(I asked a graduating UCD student I’m working with, D’Lana Pearce, to write about bad teachers for the blog.)

I love school and I love learning. When I came to college I was excited for all the new material I would learn. This is why I have found it particularly disappointing that *some* of the professors at UC Davis are absolutely awful.

Many of my professors have simply not cared. We, the students, understand this is a research-based university. We get that many of our professors have a bigger passion for research than teaching. Yet these professors are still conducting research at a college. Why bother teaching a class if it is not enjoyable? I have had professors state that they do not care about teaching and that all questions need to go to the TA. I have had professors that are grad students and are better at teaching than the tenured professors who are “experts” on the topic.

When I was a sophomore, I was struggling with anxiety (I still do to this day), and I did horrible on a midterm. My conversation with the math professor went like this:

Me: I did not perform well on the most recent exam and I was wondering if we could schedule a time to meet. I’d like to see what mistakes I’m making so that I can work to improve my grade in this class. I love math and I really want to do well in your class.

Professor: Sure, you can come to office hours.

Me: Unfortunately, I have a class during office hours and attendance is mandatory. Is there any other time that works for you before the next exam?

Professor: My office hours are for students. I’m too busy with my research to open more time. Skip your other class.

Situations like this are common and infuriating. Helping students succeed is not a burden. I know that there are not enough hours in the week for a professor to plan one-on-one meetings with every student, but I clearly needed help and I was trying to be responsible by reaching out and attempting to learn more. It makes me, and many of my peers, wonder why we even chose this school.

Good professors may outnumber poor professors but the discouragement from a professor who simply does not care is not something I can forget.

This quarter, I’m teaching 104J: Writing in Social Justice.

The first assignment is an autobiography to share with the class–it can be in any genre but must be no more than 500 words.

I decided to write one too.

What came out, as I noted, wasn’t what I wanted or expected.

My brain is still processing some core issues–my relationship with Daddy & what I’ve learned about my mind/body connection.

I’m going to write one of these every time I teach this class, to see how it changes.

Without further ado:

31 True Things

1. Karma is my given name.
2. (Dr. is my earned one.)
3. Someone once said I was in chronic pain because my name was not Christian—God was punishing me for my father’s choices.
4. My father died when I was very young.
5. My faith in God died much later.
6. My faith was in “Daddy,” my grandfather who raised me when I was little.
7. My faith in him got stronger when my mother, an emotionally abusive alcoholic, took me back.
8. I lost my Daddy two years ago next month.
9. His disapproval lacerates me.
10. And remembering I disapproved of his politics, his racism, his disapproval, doesn’t even anything out.
11. I argue with him and others in my head constantly.
12. That’s part of being a chronic worrier.
13. Chronic worrying and chronic pain are both tied to high ACE (childhood trauma) scores and PTSD.
14. We think that if we keep worrying, keep thinking, keep spinning, we’ll find a way out of chaos.
15. The “unexplainable” spasms are the same—every muscle tense and ready—but ironically too tense to physically run away from whatever they’re afraid of, if I had to.
16. I’m also a workaholic.
17. People say I work harder than anyone they know.
18. The tone is awe, with overtones of worry & pity.
19. I’m in a trap, working hard to pay down student loans and medical debt.
20. Then my doctors tell me to work less, because I’m killing myself.
21. Sometimes I think I keep trying to do everything at once—publishing, traveling, teaching—because I might not have much time left.
22. This isn’t how I wanted this list to go.
23. I wanted images of geekery, theatre, writing, cats, books, friends, family, cooking, pop culture, teaching, . . .
24. Maybe I would open up about my fears & how I’m insecure about my body, and vain about my hair, and how I’ve loved and lost but sometimes not loved at all.
25. I wanted this to be a list to show I’ve survived.
26. And if multiple degrees and (a)vocations I love and a great chosen family and putting my son through his first quarter century are the criteria, how I’ve thrived.
27. He was born to a teenage mother, but his ACE score is a hell of a lot lower than mine.
28. That might be my greatest accomplishment.
29. No—it’s that he’s smart & funny, and we genuinely like each other.
30. I make jokes about all of these things in my stand-up.
31. Lord Byron said, “And if I laugh at any mortal thing, ‘tis that I may not weep.”

“How did the presentations go?” I asked my class this afternoon.

They all started talking at once, not about the presentations, but about the substitute teacher.

I have two conferences this month, so I scheduled student presentations for the two days I’d be gone–something that’s easy for a sub to supervise. I didn’t get to choose my sub–it’s someone I’ve never met, actually, a full-timer at SCC, who usually teaches on the Sacramento campus.

Their complaints were numerous–she started roll before class started and then “tardy-shamed” people who weren’t actually late. She cut off their presentations and was strict with questions. She criticized how I wrote the presentation instructions (I was surprised she did something like that in front of them). She made a student take his baseball cap off.

“Well, you’ll see her on Thursday, for the next group of students to do presentations while I’m gone.”

They groaned.

“Are you going to wear your hat?” I asked the student who always wears a hat.

Another student: “Maybe we should all wear hats.”

They got really excited.

“Could we?”

“I can’t condemn peaceful protest. . . but please make sure you actually get to do your presentations.”

Tune in next week . . .

I am always astounded when my students tell me former teachers have told them they’re bad writers.

This quarter, someone implied I had.

We were at a writing workshop with Douglas Abrams, co-author of The Book of Joy. My student said her confidence was shattered–she had thought she was a great writer, but now she knew she was a bad one.

“Who told you that?”

She looked right at me.

I got defensive, immediately.

“I never said that–I would never say that.”

“But I got a bad grade on the punctuation quiz.”

“That was an automated quiz–I haven’t even seen it. And I certainly haven’t told you you’re a bad writer.”

The student seemed to think my distinction wasn’t important.

(Abrams tried to get us back on track by telling her to just put a comma wherever she would pause, which caused ALL of my students to swivel their heads to me, since I had told them that only people who don’t know the formal rules (and who aren’t professional editors) say that.)

My student’s feelings were hurt by the quiz results, though. She had been in AP English. She had been an editor for her school’s yearbook. My assuring the class that I go over punctuation with my graduate students hadn’t mollified her.

I tell my students that we all need more practice–that’s why writing classes, from remedial to graduate level, exist. I also tell them that I am usually their first and last hope at getting an actual explanation of punctuation.

None of my teachers had really gone over it. Having a BA in English doesn’t necessarily prepare you for teaching writing, especially at the nuts and bolts level. I taught myself the rules (and the names of them) when I was becoming a professional writing teacher, a professional editor. In other words, I had to go out of my way to understand the difference between the restrictive and nonrestrictive clause, the cumulative and the coordinating adjective.

(This lack of formal training is what leads to so many people saying that commas and pauses are interchangeable.)

My student isn’t a bad writer–she did fine in my class, especially since grammar is one small part of writing and therefore of writing instruction. But she is a graduating senior who makes comma and semicolon mistakes. The latter is compounded by her inability to spot and fix her unintentional fragments.

But I’m worried that her assumption about what I was “saying” with a quiz grade will change her memory of what I did say–what I would say.

What if I could teach writing this way:

In class, we go over all the things we do now, from the development of a solid research question to fine editing.

But I don’t grade a student’s paper until it’s good.

If the student turns in something with a terrible title (“Essay 2”) or even a meh one (“Antibiotic Resistance”), I get to hand it back. “In the real world, I wouldn’t read this.”

If the introduction is boring, I get to hand it back.

If there’s no sense of audience, I get to hand it back.

If the organization makes no sense, I get to hand it back.

If the counter-argument is a straw man, I get to hand it back.

If there are a bunch of grammar errors, I get to hand it back.

If the conclusion is just a summary, I get to hand it back.

Etc.

The class would be pass/fail. To pass, the student would have to hand me a paper I was okay with (if not thrilled by) the whole way through.

About a third of the way through my guest lecture, the professor said, “I’m going to stop you there. I don’t agree with your feminist reading of the text.”

I was Professor Levin’s TA in a Shakespeare course. I already had my Masters–I’d written a book to get it, on the figure of the witch on the British stage, from Shakespeare to Churchill. Chapter One was about Macbeth, and even though I didn’t use it in the book, I’d written another chapter about witchcraft in The Tempest.

Thus, when Levin invited me to give a talk, I proposed a brief talk based on that.

The Tempest features a mage, Prospero, which is tricky, since King James really hated witches.

He had written an entire book about them, Daemonologie, in which he explained how all magic is in service of the dark forces, with tangents about how it’s possible for the Devil to impregnate a woman, since he can’t make sperm (spoiler: he gets sperm from a corpse).

While all witches were bad, he did make a common distinction between male and female magic. Male magic was “white”–it’s what learned men did, in trying to compel the spirits. Female magic was “black,” base, sexual, and destructive. Women were controlled by the devil and usually gave their body to him to seal the pact.

My point was that Sycorax, the unseen (dead) witch in The Tempest was there to foil for Prospero (she is rumored to have gotten pregnant by the devil, etc.). One could view the play with more sympathy towards Prospero due to her (and because Shakespeare allows for multiple interpretations, one might realize they’re not that different).

I got cut off, though.

I had to leave the lectern and take my seat in the back of the room, before Levin told the students that he didn’t approve of feminist theory and that they should forget everything I’d said.

Some of the students emailed me, apologizing for their professor’s behavior, saying they wished they’d been allowed to form an opinion about my point, if only they’d been allowed to hear it.

On the way out of class that day, Levin had asked where I’d gotten all that crap about James’s views.

“From his book, as I said. Have you read Daemonologie?”

“No.”

Every time I teach Shakespeare, as I am this summer, I think about this interaction.

And about the lesson.

A professor stopped a point of view he didn’t understand before hearing it out.

A male professor made a woman sit down before hearing her out.

I’m sure the students learned from that–that he would punish them for even proposing an interpretation he hadn’t thought of.

And that the sexism of King James’s time is still very much with us.

Today is my birthday, but this month also marks an important milestone for me. I’ve been teaching for twenty years.

I wasn’t always sure that this was what I was going to be, despite the amazing teachers I had, how much I enjoyed tutoring and directing, and the empowerment and escape path I found in education.

I had a year between undergrad and grad school, and when I started grad school in the summer of 1998, I was sure of what I wanted.

Especially after I got to guest teach for the first time.

If the feeling I had had happened in a church, I’d be a nun now.

I’d like to claim it was inevitable, and I could make that case–I’ve seen my permanent record. (I asked my mom for a note to see it when I was in high school–I wondered if the rumors about it were true.)

One of the first notes, from my kindergarten teacher:

“Karma displays leadership abilities on the playground.”

And so here I am, displaying leadership abilities on the playground of higher education.

In these twenty years, I’ve taken several pedagogy courses, including a film pedagogy course, I’ve made a video for my students on better editing, I’ve mentored (officially and unofficially) many students, worked with our at-risk students, written two pedagogy books, served with our campus book program, done library outreach, created courses, worked with student interns, been an interim director of a program, served on committees, overseen comp exams, worked with local theatres, brought speakers to campus, significantly contributed to scholarship in my fields, edited Prized Writing, served on two dissertation committees, gotten my students scholarships and into graduate schools, facilitated the stand-up comedy club, etc.

I have won the 2015 AF Excellence in Teaching Award.

And then there are the courses.

I think this is the complete list (two of these years at Florida State, getting a terminal masters by writing a book–yes, a book, for a masters; six of these years at UCD, getting a PhD, during which for one year I just TAd; and then full-time at UCD for the rest; adjuncting for Los Rios; I’m only counting courses for which I was the sole instructor):

Freshman Comp: 25

Writing About The Simpsons: Satire and Postmodernism. This turned into a book and a freshman seminar at UCD that I’ve taught over a dozen times. 2

Great Books of the World: 2

Young People’s Lit: 1

Storytelling: 1

Multicultural Children’s Lit: 2

Science and Speculative Fiction by Women: 1

Introduction to Drama: 1

The Short Story: 1

Writing Research Papers: 2

Witches: Myth and Literature: 1

Performing Arts Today: 1

Contemporary British Literature: 1

Fantasy Literature (in Oxford): 1

Group Study (travel writing): 1

Style in the Essay: 7

Graphic Novels: 4

Writing in Education: 3

Writing in Film: 2

Writing in International Relations: 7

Writing in Health Science: 23

Freshman Seminars (British Humour, Science and Literature, Doctor Who, Margaret Atwood, The Simpsons, Stand-Up Comedy): 41

Advanced Composition and Rhetoric: 30

Grad Course: Writing in Performance Studies: 4

Writing in Business: 2

Shakespeare: 2

Writing in Fine Arts: 2

Tutoring in Writing: 2

Independent Studies: 8

Grad Course: Writing in Forensic Science: 1

Introduction to Fiction: 3

Introduction to Lit: 8

Developmental Writing (Workload): 63

If my math is correct and if I’m not forgetting a course or two, I have taught 255 courses so far.

(I refuse to do the math on how many papers I’ve graded.)

Not bad for someone who had a less than 1% chance of getting a BA.

Not bad for a chronic pain patient.

 

Today, I’m stressed because I have to finish grading two classes; two more start Monday.

But I’m excited about those courses.

And, as I remind my students, I have an amazing job. I get paid to think. I tell students what I think, they write down what they think, and then I tell them what I thought of that.

🙂

There’s no way I could have done everything I have if I didn’t love this.

And part of what I love is seeing them grow, into better writers, better thinkers, and sometimes better people.

The other thing I love is having that rare relationship with a student that grows into a real friendship.

(You know who you are.)

So thank you to all my students, except for the baker’s dozen that have really pissed me off (it’s amazing that it’s only about a dozen–fewer than one a year–who has really been a problem).

Thank you for your patience, your encouragement, your laughter, your hard work, your willingness to let me experiment, your friendship.

I just got a raise.

It’s a long story, though.

Every three years, I come up for review. As a union member, if I’m rehired, I get a 6% raise every three years–this is dependent on my being “excellent.”

In Fall 2015, I put together a review packet and asked for a merit raise of 3% in addition to the regular one. Why? Well, research faculty get raises for publications, for editing journals, for presentations, etc. I am the author of several books and articles. I edit a peer-reviewed journal. Etc. All but one of the tenured faculty in my department supported that request, which was then forwarded to the decision makers.

In Spring of 2016, I was nominated for and received a teaching award.

A few weeks later, UC Davis told me that I could not get a merit award–that it was great that I do all this research and publishing, but that I can’t ever get a raise for it, since I’m teaching faculty instead of research faculty. (Research faculty (aka tenure track), by the way, are the ones who get to vote on things like my raises.) In other words, they said since publishing wasn’t part of my job–something I’m already paid to do–I can’t get a raise for it, like they can. (I don’t think they understand what raises are for.)

They said that the only way I could get a raise was to win a teaching award or to publish a textbook. They mentioned that since my teaching was amazing, I would likely get a teaching award soon.

I appealed, noting that in between asking and being denied, I had in fact won that award. I also noted that since they could tell I deserved one, I should have gotten a raise anyway–they were looking at the same materials the award committee was, after all.

And you can only win that award once. And only two are granted a year, so that means a bunch of amazing teachers won’t ever get the raises they deserve.

In my appeal, I also made the argument that if the only part of my job that counted was my teaching, I should get a raise for serving on a dissertation committee and for teaching independent study classes. Both are teaching. Both are unpaid labor. In fact, when I teach independent studies, the university gets paid by the student, but I don’t get paid at all.

I swayed half of the committee to reevaluate. The dean broke the tie, denying the merit raise.

Three more years have come and gone. In that time, I have done even more professional development, I have attended more conferences, given more interviews, published more articles and books, taught more “free” classes, done more admin work (paid and unpaid), etc.

And one of those publications was the textbook I authored with Melissa.

Within the last three years, someone who won the teaching award after me has gotten her raise.

Melissa has gotten a raise for our book.

So this fall, when I turned in my packet, I argued that I should get the union 6%, 3% for the 2015 teaching award, and 3% for the textbook.

About half of the tenured faculty in my department agreed. The other half said I should just get 3% (like Melissa did, which would have negated my teaching award entirely).

One faculty member, the one who said I didn’t deserve merit last time, wrote a red herring argument about how she hated one small piece of my admin work, which went into the file.

So I was worried.

Today, however, I learned that I got my 12%. By one vote.

At UC Davis, I do a lot of work with our EOP/STEP programs, for students who are first generation and economically disadvantaged, including giving talks for the program and teaching a specialty developmental writing course.

I do this because I was like them.

I tell them my story and how the most crucial thing I learned was to ask for help.

I show them that people like them can move up in the world through education, even though the climb is so much steeper.

Some years, the program thanks me. This was one of those years.

On the back, a note from the nominator:
“I would have never thought that my favorite class at UC Davis would be Workload 57P. I was able to learn in greater detail the fundamental rules of writing. In this course, I learned more than in my four years of high school English combined. This wouldn’t have been possible without Dr. Karma Waltonen’s amazing work ethic. Dr. Karma Waltonen truly believes in the success of her students and their true potentials. She understood our struggle coming from nontraditional backgrounds, so she made sure to secure a welcoming environment. What I found most helpful and inspirational were the stories of the obstacles she has faced in life. Many of us, if not all, were able to relate to it one way or another, which tore down the wall of silence in the classroom. She made me want to be a better student for her, my parents, my siblings, and the generation to come. The other nice thing about this course was that I was able to see familiar faces from STEP, removing the feeling of loneliness and giving me the opportunity to challenge my writing ability without the fear of being judged based on my appearance.”