcasting also breaks down academia’s walls, creating a wider audience and inviting the public to see what scholars do and why it matters.
Friday evening a Twitter friend announced she was officially leaving her MA program.
It is a courageous and difficult decision to leave academia, and particularly to leave mid-program. So much time, money, and effort has been invested in the pursuit of a degree, yet so much more investment is still required. Is it worth it? The answer isn’t easy.
To those who choose to leave for a different path, I want to say: Academia, like banking or plumbing, is not for everyone, and it’s ok if it’s not for you. You are not a quitter if you leave. There is no shame in finding a different path that is more rewarding and better suited to you.
Your well-being, health and happiness are more important than any degree. If your degree is not giving you that, then look for a different path. Without health and happiness, what is your degree worth?
Leaving doesn’t mean you don’t care about your field or discipline. It doesn’t mean you can’t find ways to still contribute if you wish.
It’s such a shame.
But she was so close to finishing!
He just couldn’t hack it.
Why on earth would she quit now?
I heard he quit after just one semester!
To those who stay, I want to say: Please think before saying things that suggest shame or failure when someone leaves your programs. Others are listening and internalizing what you say. From faculty, fellow student, friend, or onlooker, comments that suggest it is the leaver’s “fault” they “couldn’t make it” contribute to an unhealthy culture.
Framing it is a the leaver’s fault also obscures the role that academia as an institution may play in that decision. The system is far from perfect, and many good scholars with excellent ideas get forced out or flee from toxic departments before they can realize their goals.
So yes, I applaud those who take the brave and scary step to leave their programs because they know it’s best for them.
I live-tweeted the Wednesday evening session and some Thursday panels of the 113th Annual Meeting of The Classical Association of the Middle West and South at Kitchener/Waterloo (April 5 & 6, 2017).
Panels/Sessions:
Opening Evening Featured Panel: Grace Harriet Macurdy (1866-1946) and Her Impact on the Study of Women’s History (Elizabeth Carney, Ann R. Raia, Maria S. Marsilio).
Euripides: Gender and Sex (Joshua M. Reno, Teresa Yates, Thomas K. Hubbard, Daniel Turkeltaub)
Roundtable: The Thersites Project (Monica Florence and Dianna Rhyan)
Roundtable: Increasing Diversity among Classics Students (Debby Sneed and Lauren T. Brooks)
Pedagogy: Tools and Resources (Ann R. Raia & Maria S. Marsilio, Marie-Claire Beaulieu & Anthony Bucci, Summer R. Trentin, J. Matthew Harrison)
Pedagogy: Classics for Everybody (Lauren T. Brooks, Leanna Boychenko, Blanche C. McCune, Mark P. Nugent, Aaron Wenzel)
I mentioned when I was hosting @wethehumanities on Twitter that I have a number of stock seminar (class) activities that I pull out from time to time, and, as requested, I plan to write about some of them here on the blog. This is, hopefully, the first in an occasional series!
The activities are not tied to specific texts and require little in the way of , so I can switch them up as I need. For example, if I have just finished marking essays, or students are about to start writing essays, I can pull out an activity that addresses some of the common problems students have. If my concussion headache is particularly bad, I can pull out an activity that is more student-driven and relies less on me interacting with the entire class at once.
The list, of course, is an ongoing project. I have been building it for almost a decade now and there are frequent additions and variations and the occasional deletion. I imagine most educators have similar lists they draw from. I like to provide a variety of ways for students to engage with materials over the course of the semester. This is not just to keep them entertained and interested, but to also teach them the critical writing and reading skills that are integral to a humanities course.
The Sacrifice of Iphigenia, by Francois Perrier, 17th century. Public Domain.
Today for seminar we were discussing Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis. I forget how wonderfully complex this play until it comes time to teach it again; I am enamoured with Medea, so that week always tends to the highlight of the semester for me. But there are so many interesting explorations of heroic nature and the role of fate to be had in Iphigenia in Aulis and its complex plot of twists and turns, misunderstandings and missed timings, decisions and changed minds, makes we wish our first year seminar was 2 hours long, not a mere 50 minutes.
This week, I decided to pull out my essay writing activity (I’m afraid I don’t have a more exciting name for it) and I added a twist to it that actually worked very well.
Introductory discussion
The seminar is pretty straightforward. I usually start with getting a sense of how many students have ready, or tried to read, the play, how far they got through it, and how much of it they understand. Experience has taught me that only a few will make it all the way through (and that number is significantly less when class is on a Friday afternoon on St. Patrick’s Day!). A number will say they have attempted it and others will admit they didn’t.
I’m careful not to shame or lecture for students for not doing the readings. I need the students to be honest with me about how they have prepared so I can make the most of our seminar. Students know they need to do the reading, and I do emphasize to them that they will get more out of seminar if they come prepared, but unless unpreparedness is a widespread, consistent issue in a seminar, I try not to pay it too much mind. (Unless it’s Medea they haven’t read. Then I might tell them they have made kittens cry 😉 )
So the first part of any seminar is going over the plot of the play. Sometimes I outline on the whiteboard, sometimes I don’t. I find students are generally quite good at the broad strokes of a myth, but I question and encourage them to go into more detail than they do naturally. I’m not sure why students are averse to details, but this is a consistent problem I see across classes, essays, and assignments, and part of what the essay activity is designed to address.
Whiteboard–Discussion of Iphigenia at Aulis & key characters
Activity Preparation
I then move into preparing the class for the actual activity. With the theme for this week about expanding and exploring the complex definition of the hero, we briefly reviewed the cast of characters from the play (Iphigenia, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Achilles, Menelaus) and their roles in the play, eg, daughter, sacrificice, father, husband warrior, king, general, wife, mother, etc.
Activity
Students are paired off and each pair is given a sheet of paper. Working together, they will need to come up with a thesis statement in response to my prompt question. In this case, my prompt question was to argue how each character was heroic. Each pair did a different character, and some characters were easier to develop a thesis for than others. While on one level the activity is to help them develop better thesis writing skills, on another it is more about the discussions they have with each other about the character.
I circulate among the groups, checking in with each and offering feedback and suggestions on improving their theses. As I know a certain number of students won’t be prepared, I make note on the board of some key passages in the text related to each character.
This time, I added a new element to the activity. When students seem to be mostly finished this step, I ask them to pass their papers to the pair on their right. Again, my focus isn’t on the the perfectly written thesis, so if students haven’t quite got it finished, it’s ok.
The students now look at the new thesis for the new character. They are invited to make any improvements to it that they think are necessary, and then to proceed to outlining one supporting point. They must include references to line numbers that back up their point.
I continued this as time permitted; each group got to look at three characters (including their first one) before we had to wrap up. During the activity, I circulated amongst the students, listening to their ideas and offering suggestions of other things to consider or passages to look at.
The nice thing with this activity is that it can be made as long or as short as time permits; whether students only get to look at one other character or whether they examine all five, they are having valuable discussions about the heroic nature and constructing arguments.
Wrap Up
To wrap up the class, I had students share the page that was in front of them with the rest of the class. For the sake of time, I didn’t have students give line numbers in their presentation, but they did need to share the thesis and supporting points.
I encouraged students to provide additional feedback, particularly if I heard someone discussing something that did not make it on the page but was still important. I also provided some feedback on key ideas that may have been missed.
In Conclusion…
I aim to use this activity at least once a semester. As I mentioned, I find students are reluctant to engage with specific details of a text to support their idea. Engaging with the text is a skill and habit that has to be taught and reinforced over the course of the entire semester. By presenting the activity as an essay activity, but having students work with pairs, they practice articulating their ideas and supporting their arguments.
Iphigenie, by Anslem Feuerbach 1862. Public Domain.
Adding the rotation of the papers was an excellent addition. Not only were students practicing expressing their own ideas, but they were also practicing critiquing and editing others’ writings. In addition, it gave students the chance to have a series of short but focused conversations about several different characters, so they were examining the idea of the hero from multiple perspectives and, hopefully, developing an appreciation for the complex nature of heroes and fate.
The nice thing with this activity is that it can be made as long or as short as time permits; whether students only get to look at one other character or whether they examine all five, they are having valuable discussions about the heroic nature and constructing arguments.
How much of a monster is Polyphemus, really? Sententiae Antiquae challenges us to think more sympathetically.
As horrifying as his earlier behavior had been, and as menacing as his threats to repaint his walls with Odysseus’ blood may sound, this speech is nevertheless given in the context of a much more deeply humanizing emotion: Polyphemus’ solicitous concern for his ram. He knows these animals, and evinces a tender regard for their well-being even in the midst of his own suffering. Indeed, this affectionate concern for his ram serves as a stark counterpoint to the actions of Odysseus, who throughout the poem shows no apparent serious regard for his companions. At no point in the poem does Odysseus show any outward emotional attachment to his men, and it is notable that even in his own tale of his sufferings, the loss of his men is primarily framed as something which happened to him. Polyphemus is thus portrayed as being, despite his monstrous qualities, a more compassionate figure than Odysseus.
[B]logging is in and of itself academic writing and academic publication. It’s not an add-on. It’s now part and parcel of the academic writing landscape. As such, it is of no less value than any other form of writing. Even though audit regimes do not count blogs – yet – this does not lessen their value. And therefore those of us who engage in bloggery need to stop justifying it as a necessary accompaniment to the Real Work of Serious Academic Writing. Blogs are their own worthwhile thing.
