Thursday, Jan. 25, 2007 - 4:09 p.m.

Yeah, my class goes better when the prof isn't there. He just makes me nervous. And I know he isn't there to observe my teaching per se, and I don't care if he is, it just makes me nervous. The transitiion from teaching the same class under the supervision of, alternately, different professors and occasionally no one, has rendered me...well, I'm not sure what it's rendered me. Just, some points that I thought were important to the class, he doesn't. Like, if you're going to teach about something called 'root' affixes vs. 'stem' affixes, shouldn't you take a minute to explain the difference between a root and a stem? But, I guess that's what mopping up in discussion section is for, and I guess that if the prof realized it, the mopping up wouldn't be there to be done.

It's still, like, oodles better than last semester. I am not really complaining. I am just commenting. My silly activities adapted from ESL are working, and the class talks freely. Some of them, a little too freely, and with inscrutable content, but. Pretty good. It's a little more like what I always want my class to be like-- an hour long, gently guided conversation about linguistics. Or, at least it was today. Not sure I can describe it with an individual-level predicate just yet. (Er, I guess 'was' is an ILP, too. Never mind. Quit using linguistics terms in the private diary, linguafranca.)

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