Boice provides a sentence in the opening of Ch 3 (which, if he wrote in a paper for my class he would receive some comments questioning this theory): “Society teaches us to work sporadically and, too often, in great binges and under looming deadlines” (39). When are we taught this? I don’t recall anyone ever telling me: procrastinate until you have four hours of free time, because that definitely exists somewhere in your week. It is frustrating that Boice assumes that all of his readers have amassed a collection of bad habits.
I do all of my lesson planning and most of my grading during my office hours. I set a timer every time I start grading and refuse to extend the boundaries of my “grading time.” As Boice states: your teaching prep should “not interfere with other important activities” (40). I refuse to let the stress in my life be my teaching. But then he goes on to suggest that we should spend time every week looking at research on teaching. Every week, Boice? WHO has time for this? I am glad to read these things as I come across them, or toward the beginning of the semester, but who has time to read articles every week on classroom management with lesson planning, teaching, grading, classes, homework/reading, our writing time, our own scholarly work + any semblance of a social life we are trying to scrape together. I am busy spending my few brief moments working on these things, which you suggested that I do!
I do however love his suggestion in Ch 10 to chart your progress. I have a hard time with the idea that even if you do have a “product” at the end of all of your writing, all of those little brief moments of note taking and prep aren’t in there—they seem to get no credit. You give yourself credit for the chunks, not for the little pieces. I think I’m going to try this for the semester.
"I don’t recall anyone ever telling me: procrastinate until you have four hours of free time, because that definitely exists somewhere in your week. It is frustrating that Boice assumes that all of his readers have amassed a collection of bad habits."
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you brought this up, Megan. I've been wondering this myself. When you give someone advice to improve their habits, it implies that the individual didn't know this information before or has been doing the opposite. However, nobody ever told me to procrastinate. In fact, I'd say that I do the opposite of procrastinate, and I need to learn how to procrastinate a little bit more. Hmm, not sure how to resolve this. Maybe the solution is that the advice kind of bridges the gap between procrastination and perfectionism--it's the balance? And, if we are already on our way there, it's all the better?