‘My assignment has a sunburn’

Last week I participated in a panel discussion aimed at introducing new instructors to Red River College.

These instructors are experts in their fields, from engineering to a variety of social services. But they are new to teaching.

As panelists shared some of our experiences, I mentioned a couple of the stupid things I did as a rookie instructor.

Thrust into teaching, fresh from a rather cutthroat corner of the corporate world, I did not understand that students are not employees.

I provided harsh feedback on assignments, judging them by unfairly high standards unfamiliar to the students.

One of my favourite written comments was “HUH?”

One day, as I handed back marked work in a class, a student jumped up and lamented, “My assignment has a sunburn!” When she waved her paper, all I could see was my comments in red ink.

Talk about “the awkward moment when.”

I realized how intimidating my comments were, and how unfair.

So I changed my evil ways. Well, some of them.

These days I mark in pencil, and I save “HUH?” for the play of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Toronto Blue Jays.

Slutty hippies and other bloggers

The Metro, Winnipeg’s free daily newspaper, is featuring two Creative Communications students’ blogs each week.

The paper, part of a large international publishing company, wants to showcase fresh young voices. Student bloggers get a new outlet they can highlight on their resumes and work portfolios.

Elisha Dacey, the newspaper’s editor, runs the newsroom, writes and edits stories, takes pictures and posts all this online. Oh yeah, she also writes a blog. And that’s just her professional life.

Here are her requirements for Red River Rants:

The RRC blog on Metro would be updated twice weekly, probably Tuesday and Friday. The instructors would pick the best two from recent student blogs. The definition of "best" will be left up to the instructors.
The blog can be about any LOCAL topic. It can be serious or funny or informative or any combination thereof. It can be about something that affects the blogger personally or an opinion piece on something happening in Winnipeg. A poem. A story. A Haiku. Whatever.

For this semester I'm choosing the blog posts.

The first one I selected was Be polite, you slutty hippie by Larissa Peck. It’s a clearly written personal story about bicycle safety, a topic a lot of Winnipeggers are talking about.

Besides, I’m a sucker for a grabby headline.

The second was Chalk 4 Peace by Erika Miller, a story of personal discovery, with a nice range of photos.

Peck and Miller are first-year students.

By Monday each week I will look at all new blog posts written by first- and second-year students and select two for publication on the Metro site.

Looking for blog-writing tips? Check out PR instructor Melanie Lee Lockhart’s blog.

And keep up (if you can) with CreComm’s most prolific blogger, Ad instructor Kenton Larsen.

Student freedom-of-information warriors

Here are the Creative Communications Journalism majors whose work you can read in Open Secrets, the annual co-operation between Red River College and the Winnipeg Free Press.

Thanks to Free Press staffers Mary Agnes Welch and Wendy Sawatzky for guiding and shaping the students’ work.

Photo by Wayne Glowacki, Winnipeg Free Press