Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

Our vacation has been great so far, both relaxing and entertaining at the same time. It is nice to be away (and in a warm climate again) to recharge ourselves, and we look forward to returning home after the holidays. In the meantime, best wishes to all of you and yours.

By the time you read this, it is likely that we are on our way to California to spend 10 days with family. The next update should come from the computer at my parent’s house or whatever internet connection I can find for the laptop.

When I was an undergraduate at California State University, Chico, I was fortunate enough to study with some very fine professors who taught me a great deal about music. One of them, Daniel Hiestand, was the education professor and band director. He was one of the senior members of the faculty and a very influential figure in the California music education scene. He tragically passed away during the third year of my degree, but not before giving me one of the most important and timely bits of advice that I’ve ever received from a teacher. The advice, in a nutshell, was simply “Follow your dreams” and it led me out of an unhappy situation (music education) and onto a path (composition) that was so much more engaging for me that it ultimately led to my doctorate. Easy advice I suppose, but not so easy when your mind is crowded with self-doubts and you need someone you respect to say it at the right time.

Anyway, he had a series of short quips and sayings for aspiring teachers that he liked to call “Hiestand’s Homilies.” Going through some old papers and notebooks the other day, I noticed that I still have them written down from the only “methods” class that I had the opportunity to take from him, and thought they would make excellent material for discussion. The first of these that caught my eye was the following:

Number One: You have to love the kids enough to “take it” if they don’t like you.

This is one of his lessons that I’ve never needed a notebook to remember and I think it is just as important for us teaching at the university level as it is for the saints that teach first grade. The best example I can think of in my own teaching is the moment where I have to give a student a failing grade. It is never easy for me to do (and if it were, then I’d be concerned) and takes a willingness to know that a student needs to hear, from me (and preferably face-to-face), why they are failing and why they need to start over at the beginning. I must care enough about the student to be honest with them and tell them (sincerely!) that they need the extra time and benefit of retaking the course.

In what I suspect is natural for most teachers, it doesn’t take any effort for me to care about most of my students and root for them to succeed. I even agonize over the few students who I just can’t seem to grow to like and never quit trying to find some common ground upon which to build a good student/teacher relationship. When I can’t seem to establish a connection, it is always a disappointment because without it, I find it easier to treat them with less sincerity than the other students in a class. This is one of the things that I am constantly working to improve in my teaching.

As an adjunct, it would be easy for me to give less effort than I would if I were on the tenure track, but that would be a grave injustice to my students and would leave me with the guilt that I’ve lost my integrity as a teacher. Just thinking about this makes me want to work even harder next semester!

I’ll post another next Friday. Have a great weekend!

The grading progresses… Slowly.

I have now graded almost all of my theory exams and with only 8 remaining, have just had one of those moments of revulsion that comes from doing something for too many hours straight. As can be expected, the papers are a mixed bag, some of them make me want to give up teaching and become a door to door salesman while others make me smile with satisfaction as a student sails through every pitfall and snare on the way to an “A” paper.

The problem is that while I might only be marking a few mistakes on each individual paper, each of these mistakes seem to accumulate until all of the papers seem to look something like the following example.

When this happens, I know I need to take a break!

NOTE: The example above is not the work of any of my students (thankfully) and no animals were harmed during the writing of this post.

If you have seen the news out of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, you’d know that they have restored their Christmas trees (Holiday Trees?) after taking them down for a few days following a complaint from a rabbi that the holiday decorations at the airport should also include a menorah.

I’m looking for some help from my readers on this one (all 3 of you.) Are Christmas trees necessarily Christian and isn’t this why calling them “Holiday Trees” instead of “Christmas Trees” is a good idea? I mean, if folks like Bill O’ Reilly and Sean Hannity really are correct when they claim that there is a full scale “War on Christmas” (such crusaders for the truth, those two…) then doesn’t it make more sense to attempt to be as inclusive as possible during the holiday season to avoid any possible sneak attacks from the dark forces looking to steal Santa’s sleigh?

Do you even care?

Today is the first day of finals week and a few of of my first-year music students have that crazed look in their eyes that comes from having so much happening in such a short amount of time.

As music students, they likely have well over 15 credit hours (I seem to remember having 19 my first semester and a high of 23 at one point as a sophomore!) of classes and all the papers and tests that come with them as well as the concerts that invariably occur at the end of the semester plus the juries on their instruments. I’d wager that anyone who has gotten this crazy degree, or for that matter any other degree, knows exactly what I’m talking about.

Since there are a few of my readers that are students and/or not in academia, I feel compelled to note that it is marginally better for the professors because we have the advantage of crafting our assessment materials to work within the time constraints of our lives. For example, I know the theory exams that I am currently proctoring will require somewhere between 3 to 5 hours to grade (depending on how diligent I am at the time), plus another hour to tabulate percentages and fill in the grade sheet. I already know at exactly what points this week I will devote time to grading them (and the other exams that I am giving) and have a self-imposed deadline to turn in my grades later in the week. All of this structure makes my finals week relatively simple when compared to the open-ended student imperative to “study hard.”

In many ways, and this may sound crazy, I miss that “Finals Week Crush.” I used to like the pressure and the euphoric feeling that came over me at the moment I walked out of the last final. Though I still get it at the end of every semester, it’s not quite the same. I would guess that the pressures (perceived or real) do not seem nearly as overwhelming as they did back when I was a student.

I need a good solid deadline for a commission. That always gets the adrenaline pumping!

In what I consider to be a poor public relations decision, an Ameren IP spokesperson used the latest outages as proof of why the company must raise their rates on electricity by 55% in the coming year, presenting a scenario, where without the increase, the company would not have the funds to respond to an emergency situation like last week’s ice storm. The company claims that the rate hike is due to increased rates from their power suppliers and that since the contracts for 2007 are already in place, they would be forced to lay off up to 1,000 employees or face bankruptcy.

I can appreciate the rising costs of energy throughout the world, and in some way, it makes me happy as higher rates will force people to either conserve or find alternate, more efficient sources. However, the company has had two major outages in the past 6 months and four in the past three years that demonstrate significant problems with the power infrastructure. As a consumer and resident of the area, I believe that fixing these recurring problems must be Ameren’s first priority, above all others. Fortunately, both the Illinois Commerce Commission and the Missouri Public Service Commission seem to agree and either have launched investigations into the power outages or scheduled public hearings on the subject.

Personally, I think a couple of these gentlemen at Ameren should take a bit of a paycut until the problems are solved once and for all. He might have to tighten up his belt, but I’m sure that CEO Gary Rainwater will still be able to feed his family, even with a 50% cut to his current salary of $2,536,103.

If you want even more news regarding Ameren, please visit the Ameren News page over at Topix.net.

Yesterday evening, after teaching in St. Louis, I returned home to check up on the house and pick up some clothes for today. The power was still out, but to my delight, the neighborhood was overrun by at least 11 utility trucks in a riot of flashing orange lights and spotlights.

I figured the end was near, so I decided to grab dinner (my wife was in a rehearsal until 10pm) and hang around rather than stray too far away. When I returned after an impatient dinner, there were even more utility trucks and more activity. With growing optimism and excitment, I rounded the corner onto my street and the lights were on!

This was at 8:45pm, just two minutes shy of 144 hours without electricity or heat. That’s six full days (for all of my musician friends) and my anger in the aftermath will be the subject of tomorrow’s post. After tomorrow, I’ll let it go, I promise…

It has been more than five and a half days and seven nights since we lost power. It will be six full days at 8:45 this evening and the forecast high for tomorrow is 27 degrees.

Though Ameren IP has assured us that they are doing their best to restore power to the greatest number of people as soon as possible, I drove through our immediate neighborhood yesterday and couldn’t help but come away extremely pessimistic about our situation. There were still downed power lines in some of the smaller streets and I simply can’t imagine our circuit being turned on before those are fixed. Perhaps we are just not a great enough number of people to matter at this point.

The company’s latest statment on their “Outage Information Page” exclaims:

More than 400,000 customers have had their power restored since the ice storm of December 1. More than 7,000 field personnel, including crews from 14 states, are working to restore power.

That may be true, but I’m out of patience and am about ready to walk into their office, which is just a few blocks away, with an extension chord and ask them if I can plug my house into their outlet.

It has been 95 hours since we’ve had electricity and heat in our home and after 3 nights staying with friends, we are about at the end of our rope. It is not that we don’t have a place to sleep or food to eat but more that we don’t have a place to rest and work during the down time. It seems that the only place that I can get anything done is at the University or in my car, and neither are as comfortable as my kitchen table with all of my resources, computer files, and soft drinks just feet away. Furthermore, I am very worried about burglary and that constant threat hovers in the back of my mind each night before I go to sleep.

Then again, at least we aren’t in any significant physical danger. It could be far worse, so for that I am thankful. I know that I’ll be giving a bit more to the Salvation Army bell ringers but we still have our home and our health.

In the meantime, my theory students get the ‘grumpy’ teacher for the foreseeable future.