I'm winded from the effort, not from the work of my 2 summer classes, but simply from trying to convince my students that class will meet today.It's been this way all summer.
It's too hot. There was a minor earthquake 140 miles away. There was a report on the radio that said the state had cut funding. The car's gauges look weird. The neighbor's dog is lost and the whole neighborhood is chipping in. The shooting range out in the desert was ransacked my Aryans. The power went out and the food in the refrigerator is melting.
All of these had been given as reasons when students have written or called with the ultimate question: "Do we have class today?"
My response was always: "Is it Tuesday or Thursday? Then get your ass to class."
But the questions keep coming; they keep trying to avoid it.
Q: Am I just an old fuddy-duddy, but didn't students have more interest in coming to class in the past than they do now? Is it just evolutionary and I have to learn to deal with it? Is my class really that boring?
Oh, Wendy...you're not paying attention. It's been going this way for years. Yes, they have 1000 excuses that range from ridiculous to sublimely ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteI find I just have to make stronger attendance, tardy, policies, and be clear about my expectations of excuses versus unexcused absences. If you don't put up with bullshit, the bullshit can't hurt you.
But it is draining. My favorite of your excuses is the fridge one. You should have offered to go over and help eat the Fudge Bars.
I may be projecting something with that fudge bar remark...just noticed.
ReplyDeleteStudents have probably always wanted to skip class (or, better, have it canceled for reasons beyond their control). Even as a self-acknowledged nerd, I loved the occasional break from class.
ReplyDeleteThe difference seems to be the increased brazenness with which they admit it to our faces/inboxes and ask to get away from their responsibilities. They've forgotten that they should be embarrassed about offering such transparent and dumb "excuses."
I feel your pain. I'm rounding the final curve on a summer class that meets three times a week. Out of 14 students, two have had perfect attendance, a handful of others show up once or twice a week, and the rest disappear for up in three weeks or more. (And yes, there is a participation grade.) They don't even bother with excuses. And yet they're shocked, SHOCKED to find their grades aren't what they expected. They probably won't learn much about the class material, but if they do learn that actions have consequences, then I've done my service to the community.
ReplyDeleteTheir needs have been met by a lot of deluded adults for years before they get to you. They can't understand why you'd be any different.
ReplyDeleteWell, this is one of those things where the people doing the teaching probably have a memory bias. The people who end up staying in the university system and teaching are probably those who didn't act this way, or didn't as often. Hence, they don't remember this attitude as starkly as they otherwise would. So attitudes may be changing, but we will usually over-misunderguestimate them.
ReplyDelete@Darla: "I may be projecting something with that fudge bar remark...just noticed."
Well, don't get any more explicit or someone will be offended.
Dear Students,
ReplyDeleteUnless I say otherwise, then class is not cancelled.
Any further requests for clarification on this matter shall be marked as spam.
EMH
It even happens, to an extent, in online classes. If you sign up for a five-week online summer course, then scheduling a vacation during which you won't have internet access during that period really isn't an option (and no, taking the class via your smartphone -- or your mother's/brother's/cousin's/friend's smartphone -- won't work). I even had one student this summer term claim she had been emailing work to me at the wrong address for weeks, and wondering why I wasn't replying (and, unfortunately, there was one line in an email that I'd sent her when she added late that could be interpreted -- wrongly -- as suggesting she should email me work rather than post it on the Discussion Board like everyone else; I'd merely told her to submit *one* late assignment that way). Her excuses got so long and convoluted that I finally gave her an incomplete, and told her to email me all her missing work (which she claimed already existed) as soon as possible, so I could file a change of grade. I haven't heard a peep from her, and fully expect the incomplete to quietly turn to an F on the official deadline for completing incompletes (about which I've warned her).
ReplyDeleteAnd no, your class is no more or less boring than college classes have ever been. Students (and perhaps their parents) are just more inclined to think that whether it's boring matters. And besides, very few tasks turn out to be boring once one buckles down and engages with them.
My favorite is when they are already in the classroom and then lobby for class to be canceled. Um. . . why? Because it's raining; it's snowing; it's windy; there's a football game tomorrow; we've had classes all semester; professor, you deserve a break. . . .
ReplyDeleteMy response in this case is always something like, "No one's making you stay. You are welcome to leave right now. If you think you can teach yourself better than I can, knock yourself out." I have yet to watch one walk out the door.
Faculty I've dealt with tend to be mostly libertarian in their attendance philosophy:
ReplyDeleteIf you come to class, fine. If you don't come to class, fine. But if you don't come to class, don't expect me to tell you what you missed.
As a chronic undergrad class-skipper I feel the same way. If you're going to talk straight out of the book, I can read. (I never missed a graduate class, though.)
The "official attendance policy," however, gets in the way. Stupid bureaucratic government getting in everyone's business...
The_Myth Re: "schools that cared about standards:" My undergrad is from an R1. The "standard" was: "You got in here. If you fail out there's a line of people who didn't get in ready to take your spot. You won't be missed."
Wendy, you're not an old fuddy-duddy (although I feel like a fuddy-duddy just typing "fuddy-duddy). Increasingly, students feel less than obligated to attend actual classes. In the summer, this inclination to skip--and to ask for what essentially amounts to permission to skip ("Do we have class?" "Are we doing anything important in class?")--worsens.
ReplyDeleteWhile I see The_Myth's point because I attended a really good undergrad school where skipping was the exception rather than the rule, I think AdjunctSlave is onto something. Students are distracted during summer--hell, I am distracted during summer. For the most part, students are young and relatively undisciplined. Profs are, for the most part, the ones who did college well. Personally, I find myself having to dig for a little understanding sometimes because I did college really well and forget occasionally that not everyone in college is as focused and geeky and without a life as I was once upon a time.
It's frustrating, though. I taught a 10-week creative writing course one summer years ago, a class that was built around workshopping student writing. Up front, I told students how much they'd earn for each workshop...and therefore how much they'd lose for missing each workshop. On the first day of class, I had several students tell me that they'd already planned vacations.
My response? "Well, you're starting with a B in the class and can only go down from there. Only you can decide if you can live with that."
They argued with me. All but one dropped, and he earned his B with a lot of hard work and some pretty good writing.
Working at Large Dead-City Community College (LD3C) as I do now, I have students who are positively baffled that vacations are not excused absences. This doesn't just happen during the summers. I warn students who are parents that their children's spring breaks may not coincide with LD3C's, but they don't listen and plan vacations anyway. The day before Thanksgiving is a nightmare to teach--too close to the end of the semester to schedule a puffy class, yet the attendance that day is terrible.
Attendance Fourth of July week this year was in the shitter, too--and it was a crucial week for what I was teaching.
I just put it all on the students. I let them know assignments in advance and that I do not take late work. They don't seem to believe me my no-late-work policy, but it's in the syllabus so I'm covered.
And, no Wendy, your class is not that boring. It's not boring at all.
Wendy, if they won't do the work, tell them the legend of the Man, the one who drives a battered black windowless van and who will, for money, capture lazy students, torture them in his "puzzle basement", then drive them out to the desert in the van to dig their own graves. Tell them that you know this Man, and the money is just burning a hole in your pocket....
ReplyDeleteDear Sawyer--I was and am the same way. Students can mostly deal with it.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I did make a "rule" my first year teaching (in my head--I never told them) that if it was so hot that my ass sweated visibly through my pants while I was walking around, everybody got to go home early. I mean--ew. Just imagine how much more swamp-assier they're getting in those plastic chairs. Gross.
Yes, let us discuss the verdant funk of "swampass"....the building would have to be on fire, shaking apart in an earthquake, disintigrating in an atomic blast for me to leave.
ReplyDelete"Swampass"....feh.
I get around this problem by not caring about attendance. If they choose not to show, that's their problem. Or not - I've had the (very) occasional no show student who successfully taught themselves. Why should I force them to learn on my schedule and following my method?
ReplyDeleteOf course, it helps that I teach a subject where their attendance is not required for the running of the class.