I have done something very closely resembling a pendulum swing on this assignment, vacillating from A) giving them a set topic or two to choose from complete with books on reserve and links to our database listing articles of interest from current newspapers and magazines and academic journals given on the class web page to B) letting them choose their own topic and find their own academically viable sources, while trying to frame the assignment in such a way as to encourage critical thought rather than a book report a 6th grader could write.
So. This semester, I decided I wanted to give them some choice. I attended a professional development seminar on inquiry based learning, and god (notice, if you will, the lower case “g”) help me, I was inspired.
A truncated version of the extensive directions I gave my students for this assignment: Consider a choice people in our current American society must make, and develop a list of points via which you can compare both sides of that choice. Present the current research for both sides of the choice on each point. When you have finished offering a thorough point by point comparison of the two choices, you should, in your conclusion, either take a stand on one of the two choices, or else explain why no clear choice is suggested by the evidence you have presented, and suggest to your reader the basis by which he or she may make their own decision.
[Full disclosure/extra information: our department requires that we teach “the modes”-----and I have found that having them do a researched “argument” is generally a disaster. My research papers are either extended definition, cause and effect, or comparison/contrast. Only those well versed in teaching “the modes” will truly understand. I have already assigned, graded and returned a compare/contrast assignment which did not require research so that they would thoroughly understand the format in which they were suppose to write this research essay.)
I have been absolutely horrified by the dumbass, brain dead, stupid protests I have received with regard to this assignment. A sampling:
No Sources Available Sally:
So, Sally. You have switched from such topics as two different careers one could pursue, to two different presidential candidates to endorse, to whether to choose to adopt a baby domestically or internationally to two different cities in which to live. For each of these topics, you assure me that there are absolutely no books, no web sites using the domain ending .edu or .gov, and no articles from academic journals on any of these topics. None. You swear the librarians from both our college library and the town libraries you have consulted have laughed at my assignment and assured you that there are NO BOOKS on that subject and NO .EDU or .GOV web sites and no journal articles either. Further, you assure me that the librarians you have consulted have agreed universally on the fact that I am an idiot who has assigned the impossible of you, the hapless freshman community college student.
I need .com Cindy:
Cindy, it appears that there is NOTHING in our library’s article database on such topics as using marijuana vs using alcohol as a drug of choice, deciding between two different places to live, or exploring the differences across a lifespan of being a parent or not being a parent. The ONLY way you can get information on ANYTHING is by using .coms. Even after I suggested you go to Wikipedia and check out the external links section at the bottom of their page for one of your topics, you drew a blank, telling me that there was no such section (of course, you had not time to come to my office so we could look together). Sorry, Cindy, I am not going to excuse you from using any other kind of source besides .com websites. Looks like you’re fucked.
Pot-Smoking George:
No, George, this is a RESEARCH essay, so your own anecdotal evidence “proving” that pot causes no health problems at all is not something you can rely on in your comparison of marijuana and tobacco. Yes, I understand that you have been smoking pot “for years” with no ill effects….when were you born, eh? I think no earlier than 1990….but still, you will need to find some actual research or data or SOMEHTING to back up your claim. And no, the blog entries you and your fellow pot lovers posted to the website you showed me will not count as viable sources for this project.
Everyone:
I am sorry you have such a hard time understanding the first thing about how to do Works Cited pages. I am so tired of looking at absolute shit in this area that I spent a full hour in class going over how to enter data into EasyBib for each one of our required sources. And so I was horrified when the draft works cited pages came in with author’s names where the publisher’s title goes, page numbers where the date goes, and so on. Tell me, HOW DAMN STUPID CAN YOU PEOPLE POSSIBLY GET?
I feel your pain. My Research/Argument students are having similar problems, but at the same time they're also struggling with argument even though every assignment (except an annotated bibliography) required them to argue something. They keep trying to write expository essays on the problem they've found rather than arguing about it.
ReplyDelete"How damn stupid can you people possibly get?"
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing that, for many of them, toilet paper is an edible food source. They can get stupider. And this blog proves it.
I will be living your hell in a few weeks when my research papers come in. Thanks for giving me an outlet to scream about it ahead of time.
I know, I know, I know. Some students are apparently unable to copy the writer's name or the title of the article correctly when they're putting together a "Works Cited" page. Or they think it should be called "Work Sited."
ReplyDeleteBut I remember eons ago when I was taking freshman comp. I forget what we were talking about, but the TA wanted us to write one good topic sentence for a paragraph on the subject. "Just one sentence," he said. "And I'll walk around the class to check how you're doing."
I wrote two sentences. I know why now, and I think I knew it back then: Often a paragraph will begin with a general statement before the actual topic sentence. But that's not what the teacher wanted, and that's not what I did. You can imagine what happened when he got to my desk. "You wrote two sentences, but I asked for just one. This is college. Is it too much to expect that a college student know the difference between one and two?" is an expletive-deleted summmary.
Here's another story: I was a few years younger playing organized baseball. The coach was instructing us on the bunt sign. "When I swipe my hand across the letters on my uniform, that means the next sign in on. The bunt sign is when I touch the bill of my cap. But I need to do it in EXACTLY that order. If I touch the bill of my cap and then swipe my hand across the letters on my uniform, don't bunt. Or if I swipe my hand across the letters and touch my nose, don't bunt. The bunt sign is on ONLY if I swipe my hands across the letters of my uniform and THEN touch the bill of my cap."
Game day: I'm at bat with men on base, and it's an obvious bunt situation; it's even more obvious because I'm a miserable hitter.
I look at the coach. He swipes his hand across the leters of his uniform and touches the bill of his cap. But he does it really quickly, and adds some fillups and filagrees to confuse the opposing coach. But the bunt sign is on.
I swing feebly at the next pitch, strike out, and the other team is on the way to getting out of the inning.
"Didn't you see the bunt sign?
"Yessir, I did."
"Then why the @##@&# didn't you bunt?"
"I didn't think you meant it."
I thought the coach would have apoplexy.
Moral: Kids do really dumb things--even though they should, and often do, know better. I try (and usually fail) to remember these two stories every time students do or say something jaw-droopingly stoooopid.
Having been in the same situation MANY times, Bella, all I can say is flunk them if you can. I no longer have faith in students' capacity to learn without consequence. TOO MANY of them just stumble through college without paying attention or learning much. So, if you can take a hit in the evals, just flunk them.
ReplyDeleteLet's be serious: You taught them how to use a BIBLIOGRAPHY PROGRAM, not how to craft it themselves. How much hand-holding is needed if they cannot do that?
It also sounds like you gave them a list of topics with sources available. How much easier could you have made it??? Not that long ago, my own alma mater CC had us do a research paper from scratch, and most of us had to use a typewriter!
When it becomes obvious that students are actively resisting the learning process, that means they are UNTEACHABLE. And that's not the teacher's fault. Especially if previous generations were able to do this shit!
Not everyone can be a highly paid basketball payer in the NBA, so why do we think everyone can earn a college degree?
Wow. I've been teaching English at the University and community college level since 1980, and I've evaluated dozens of teachers. Your attitude basically sucks. If you have even a whiff of condescension towards the students, all they hear is that you don't respect them, and they turn off. "If you can take a hit in the evaluations, just flunk them." This is unconscionable. You should be ashamed of yourself.
DeleteWow, xyz. Just wow. Don't you think anything should have consequences?
DeleteYou might reread what Myth said. Or check out the recent post from Deke in Duluth.
We love our students, mostly. But sometimes you have to use stronger measures to get their attention.
XYZ - I'd like to remind you that we do sort of exaggerate our frustration and condescension here. The whole concept of venting, ya know? If you don't like it, you don't have to share.
DeleteBut as far as our students needing to feel we respect them. Fine. I do, very much, respect my students when they are trying, when they work hard, when they give me even the tiniest little crumb to work with. Then I respect them. BUT, how do you respect people who lie to your face, who refuse to try, who give you incredibly rude attitudes as covers for their own inadequacies. I do not think it is possible, but even further, giving their behavior the consequence it deserves IS a form of respect.
If I fail all the people who do not do passing work on this assignment (and I CAN take the hit on evals, so I WILL fail them) then I am telling them I believe they were capable of doing better. If I let myself give them a C out of pity or laziness or fear, then I am not showing them respect.
Do you get it?
But many of our students interpret "respect" to mean they are always -ALWAYS- right. Any attempt to steer them to the path of knowledge-- no matter how wrapped in constructive, productive, and positive phraseology -- becomes, to their minds, a soul-crushing act of dissing (like the kids say).
DeleteOr Lucy, how they -- with no sense of irony or arrogance -- declare that the instructor must earn the students' respect.
DeleteThe concept that the person in the front of the room is there because of (several) receipts for dues paid, scads of scut having been completed, subsequently the ladder climbed, is utterly foreign.
And, yes, to them "respect" is the freedom to be allowed to do whatever the frick they want and to be applauded for it.
Gee, XYZ, how about I do that back to you...
DeleteYou are a horrible person. You are the reason we all have such terrible students. You are blind and ignorant to the real troubles in the classroom. You think all students are bright and special and deserve fifty gajillion chances. You are the one with the bad attitude...toward your colleagues. You have made the profession unbearable by making excuses for bad behavior. You are just a vicious little troll who needs to be fired. How many colleagues has your condescending attitude driven out of the profession. You just inflate grades and gift students with degrees. You are a fraud and do not give one speck of spit about your students and whether they learn or not. You have a big problem with understanding consequences and you should be fired for your incompetence.
How's that feel, XYZ? Go crawl back under your bridge.
OK, Myth! Ironically, this comes just as I have decided I can't grade one more bloodless, wordy, unclear mess of a paper tonight. I've been grading all day and have 21 Critical Thinking papers to return at noon after my Basic Skills writing class; most of their papers are D level at this point. Vent away!! But never forget that your attitude sets the tone in your classroom, and it is the world you create for the students that will give them the tools to improve. None of us were born knowing how to write. Here's to better essays next semester! One can always hope.
Delete“One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
The "respect" issue is an interestng one. Thankfully I have an awesome Dean in this regard. A few semesters ago she had a number of students coming in to her office and reporting that they had been "disrespected by the professor!" Her stock response is "The professor doesn't have to respect you. In fact, you owe the professor respect simply because she is the professor." (I would just LOVE to be fly on the wall and see the look on their little snowflake faces!). She goes on to say "The professor needs to treat you professionally." I also wish people would recognize that the proffie is not the only person in the room who can make or break the atmosphere of a classroom. Yes, I can set the tone of the class, but one shitty snowflake can ruin it for everyone.
DeleteI believe the central difference between students of my generation and students of the current generation is that we may have been lazy and stupid, but we had the good grace to be ashamed--we took responsibility for our ignorance and sloth.
ReplyDeleteAlas, this does not seem to be the case with this latest batch of students. Back in the 1970s, if I showed up unprepared for a peer-editing class, I would hang my head in shame and apologize to the professor for not following his/her instructions (which, I acknowledged, were clearly indicated on the course outline).
When this current batch of students shows up unprepared, they hold their heads high and state (imperiously), "I was not aware that I would need to come prepared for this." To my reminders that I mentioned it in class four times, posted it on the course website, sent out e-mail reminders, they reply in an appalled tone, "I wasn't at class!" or "I wasn't listening!" or "I haven't been on the course site in a month!" or "I never look at my course e-mail!" or (my favourite) "Well, of course I received your e-mail, but I didn't read it!"
I really don't care that a number show up unprepared every semester, but a little head-hanging, a little shame would be nice. Is that too much to ask?
I have almost entirely abandoned research papers for undergraduates, precisely because of this. They don't know how to make arguments, just reports, mostly guesswork. So I'm concentrating on teaching them to read scholarly material (and historical documents): to see the thesis and argument as part of the work, and to understand why it matters. Book reviews are a good assignment for this. But for those, and for the few research papers I have left, I always, ALWAYS insist on a bibliography before they start writing their drafts, so that I can point them at useful material they haven't found.
ReplyDeleteTeaching them to read scholarly material critically--to simply understand the author's thesis and argument--should be the ENTIRE curriculum of one of the courses I teach. Trying to teach reading, thinking, and argument writing in a one-semester course is ridiculous. Good for you for focusing on reading and thinking--it's what they need to learn.
Deleteagreed on the teaching reading - it's hard to incorporate scholarship into a research/argumentative paper if you don't know what it says in the first place. One of the most successful assignments I've given in the past year was to write a precis/summary of a (fairly difficult) scholarly article. No quotations allowed. About eight-hundred words for a ~25 pp. article. No analysis. No opinion. Simply write down what the author said. Identify the question, argument, organization, and main points. It nearly killed them. But the papers that followed, and class discussion, were actually better. . .
DeleteYep.
ReplyDeleteSummarizing requires that you pick out the important stuff. Because so many students lack any background knowledge--what a reading teacher would call "schemata"--they really can't tell the forest from the trees.
I think this was also true decades ago--or at least it was for me. I've still got a copy of my Western Civ textbook from 'way back then, and it's hilarious: I underlined or highlighted nearly everything. It would have been much quicker to black out whatever wasn't important, but I simply didn't know enough to separate the big ideas from the details. Because it was college and college was supposed to be hard, I thought EVERYTHING must be important. And even back then, I was a reader--something many of our students are not.
I really can't say whether students today are lazier or feel more entitled than they did decades ago. My mostly first-year, working-class and working-poor community college students can be absolutely frustrating, but they sure don't act as if they're entitled. Whether they're lazy or just tired is a judgement I'm not willing to make.
But if I were teaching upper-division classes to upper-middle class white kids at an prestigious college, and if they behaved as many of these posts say they do, then I'd change my name to Strelnikov.
Philip, I also teach mostly first-year, working-class and working-poor. Certainly not all of them feel entitled. I have wonderful students (it is just that I don't feel the need to bitch about them here). But do I have students from this population that feel entitled? You bet I do. Lots of them. Many of them feel entitled to a passing grade BECAUSE of their circumstances. They feel like I should give them extra accommodations up the ass (which I largely do, but never more than I would give for any other student at Inner City Community College), and when that fails, extra credit just for being there (which I do NOT give them). Whatever it takes for me to pass them. So yes, even this population feels entitled. Some of them are lazy, some just tired, but I don't really make any distinctions for life circumstances.
DeleteIt just would not be fair to the ones who are working very hard to achieve something if I let others doing crap to skate by based on their hard luck circumstances.
You're right, Bella. Students, whether they're from the working class or the upper-middle class, often have a crisis that they think exempts them from showing up to class or doing their work.
DeleteBut one of the differences I see between my students and some of the students described in CM is that when more priviliged students fail, they often blame their teacher. My students almost never do.
You are lucky then. I think we teach a very similar population though, so maybe I just suck. I liked your story about remembering dumb things you did as a kid. But my "worst" students (usually my worst third, this semester my worst full half of the damnable class if not more than half) they are not really confused so much as willfully gnorant. Putting their failure back on me is a strategy that has worked for them in other venues. At this point, feeling truly under seige as I honestly do feel, I am working towards being as thorough, as helpful, as detailed in my feedback as I can possibly be. I intend to give them every opportunity to pass, and still I am looking at straight out failing 60% of both my comp classes this semester. Thank God for tenure, and for long time service to the college in well appreciated areas. I can definitely "afford" it.
DeleteI don't think you "suck." My bottom third also seem willfully ignorant, and they absolutely resist doing much of anything.
DeleteMaybe a way to keep them from "putting their failure back on [you]" is to provide "detailed feedback" in a different way. Some earlier posts--I think from Stella--talk about easing your paper load by giving students the opportunity for feedback during office hours, rather than writing lengthy comments, helpful though they might be, on their papers.
That's what I do. If students are willing to work with me one-on-one, they'll see that their writing gets better. If they aren't, then it's clear, even to the willfully ignorant, that they didn't bother to use me as a resource.
After a few weeks into the beginning of the semester, I have a draft that's due. Students have a two or three weeks to revise it, which usually involves going to our Writing Center for help and then meeting with me in my office. In the meantime, they're working on another assignment in class, so I make it as clear as I can that their workload is going up: There's their regular homework to do, plus the additional work of revising what they did earlier.
When the time for revision is over, I put a final grade on whatever they've done (or not done). But I always--and this is the important part--ask students to write a self-evaluation to accompany their paper. "What grade do you think you'll get?" and "If you could go back in time to two or three weeks ago, what would you do differently to get this paper ready to turn in?" are among the questions I ask them.
Their answers are almost always good ones. Students are pretty realistic about the grade they've earned, and if it's a low one, they're usually honest about the fact that they--not me--didn't do what was necessary.
All semester long, I do the same thing, and part of my take-home final exam (which also allows time for writing an early draft, tutorial help, and one-on-one time in my office) also requires a self-evaluation. By the end of the semester, students usually get the idea that they are responsible for their education, not me.
I usually give about twice as many "C"s and "D"s as "A"s or B"s, but I've never had a student file a formal complaint about a grade. Even if they come to me to ask informally why they got a "D," they usually understand--even if they don't like it. And I don't know if this is a highlight or not, but I've even run into students walking across campus who have told me that they deserved their "D"s and have learned an imortant lesson.
With all this said--and sorry about the long post--please don't think I've got it all figured out. I'm as frustrated with "willful ignorance" as anyone, and students' lack of preparation and basic skills is appalling, but this seems a realistic and do-able way to deal with it.
Hi Philip, Thanks for your suggestions. Some of that stuff I already do, although I really like the idea about requiring one visit with the essay to the Writing Center (or to use the online tutoring center my CC pays for) as part of the revision process.
DeleteAnd some of it I need to do more of. As much as I complain, I have not had any grade complaints either, not one that has gone beyond coming to me for an explanation, and I give a lot of failing grades, in addition to Ds, Cs, Bs, and some As. I think it is because I do give them plenty of notice of how they are doing.
I think I just focus too much on the negative students. I have a really hard time not doing that. I've also been known, lately, to get physically ill prior to and in the midst of correcting essays. Yuck. Stella's method is definitely coming out with this research essay----it's part of why I did it a little earlier in the semester this time!
A teacher-training veteran used tennis as a metaphor: You'll never lose a tennis game if you keep the ball on the other side of the net.
DeleteThat works for me. Just keep hitting the ball back at students. If they don't hit it back--or if they don't return your serve in the first place--well, it's their responsibility.
I just had a student turn in a paper that said "no heartbeat noted". His patient was dead?
ReplyDeleteI feel your pain!
I've had a couple students tell me that they "couldn't find any books or articles on x" when "X" has been one of the most popular topics in my discipline for 20 years. I'd find a book on that exact topic in our library's catalog, send them the link, and say "go look and see what books are on the shelf with this one." sigh.
ReplyDeleteI've had these students too. Our librarians at Large Urban Community College are top-notch. They will actually take a research assignment and create a personalized lesson plan, which they'll teach our students on campus and online, to help them find the types of sources they need. The lesson plan is then available as an interactive website for the rest of the course. I tell my students no .com. I tell them no Wikipedia, but they could look at the endnotes for potential sources. I tell them that .edu and .org are potentially good but they need to be sure of source credibility using the guidelines from the library lesson. (I'm still amazed they think undergrad student papers posted as part of a web project are credible academic sources.) I teach EasyBib. I point out BibMe and MoodleBib are also available. I go over the most common data entry errors. I offer conferences to go over their sources before they turn them in.
ReplyDeleteI will still get crap.
My version of No Sources Available Sally is a student from years back to whom I still refer as Death Penalty Dipshit. That Freshman Comp I class went for library instruction. I even gave them a library day where I sat in the reference area and let them look for sources and ask me questions. Death Penalty Dipshit came back to class the next week and told me there absolutely no sources whatsoever available on the death penalty in our library. I looked at him and said, "Really? You expect me to believe you actually looked, used the search strategies from last week's class, and talked with our librarians, and discovered no information on the death penalty exists? You must not think I'm very smart!"
He dropped the class the next day.
Well played. I try to be polite, but sometimes you just have to say what you're thinking (because they need to hear it).
DeleteBut why would they need to read books? Don't you know that in the internet age, students can just go online for content?
ReplyDeleteWell, yes, and the last time the author of a Virginia textbook tried that, she came up with "fact" that there were a substantial number of African-American soldiers in the Confederate army.
Delete(Yes, I know you meant that sarcastically, and I will add, in the same vein -- of course, now that it's also in a published book, that means it's really true).
My current crop just turned in their source list for the upcoming paper. One student selected a famous English author with a somewhat common name. He's been dead for well over 400 years. Imagine my shock to learn that he published a history of the bicentennial of one of our great states in the USA in the 1970s!
DeleteThe real fun comes if you ask them to find primary sources, which, of course, require even more ingenuity and persistence in searching. I helped one student this term narrow down her very broad, vague idea to trying to figure out how the European economic crisis is affecting everyday student/young adult life in one of the harder-hit countries (say, Spain or Greece). She doesn't read Spanish or Greek, so we needed English-language accounts. Knowing that colleges often require or encourage semester-abroad blogs, I suggested looking for those. Several weeks (and, admittedly, a real family crisis) later, she came to my office, not having found any. I tried a couple of searches on google, and quickly came up with a pretty good selection of study-abroad blogs (admittedly not sorted out by country, but that wasn't so hard to do). I think the main difference between the student and me was I was asking myself questions like "who would observe and write about this phenomenon?" "where might that writing appear?" and the like, while the student simply wanted to plug in key words directly associated with her subject ("blog," "financial crisis," "Greece"). So she now has some possibilities, but she's still going to have to do some combing through them to find a source or two that will actually work, because we discovered that (1) many students studying abroad start blogs but quickly abandon them and (2) a good number who did blog about their experiences in Spain or Greece over the last year or so were remarkably oblivious to the turmoil around them. Or, to put it another way, one problem with this particular search process was that there were snowflakes on both ends.
ReplyDeleteI'm increasingly leaning back toward the give-them-the-sources approach, which, like Bella, I periodically embrace (only to be cowed by accusations that I'm forcing them to study stuff I'm interested in -- which is true, but if I'm going to spend a bunch of time sorting through sources, I darn well better have *some* interest in the subject(s)).
I did this thing 10 years ago that I am trying again (keyed to a course I didn't teach for quite a while, obviously). They write a paper on a literary work. Papers are then paired, with each student treating the other paper he/she receives as a critical source on the same work and rewriting their paper as a response to it. They then summarize a somewhat difficult published critical article, formulaically, with no new ideas added -- all summarizing the same one. THEN they write a paper that enters into a critical dialogue with at least one scholarly source they find on their own. All this to get them to stop dropping in lines from secondary sources to "back up" what they say, and to understand scholarship as ongoing critical dialogue.
ReplyDeleteIt worked very well 10 years ago. We shall see.
My students would not even be able to follow the directions, never mind write the paper.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's 4 separate prompts. So I remain cautiously hopeful.
DeleteSo I am sitting here in my classroom, and it is D-day, twenty minutes into my first comp class. I have five students here doing their peer review activity. I really hate this. I tried everything to help them, but they just won't do the work.
ReplyDeleteI have to find another way to earn a living, as this no longer seems like it has any value, for me or for them. Waaahhhhh.
Please keep posting such fantastic articles as soon as possible.
ReplyDeleteDissertation Help
Dissertation Writing