I'm remembering a look she gave me once. It marked the end of acquaintanceship and the beginning of friendship. I miss you, Denise.

Just thinking of her

And have been.

NCC memory wall

Several weeks ago, on a beautiful sunny day, I represented the Broadhurst family at a little event officially "unveiling" new bricks in the NCC memory wall. The family had gotten a brick in our beloved Denise's memory, which now will be a permanent fixture of the campus she loved so much. I took great pride in being able to say that she was not only a respected colleague of mine but also a very dear friend.

One nice moment came after the "ceremony" (such as it was) came to a close: a woman rushed up to me to let me know that she worked with Denise on several campus committees and had loved her (of course). I'm afraid her name and department didn't register with me: I apologize to her for not being more careful to make note of both. In any event, this woman said that her sister was diagnosed with breast cancer at about the same time Denise was, so she had taken it as a mission to e-mail Denise regularly with supportive and encouraging messages. Clearly, she wanted to do something, anything, to help Denise in any way that she could. Didn't we all.

I'm not often on that side of campus, but now, every time I am, I will stop by to touch Denise's brick, just to say hello, and to let her know she is missed.

Celebrate Denise's 40th by giving in her name

The Denise Broadhurst Memorial Scholarship at Nassau Community College is given annually to a music major of great promise. The amount of the scholarship is $1,000 ($750 tuition, $250 cash award).

Thanks to the generosity of so many of you, the scholarship has reached a balance high enough so that the annual accrued interest is equal to the scholarship amount.

But we can do this one better-

Our goals are to get the scholarship fund to the point that we can substantially increase the amount of the award and ultimately make more than one scholarship available annually.

Let's celebrate Denise as a great teacher and honor her 40th birthday by making sure that her spirit and legacy live on in the school where she made such a great impact on her students. Please consider making a contribution to the following:

The Denise Broadhurst Memorial Scholarship
c/o The NCC Foundation
One Education Drive
Garden City, NY 11530

Thank you,

Harry Marenstein
Scholarship Committee

I just miss her, and I wish I could call her up tonight and see if she wants to get some coffee.

That's all.

Strange

I intended to post to my teaching blog--thought that was the page I was on--but when I posted, it came up on Denise's page. This is strange because I've had Denise on my mind a lot lately (not like I don't always have her in mind, but more prominently than usual). I can't think of anything specific to say, just a sense of her presence and lost of memories cropping up. She's always there in one way or another. There is still a huge hole in my life where she was, our day-to-day interactions, but I'm more aware of all the ways she will always be with me, as long as I have any memory left.

Lightening the load

I know you're all dying of curiosity, so here's what I've decided: I am not going to rush to get first versions of papers back to the 101 students. I'm still on the fence about whether to make revisions optional; at the moment I still think I'll require them but will give the students a time extension so they have at least a week after I return the graded first versions. Not only does doing this ease the pressure on me, it lets the students focus on starting their final projects. The sense of relief is huge--and I no longer feel the ferocious resistance to facing those papers that I've felt since they came in. I don't need to rebel any more, as the repressive regime has been overthrown in a bloodless coup. (All inside my own psyche. I think most of us tend to be much harder on ourselves than the outside world is on us.) Interesting on a psychosomatic level that as soon as I made that decision, the headache that had been plaguing me all day eased up. It's not altogether gone, but has receded to a dull murmur instead of an insistent scream. I'm chipping away at that pile of unmarked homework (still, again), interspersing a paper or two as I go along.

Making this decision also means I don't feel compelled to cancel class, which also feels better. In a way, it's nice to have a stolen day at home to work, but I actually do enjoy being in the classroom, and in 229 as well as the 101s, they have reading due this week that I do want to have time to go over with them. And I have some homework assignments ready to go--which I may or may not actually assign. Many of the 101 students are still far from understanding MLA documentation--not that MLA is the be-all and end-all of document styles, but I feel I only have time to teach one (and one is confusing enough), and since MLA is specific to my discipline.... Anyway, I have an assignment in which I provide them with 5 different kinds of sources and have them use their style guides to create a works cited page. The ones who get it have no problem; the ones who don't may not be served very well by the assignment. I may do better simply having them rework their own pages from their papers, over and over until they get them right. I don't mind if there are some errors, but I'd like them to have at least the basics right, and a lot of them are far, far from that understanding. We'll see.

I also realized I have to take a look at the final paper assignment for 229 and make any necessary adjustments to it; I should give it to the students this week, again, so they can start thinking about it. I'll be very interested to see how they do with the first pages of Ceremony. Many of them were getting the first few paragraphs much better than I expected when we went over them in class last week; I hope that holds up.

I hope for an early collapse tonight and a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed start to the week tomorrow morning....