I had to give my morning class a come to Jesus talk last week. They don't want to be in summer school. They moan at every utterance. They wear their skull caps
in the morning. Slurp coffee. Stare vacantly.
in the morning. Slurp coffee. Stare vacantly.I said, "30% of the people who took my class last summer failed it, failed it because they didn't engage. Failed it because they didn't try."
Crickets.
I had them do a diagnostic writing sample. One guy wrote. "This isn't like Mr. Johnson's class. He let us take our time and write when we were ready to write."
Someone asked me if there was "anything going on" the weeks of July 11th and 18th . I said, "No, no. That's a pretty dead part of the semester. Are you going on a fun trip?" She brightened. "Yes, my friends and I are going to Mexico
."
."They're waiting for me down the hallway now.
Terry, summer is when the douchebags up their game to UltraDouchebaggery....I say crush those sumbitches; they say "Mexico", you say "Aw Hell No, I suffer, you suffer as well. All trips rescinded or you drop out."
ReplyDelete[And I saw what you did to the page header, Mr. College Misery Site Manager person.]
ReplyDeleteYeah, just fail them.
ReplyDeleteLet them take their trips.
Let them not engage.
If your school is like the ones I was at, your summer numbers don't count re: pass/fail rates, so just let them waste the money, evaluations be damned!
You do your job and just let them fail if they refuse to do theirs. But document EVERYTHING! (ex. photocopy Mr. This-class-is-too-hard's lame paper, note Vacation Veronica's Mexico jaunt, etc.)
Well, just to give you all something to look forward to ...
ReplyDeleteI was outside of my daughter's kindergarten class. The K - 4 school is all reading a book from a well known children series as a community (and literacy) building exercise.
The PARENTS outside were whining about how unfair it was to expect kids to, like, read in JUNE!
They also went on and on about how THEY couldn't manage some of the vocabulary so how the FRICK would their child?
I'd go on but I have to craft a proper response to my graduate student who submitted a final project that was 1/3 plagiarized, simultaneously submitted to two classes, incorrectly formulated for our class, and this was NOT the student's first attempt at the class!
School sucks. Fuck school.
ReplyDeleteI've got about a 16% drop rate in my summer class -- much higher than in the regular semester, even for online classes. And the drops represent the students who actually realize that they're hopelessly behind, and have dealt with that realization in a responsible way. There are another 10% or so who are partly or completely MIA, and probably ought to drop, but are living in denial instead. Some of them will undoubtedly squeak through, but I'd still guess that at least 20% of the people who started the class won't successfully finish it. That's a waste of everyone's time, and their money, and, yes, it's frustrating, even when the complaints only come over email.
ReplyDeleteOn the brighter side, the majority of my students are humming along very nicely, doing what they're supposed to do when they're supposed to do it and asking intelligent questions that aren't already covered in the course materials. Still, the ones who seem surprised by the fact that they have to work are the ones who stick in one's mind, somehow.