My Tipping Point

It's Monday of the last week of classes, and my freshmen are writing their final research essays, due by Friday. Because they cannot seem to grasp the finer points of citation--wait, who am I kidding? Because they cannot grasp any points of citation--nor margins, fonts, and the elusive skill of double spacing--I schedule time in a computer lab for them this week. I work with them one-on-one and as a group. Each sits at his or her own computer to use for the duration of the class.

My tipping point? Slacker Slick, who missed three weeks of class, looked over his computer screen--the computer was on, his cell phone was right by the keyboard (also on, unfortunately)--and asked, "What's Wednesday's date?"

"Seriously?" I asked.

"I'm really tired," he said.

His timing was unfortunate. The first question asked, it made me deaf to all other lazy questions. My response to nearly every student who asked something out of sheer laziness was, "Seriously?"

They got the message and learned to fend for themselves pretty quickly. Most of them asked me questions pertinent to their essays and I was able to help them. The majority of the session was productive.

Slacker Slick? He spent eighty percent of our allotted hour looking at Facebook. Then he checked weather.com and split.

Is this the way it should be?

It is my last term at an institution I have taught at for nearly seven years. I feel like I was a baby when I started working here (professionally speaking I suppose that I was).

I have already formally resigned and set a stop date, and that means that it wouldn't really make any sense to fire me. So what does this mean?

Well, it could mean that I could break all of the crazy arcane rules this place has about dress code and faculty behavior. But, instead, it means pretty much the same thing it meant the last time I quit a teaching job and new it was my "last term."

Over the years I've worked here our curriculum has grown stricter and stricter. More and more we have to grade the way we're told, rather than whatever way seems right. Consequently, the best thing about this term is knowing that I'm teaching without being reviewed, grading without consequences, and I can, quite honestly, shoot the curriculum to hell and back and nobody will care.

Maybe it would be in the spirit of this site to announce that I am therefore doing NOTHING in class this term, but that's not true. Instead, I'm teaching to the students' potential (quite high) instead of the curriculum (quite low). We're doing awesome fun projects. We're running all over the school really enjoying the subject and turning every spare corner of the place into classroom space.

In other words--I'm teaching the way I really want to. I imagine that this is what tenure is like (shut up, I'm sure it sucks too).

In the past few years I've seen many people resign from a number of different schools in many different fields and they nearly all do the same thing that last term--they teach the class they've wished they were teaching for years.

There is something terribly broken about our current views of standardized curriculum and assessment when every term can't be just like this. Is everyone a good teacher? No! But I bet many of us would be better teachers if given a little more leeway in what we teach. Standardized testing and curriculum has killed K-12 education (at least, most people seem to think it has). Why do we assume it's right for college?

Check the forecast ...

Has a freeze come to the Land Down Under? (That would be Hell, not Australia!)

After slogging through another batch of soul sapping drivel, er, student work, my heart sank as my Emailbox filled with student names.

Then I read one student's message:

"I would like to thank you for your patients ..." (yeah, I know but, read on ...)

"I did visit writing center and think I have figured out proper paraphrasing.  In addition, I will no longer submit work from my previous classes." (shudder, but yay!)  

"Thank you for your feedback, without it I would have assumed I was a good student doing good work. This is my first experience not getting straight As, and I thank you."  (aww, shucks!)

"I will however, wish to take this class again, to prove to myself that I am capable of doing work at a level that is expected of me." (hello, what now?)  

"Thank you for your honesty,  I needed it."  

Have I just been punk'd?