Middle-aged Marie approaches me, looking concerned, after Hamster Fur Knitting class ends for the day. She wants to speak with me, but she’s a working adult and can’t come to my midday office hours. She can, however, come to campus at 8 AM. Could I meet her this Friday? I’m a night owl sort who teaches in the afternoons/evenings and therefore usually don’t wake up until 9 or 10, but since I’ve got a 10 AM meeting this Friday, I suppose that I can wake up two hours early and get here… OK, Marie, I’ll see you at 8 on Friday.
Come Friday morning, I arrive at my office and find Marie waiting in the hall. We go inside and sit down, and Marie starts in with the leading questions. “Dr. Mindbender, wouldn’t you agree that _______?” *sigh* Puh-leeeze, Marie. I’m not a complete idiot, and I see where every question is leading. Stop trying to back me into a corner and force me to admit I’m incompetent.
Q: “Wouldn’t you agree that the syllabus is a vague contract between the professor and a student?”
A: “No. It’s a contract. Some professors write short, minimalist syllabi. Others write long, detailed ones. Mine is in the middle. Everything in the syllabus you received comes from specific situations I’ve encountered while teaching.”
She wilts a bit and tries again.
Q: “Is this a new syllabus?”
A: “No. The course policies are almost identical for every class I teach, and I’ve been using variations on this syllabus for as long as I’ve been teaching.”
Q: “Oh. How long have you been teaching?”
A: “For about seven years.”
Marie wilts even further.
Eventually, she drops the questions tactic and she gets to her point: She doesn’t like my course policies. They’re scary. Besides, I’m not enforcing the parts about ejecting people who aren’t prepared and about disrespect not being tolerated in the classroom.
Inside, I say “Watofok?”, but I ask Marie to elaborate. Well, during the in-class workgroup session last week, one of the group members clearly hadn’t done the reading, and that girl still ignored everything Marie had to say. Why didn’t I kick the youngster out?
Again, my internal monologue differs from what emerges from between my lips. Inside, I say “Of course they ignored you. You spouted non sequiturs and generally made it clear that you have no fucking clue about how to card hamster fur. The girls just didn’t know how else to shut you down without seeming rude,” but what emerges is a platitude about interpersonal difficulties being different than ethnic or religious bias, which is the real focus of that policy, and had I been aware of the younger girl’s not reading, I would’ve given her forty lashes with a wet noodle.
Marie seems pacified for the moment, but the conversation goes downhill from this already low point, and over the next hour-and-a-half, it practically goes into freefall.
Marie can’t hear what I’m saying because she’s partially deaf, and she has trouble keeping up with note-taking because she has undiagnosed dyslexia (never mind that Marie sits on the periphery of class instead of sitting up front).
Marie doesn’t like the way I number the homework assignments on the course website (never mind that ninety-three percent of the students in both sections of Hamster Fur Knitting 315 understood the numbering system just fine).
Marie doesn’t like the comment I wrote on her paper (never mind that I’ve used much the same comment many times over the past years, in many different classes).
Marie doesn’t like that I assigned a take-home project in the second week of class (never mind that I’ve used this assignment in many classes, and always at the beginning of the semester).
In short, Marie doesn't like the class or anything I do in it.
I summon up my most saint-like demeanor and resist the urge to ask Marie what the fuck is wrong with her. Instead, I make soothing noises about perhaps rephrasing parts of the syllabus in the future. Yes, of course I can revise how I phrase homework assignments when I post them on the course website. Oh…and of course, if she’s having trouble keeping up, it’s possible other students are, too.
This rigmarole goes on for two full hours. At the end, Marie seems mollified. I eject her from my office as gracefully as possible and make tracks for my 10 AM meeting, feeling battered.
On Tuesday, Marie drops the class.
Marie set you up. And I am surprised you are not familiar with the snowflake tactic. She should have never been alowed to rant for two hours. Give her ten minutes at best. Students will act out in class, purposely so when you call them on it, they can later blame you when they drop the class. It is all part of the snowflake/professor game.
ReplyDeleteWhat a punch line!
ReplyDeleteAt least she dropped your class. I could swear I am marking her research essay on the politics of basketweaving right now...
ReplyDeleteYou felt battered (and fried) because you ALLOWED the student to batter you.
ReplyDeleteShe set the time of the meeting on HER terms.
She ranted as long as SHE wanted.
You admitted that SHE was right; your syllabus needed improvement.
She also found a way to improve your homework listing by you're own admission.
When she went to drop, it wasn't an admission that she wasn't capable of doing the work; you gave her power so that she probably felt she was better and smarter than you. She likely told others that you ADMITTED you could improve your class.
DUDE...don't do this to yourself again! You're not doing yourself, the student or other instructors any favors by being so passive. First of all, take charge of these whiners for your own sanity. Second of all, I don't want to deal with this flake when she wants to HELP me with my class.
Tough love, Mindbender. Tough love.
I agree with junebug, a vast majority of the posts here deal with problems that easily could be solved by showing slightly more backbone than a jellyfish. I understand compassion, but lack of strong will is causing problems for you, and, indirectly, for the rest of us. Cowboy up!
ReplyDeleteShe dropped the class? Well thank God for that.
ReplyDeleteI have a policy, however: I will never meet a student at a time when I would not otherwise be on campus. And I certainly wouldn't meet any student at 8 a.m. If I'm a night owl and they work during the day they can meet me AFTER hours. I'm not getting out of bed to suit a student's schedule.
There is, as you already know, nothing wrong with your policies, your homework assignments, your numbering system, your comments, or how you handle students in class. This lady was power-tripping you. Two hours? Of course you felt beat up. Whiners like this get at most 15 minutes, and after that I have a meeting to prepare for, glad you could stop by.
Hand holding should count as time-and-a-half.
ReplyDeleteI am glad you shared this, and I don't want you to feel all beat up again by us commentators. But I agree. You need to kick bitches like this one right out of your office. Tell her you have another appointment, glad she could stop by.
ReplyDeleteBe confident. You are not crazy----they are. It is just that their insanity has worked so well for them, at least so far.
I don't think it is a weakness to admit when you can improve something, even to a student, but in this case, you cannot improve it, don't need to improve it. 93% of your students 'get it' and with today's students, that is an effing miracle. You are as crystal clear as you can possibly be. There will always be some moron who can't find her way out of a paper bag, and in this case, that moron was her. You don’t even owe her an explanation for this.
What I have done with students who claim something was not clear enough is ask them to read it aloud for me, with me, and to stop at the places where they got confused. This has never failed me; they always, miraculously, understand it a lot better when they actually read it. At least when I am in the room, watching them read it, ready to explain those pesky little words and concepts they do not understand.
Hey, congrats! She dropped the class! It reminds me of the time I was accosted by a Hare Krishna in an airport, and I talked him out of a copy of the Bhagavad Gita that he handed me, without giving him -any- money for it! It took some talking—nay, it took rather a -lot- of talking—but I won.
ReplyDeleteYou can't really win with a petulant child like Middle-aged Marie. Her dropping the course was the best possible outcome for you, and quite possibly also for her. Never mind any romantic nonsense about failing to educate her, pushed in a number of movies about teaching: she was ineducable, because she quite obviously didn't -want- to be educated. The nature of her questions, and the rapid succession with which she clobbered you with them, clearly showed that.
I’ve had at least one student who I wanted to ask, “If I agree to give you a C in the course, will you just STOP coming to class, since you’re clearly not learning anything, because you’re doing your absolute best not to learn anything?” I never did, though, and he earned his C fair and square. I’ve since tightened up standards for the class: he’d be lucky to get a D, plus I’ve become much less tolerant of generalized whining, particularly if it isn’t really about anything at all. I simply do not have time for students like this: I need to spend my limited time on students who can, will, and want to learn.
I have to wonder whether she had taken a class in communication or negotiation or something (or maybe read a self-help book or one of those "ten ways" articles) and was trying (ineptly) to put the techniques into practice. The "wouldn't you agree" tactic is weird.
ReplyDeleteBut, yes, the tactical mistake was making 2 hours available to her. If she stayed until nearly 10, then the meeting could have been scheduled for 9:30 (and ended at 9:45/9:50), significantly reducing the wear and tear on you without losing anything in terms of content. I suspect I would have gotten cornered, too, especially since I do sometimes propose early-morning meetings (generally a good way to sort out the serious from the less-so), but I try to work backward by 1/2 hour increments from my own first commitment, and also to try to elicit information from students about their schedules before volunteering too much about my own outside-of-office-hours availability.
>>I suppose that I can wake up two hours early and get here… OK, Marie, I’ll see you at 8 on Friday.
ReplyDeleteI thought you were leading up to her not showing up at all.
While I certainly appreciate the "tough love" advice, I am curious if most who hold that ideology also hold tenure.
ReplyDeleteI know, it is not a bulletproof shield, but as a member of the contingent class, there are times when I WANTED to hold firm but capitulated out of plain and simple fear that this would lead to my silent dismissal.
It's a sucky situation to be in ... especially for one who has NEVER bought into the deification of snowflakery.
@Aware: as my name suggests, I'm contingent, and very much vulnerable to student evals. But I think that students who have unreasonable expectations about availability are going to slam you on availability no matter what you do. And I get pretty good scores on that particular measure, mostly because I do a reasonably good (24-hour weekday turnaround) job of keeping up with email. I do sometimes come early or stay late to meet with a student if my schedule allows, but I don't come in on days I wasn't already intending to (at least not unless it looks like I could productively schedule at least half a dozen student conferences, and squeeze in whatever work I was planning to do anyway in the interstices, and/or when someone doesn't show). It may help that I can use a shared office as an excuse (I'll say "I don't come in on x; the office belongs to my officemate that day," even if I know he won't, in fact, be in, and wouldn't, in fact, mind even if he were. I guess that lie shows that I do, in fact, feel a bit vulnerable -- but not enough so that I don't set limits; I just feel the need to bolster them with a reason).
ReplyDeleteThis sounds AWFUL. Had it been me, I might have gotten to that point where I just look at the student blankly and say "I'm not really sure what you are getting at here. I'm not changing the syllabus, because it works for the other 99.999999% of the students."
ReplyDelete1. Lie about future engagements. ("I have a phone conference at 830.")
2. I LOVE it when they ask how long I've been teaching. I am relatively young for the amount of teaching I've done (go, go, frantic search for health benefits!) and I LOVE when they pull that shit and I say "eight years, four of them as full-time faculty." HAH. Suck it, Marie!
@ ConCass
ReplyDeleteAs I only have one on-campus class, believe me I make no trips to campus I did not already plan. My "office" hours are virtual -- and I retain a perfect no-visitor record.
My concern, though, was less availability than capitulation.
Following the lead of dear CMers, this past term, I was explicit in my statement that by remaining in class students were certifying they had read/understood the syllabus and were accepting the terms contained therein.
I'm just not sure how valuable doing this is, however. For years, I have had a similarly unyielding policy that a statement of understanding of academic honesty policy must included in any major paper's submission. The instructions go so far as to state failure to include the statement on the title page is grounds to not accept the paper outright.
Even with such a clearly stated policy ...
> there still is a 10 - 33% rate of academic policy violations;
> a similar percentage do not include a title page at all (eliminating, therefore, the academic honesty statement);
> another group has a title page, sans honesty statement; and most troubling
> there is no correlation between inclusion/non-inclusion of the statement and instances of plagiarism.
But, returning to my original point, when I attempted to enforce my "no statement, no submission" policy, I got NO support from various administrations.
To be fair, when the issue was plagiarism, I have ALWAYS been backed by admin. However, when the issue is inability to follow directions, the support evaporates. All I have been permitted to do is deduct a miniscule point penalty.
I just started with (what I thought was) a generally well regarded program. However, I have come to learn there is a major disconnect between their public reputation and published philosophies and the utter lack of skills demonstrated by the students I saw. Using the college's own writing rubric, students were dispassionately evaluated by those very standards. I was inundated by students complaining they had "never" been given such low grades before.
I would love to take a stand. But as someone who has already suffered a silent dismissal (from a program I had taught steadily for 5+ years), I am (quite literally) frozen with anxiety about how to hold to standards in a program where they seem to exist only in the imaginations of administrators.
@Aware: I'm tenured, but I haven't forgotten my years as an Accursed VAP, and on the tenure track, both with department chairs who always blamed me first, and took everything even the worst students said at face value, no matter how patently ridiculous. I learned to be sneaky: to avoid face-to-face confrontations like this. I am still deeply ashamed I had to do this, to survive, and I very nearly didn't, because there were things I still would not do.
ReplyDeleteBella - I LOVE that tactic (getting them to read the syllabus out loud with me in the room). I shall remember it. Thank you.
ReplyDelete