Reading Ahead of Time? Only if you want to do it.
Assignments? Heck, no, he'd just have to grade them.
Quizzes? Open book, of course, then grade them in class & tell him your score.
Essays? Strictly pictorial or oral. If you must turn something in, do it on a Post-It note.
Attendance? Only if you have something interesting to share from last night's TV lineup.
Facebook in class? The preferable mode of participation.
And the students loved Papa Paul. They loved him so much that they transferred out of other classes to sign up for Papa Paul's classes. They loved him so much that they crowded into his classrooms and larger rooms had to be found. Papa Paul turned no one away because Papa Paul loved to be loved.
The love of Papa Paul's life, however, were not his students. The love of Papa Paul's life was Toddler Ty. Toddler Ty demanded a lot of attention from Papa Paul. Toddler Ty refused to go to Day Care, for one thing, and Toddler Ty refused to stay home with his stay-at-home mama. Toddler Ty cried and cried and begged Papa Paul not to leave him at home, so Papa Paul brought Toddler Ty to work with him all week. And when this became a problem for Papa Paul (Toddler Ty probably shouldn't have been allowed to play alone in the Photo Lab), he flattered and cajoled and begged the chair for a different schedule that would allow him to teach during Toddler Ty's naptime. And when the chair balked, he claimed that Toddler Ty has a disability (one that is yet undiagnosed, but which will require diagnosis). And because Papa Paul was loved by all, the chair agreed to have someone take over his two morning sections of Hamster Scribbling for Beginners and gave him two sections of online classes that begin later in the quarter.
And this is how the Contemplative Cynic ended up teaching two extra sections of Hamster Scribbling for Beginners classes that are twice the size they should be.
This is how the Contemplative Cynic came to be hated by two extra sections of classes that are twice the size they should be.
This is how the Contemplative Cynic came to hate Papa Paul and the weak-spined chair who caved in to Papa Paul.
This is how the Contemplative Cynic came to be searching for a job outside of Academia-land. And no one lived happily ever after.
The End.
In a previous life, I was one of those rare students who hated Papa Paul's class. The other students rolled their eyes whenever I used the word, "jagoff."
ReplyDeleteIf the Contemplative Cynic has tenure, I'd wear my students' scorn like a badge of honor. And keep searching.
If the Contemplative Cynic had tenure, the Contemplative Cynic would have told the chair to jagoff. :o) But I, too, hated Papa Paul types as professors. They were a waste of my time and I avoided them.
DeleteIf the Contemplative Cynic had tenure, the chair would not have even asked her to take over Papa Paul's classes, unless he wanted coffee all over his shirt. You have my extreme sympathy, although I realize what that is worth.
DeleteSince you have their scorn whether you want to wear it like a badge of honor or not, I'd just grade them even harder than you grade other sections. Give them detailed rubrics and then be a real stickler about every little point. Most of them will fail, every time, and you'll whittle those classes down in no time!
Or, you could do what I did when I was not tenured and was new to the department and had a similar Papa Paul situation.....
DeleteSee the "customers" give you bad evals and sue the school because they didn't get what they paid for.
ReplyDeleteWhat would they be able to sue for if I'm actually teaching stuff that Papa Paul wasn't doing?
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ReplyDeleteWhat would they be able to sue for if I'm actually teaching stuff that Papa Paul wasn't doing?
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You'd be surprised.
You humiliated them (by calling on them, particularly if they were not prepared). You pick on them; you single them out and treat them differently than everyone else (even everything is on the tea-partying syllabus). If they have card to pay - race, disability, gender, etc. - they will play it. Anything, except to be accountable themselves - it could be anything they did (or didn't do). It's YOUR fault.
You asked.
Ah, I see what you mean. I'm pretty affable in class, which means students rarely complain about being picked on, even when they aren't prepared, but you're right--it's a new generation where NOTHING is their fault. EVER. No one I have worked with in 15 years has ever been sued, that I know of, for the above, but we do hear students complain and claim they'll file complaints.
DeleteThe worst I've had (which I've written about on here) is a student caught plagiarizing repeatedly claiming I was racist (despite our being the same ethnicity).
So far, I've managed to be hated simply because I'm making them read and giving quizzes over the material and actually require some writing of them in our Hamster Scribbling class. I like to think they're actually going to appreciate that, come the end of the quarter when they have to pass a qualifying exam to take Hamster Scribbling 101. I can always live in Fairytale Land.
Thank you Academaniac! They may sue and still lose, but it will make your life miserable. I've read about stoopider suits. You're not what they signed up for, even though they will be better for it in the long run.
DeleteSounds like a snowflake breeding another generation of snowflakes, on campus and off.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I suspect that Mama Paulina would, on average, receive fewer concessions, though I realize that varies by department.
No, we have a Mama Paulina, who struggles along without complaint, but for whom way fewer concessions are made.
DeleteI was just gonna say that about Mama Paulina. And IMAGINE if Papa Paul had actually fed Toddler Tyler in class -- the coos of "he's adorable" and the thumbs-up from coeds with dreams of marrying daddy in their eyes (and yes, I do mean "co-eds," who still exist in personality type if not in strictest form).
ReplyDeleteI've been in your shoes. Before I earned tenure, I had a special grant project that required me to teach an experimental class. Because the class was low-enrolled, the administration made me take it as an overload and assigned me to take over a class Easy Edna had given up since she decided she would really rather teach Early American Hamster Masterpieces than Writing for Rodentia II.
ReplyDeleteThe first day of class when I walked in, I could see the look of terror on the students' faces. Easy Edna is especially popular with the ESL/ELL crowd as 90% of her class is grammar. Two students actually refused to take a syllabus from me, said, "I don't want to take this class anymore," and walked out before I even got started. The class had 22 students on the roster. Eighteen showed up the first day. By the second day of class, I had 14 on my roster. By the next week, I was down to 11. I finished with 6, 4 of whom passed. It was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life.
But God help us all if anything should happen to our real version of Papa Paul, Bootstrap Barry. His classes fill within 24 hours of registration. His schtick is "I came up from the underclass; I'm one of you." Readings are routinely done in class, aloud from the book. Academic assignments are non-existent; everything is made personal. Tests are open book, open note. If someone were to take over his class, I would be surprised if that person walked out of the room with body parts intact given the way students worship Bootstrap Barry.
I am glad I'm not alone, but I hate that this happens to conscientious employees. I also wish everyone would drop. As it is, I'm teaching the equivalent of three classes instead of two to cover for him (and my own three).
DeletePapa Paul is friendly with all ELLs and slackers. They, too, flock to his classes, as do those who think he is way cool. Sadly, we have another one in our department (Slacker Sally), so someone is always working overtime because of them.
I don't know if I even WANT tenure here.
You are not an employee. You are the university, the "fellowship of the elect Masters". The university does not employ you, its faculty co-opts you into it. Or, at least, that was the original idea.
DeleteIt is not as if you could do anything about it. But it is the job of tenured people to stop the transformation of faculty into a herd of powerless sheep.
I took over for a Papa Paul once,, when I was a young Padawan. I did not realize he was a Papa Paul until I was a week into it. I had to take over for him about a quarter into the semester. You know what I did? This will earn me scorn from all of you (maybe), but I have a four four teaching load, so this was a FIFTH course. I just taught it like Papa Paul, mostly. Rather than essays, he had them do paragraphs. They did grammar lessons every day, took quizzes on the grammar which they then corrected themselves as he went over the correct answers with them (before collecting them). His mid term and final consisted of having them read a speech by a famous political figure, with grammar mistakes added in. Next to each line with a grammar mistake, he had a fill in the blank space in the right margin, and they had to choose from a "mistake bank" which kind of grammar error that was. He smugly prides himself on the fact that in his Freshman Composition classes, he exposes his students to great political thinking. He's a peach. He had all this stuff in his records, neat as a pin. I just followed along with his game plan, and got paid for a fifth course. I felt no guilt.
ReplyDeleteHis other Comp class was given to a second newbie to the department. She fought like hell, made them work, failed many of them, gave Ds to the rest. And the chair asked him to look over her grade book for discrepancies. Papa Paul, from home, changed all of her grades to Bs and Cs.
In my reply to you above, I told you to do what she did, because it would give my tenured tush a gleeful sense of justice.
But as I am admitting here, that is not what I did with my own Papa Paul situation.
Thanks, this helped! :o)
DeleteNobody lives happily ever after? I doubt that, especially if you find a job outside of academia. I wish you the best of luck finding enough places to bury all the bodies that need burying.
ReplyDeleteI like my summers. I love my summers. That's why I've stayed this long (15 years).
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