Weather report

It had been unseasonably warm in Boone for the past few days, but the weather's changed a bit, and it's much nicer now. I had breakfast at the Central Dining Processing Plant, and it was pretty good. I got a latte and some hash browns. The guy sitting at my table said he thought the latte (he got one too) was better than he had thought. I said it was pretty good too, but truth be told I was a little disappointed. I think it's plan coffee from here on out. The hash browns weren't really hash browns. They were processed potato and oil disks, kinda like how Burger King makes, and they were really good. First up: Hunter.

Walking into the classroom, I noticed some coffee, tea, fruit, and stuff set out for us. Now, any jerk can set out some apples and coffee and stuff, but here's where the details swoop in and make a difference: toothpicks so you don't have to just grab a strawberry with your hands, and yogurt dip, kinda like the stuff Jason's deli gives you with the fruit when you order something healthy and forget to ask them to just give you potato chips.

Hunter started on time and went twenty minutes over, and he was "on" the whole time. I think the thing I like about him best is his absolute certainness of purpose. There's a guy who wakes up every morning thinking he's right, and there isn't anything that's going to happen during the day that's going to make him feel otherwise. He's going to go to bed being right, and then probably dream about how right he is, and then wake up refreshed the next morning to repeat step number one. And it works because he can back it up, which is always nice.

His big thing, far as I can tell, is that you have to accept students as they are and not judge them. It's easier said than done, and there's a little more to it, but that's the gist; that's the constant. He said developmental education covers everything from remedial classes to GRE prep, and that makes a lot of sense, too. He said that even much of our remedial coursework probably isn't remedial, and I'll attest to that. Some of that 9024 doesn't look remedial to me. And can you say that the grammar we cover is remedial if it was never taught in high school? The whole idea is to take students as they are and move them as far as they can go.

Here's a few things I wrote down: "gradually accept responsibility for their own learning;" "envision every student as a potential graduate of your institution;" "we tend to look at things that are easy to measure."

More stuff, obviously, but on to lunch: for lunch, I had fake Moe's. It was really good. There's this Mexican place in the Central Nourishment Feedplant called Calientes or something, and it's basically a generic Moe's. I had a black bean burrito with pico de gallo. It was awesome, but the attendant tortilla chips were kinda stale. Apparently, you pay by the pound, too, so my black bean burrito, chip, and diet Coke were $8, and someone probably could've gotten a steak chimichanga or whatever for cheaper, which doesn't seem right. Regardless....

Ed Morante was really good, and he talked about assessment. He was a dean at a college in California for years, but now he's a consultant. Animated guy, New Yorker - he reminds me of Antonio Scalia, but if you removed the part of Scalia's brain that makes him wrong about everything and replaced it with a moral compass. Ed's alright by me. The two best things I learned from him today are: "placement decisions should involve multiple variables," and "we need to get to the students before they take the placement exam." I think both would really benefit our institution, and it's something I'd like to work on when I return. In a freaking month.

Ed apparently lives in the dorm with us, which everyone thought was quite odd. He runs a Trivial Pursuit/Beer tournament nightly during his week of the Institute, so I have to make a beer run before 7:30. Buy in is one beer; it's like a tithe I guess.

One last thing: Ed said that the "right to fail" was pernicious (his word), and I wasn't sure I agreed at first, but then he clarified and said that entering students don't have the right to fail, and I agree with that. I usually say, explicitly, that I believe in the right to fail, and I do, but I also always throw in the caveat that everyone has the right to fail, provided they have given informed consent. Entering students can't really give informed consent.