My class officially ends at 12:00. Your class starts at 12:10. This is to allow plenty of time for change-over between classes, even in a 150 seater lecture room like this one.
I would appreciate it if you didn't walk into the room at 11:50 and sit on the ends of rows (so that my students can't get out), or stand in the aisle talking in a non-local-language (I can't understand you, but I can still hear you, so you are still being impolite), whilst I am finishing up with my class.
When my class ends at 11:57, I do not think it is unreasonable to ask you to stand aside from the door and let my class - AND ME - leave before you try to get in. You may think otherwise, but pretending not to understand English (the only language of instruction in non-foreign-language classes on my campus, and this room is in the Science Teaching Block) when I politely ask you to wait and refusing to move aside when I want to go out through the door is not going to help your case.
Is it really THAT important to sit in your lucky seat???
Yours,
One Grumpy Academic (and her grumpy students who want to get to their next class as well)
If they're blocking your exit, call the campus cops. They just bought new pepper spray.
ReplyDeleteI gave up being nice about shit like that long ago. If someone walked in on my class before I was done, I would stop and in my best polite but no nonsense voice tell them that if they're not in this class, they must wait outside until you are finished. If they continued to do so, I'd pull up whatever college policy applied to disrupting classes (surely there's something that would apply) and explain that you'll have no choice but to write them up on this if they continue disrupting your class, and then I'd follow through with it if they did -- including calling security to escort them out if necessary (preferably sans pepper spray, though!)
ReplyDeleteThis is like trying to actually get off a train in Europe. It's as if: "No, I just happen to be standing in the door of the train with a huge suitcase. I don't plan to actually disembark. You can just stand there staring at me and wonder when I will dissolve into thin air so you can get into the train. Or perhaps you do realize the obvious - that I am in fact getting off the train - but you think I can just pass through you like a ghost. Or you think it is somehow more logical to board passengers before letting anyone off. Tell you what. Let's make a deal. I won't blog about what an oblivious, childlike pain in the ass you are if you promise to never chime into the European chorus about how superficial Americans are."
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like your classrooms need an announcement of the sort heard on many subways: "please step back and allow exiting passengers to disembark before boarding train," perhaps recorded in several languages.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe just a sign on the classroom door?
If it's a perennial problem, I'd be inclined to enlist the help of the teacher (who presumably speaks both the local language and that spoken by the students, or has some other means of communicating with them. If they're very basic English learners, then they could spend a class session on understanding a simple sign, which would introduce them to some words and linguistic forms that could come in handy in other contexts).