It's nice to know when the teachers/profs are on your side
Being me ... I did not read BB until today. But this makes me like me senior phase prof/tut leader even more. Here is what he wrote for this week (a small section out of a longer note:
It was good to meet a lot of you down in H Building on Friday, handing in your assignments and I hope you were able to enjoy some time relaxing this weekend. I am very aware, and worried, that assessments seem to be driving your lives at the moment which isn't always a healthy situation and it is something we will need to review when we look at the Grad Dip at the end of this teaching session.
With regard to this I have had two guest speakers both cancel their talks later this semester but I am seriously worried in trying to get substitutes if the attendance is the same as that of the last couple of weeks. I think I'll try to arrange one and then give you some catch up time with the other - but please let me know what you think.
Because it really has been insane. It's like ... one class has wanted to completely kill us with assessments and what they want verses the ability they are giving us to do it in. For example, the report they want us to write? Well, let's give you all 1500 words, expect you to do it like grad student quality and then make you lose marks because you decide to go with either the word limit or the quality. It's just not possible. To me it's either ... you want crap that is surface quality because you all are too lazy to read papers that are more than two pages ... or allow us to get into some detail that is not backed up by anything ... or you can say "to h-ll with the crazy low word limit, let's see what you've got - bring it". Now ... I saw something I liked when examining work from last semester for the assignment we need to do (that is creating an assessment task and criteria task) where the students were given a minimum, but not a maximum word length. I don't know - it's not even the assignments that are worthwhile to do that are the issue - it is all these stupid assignments that have next to no indication of how we are as educators or whatever.
I am really happy to have Dr. A - I like that he actually cares. And my 621 tutorial person really cares too. They both realize that there is so much and it is all about assessment right now. But the rest of them ... The rest of them think that whatever subject it is, well, that is the ONLY assessment you have and the only class. It sure seems like that. I don't know how anyone is handling working part time on top of that. The only sane people in this entire program.
Speaking of crazy ... I had to do my presentation thing in WPL tonight where you give a brief taste of a lesson while being hit with at least two people that are misbehaving which you need to use effective behaviour management strategies ... It seems that I did not do what she wanted. One of the situations I got was this guy who was disengaged and reading a magazine and then bothering the people around him. I tried the standing close bit but he got more and more agressive and didn't respond to that - so I told him to go for a drink of water. And then he storms off and when he tries to come back in he was still pissy so I told him to go and wait outside of the class. The other situation was two girls who wanted to go to the toilet together. I paid a little too much attention to secondary behaviour but whatever. Oh, this was meant to be a year 10 English extention class. Yeah ... And then when I had them working, I went outside and talked to him. Blah blah blah. And then it was all about what I had done wrong (not even what I had done right). I didn't even hear him swear at all which according to everyone else he did. Ahhh so dumb. "oh you didn't give him a choice" "oh you didn't debrief" blah blah blah. Whatever.
It was good to meet a lot of you down in H Building on Friday, handing in your assignments and I hope you were able to enjoy some time relaxing this weekend. I am very aware, and worried, that assessments seem to be driving your lives at the moment which isn't always a healthy situation and it is something we will need to review when we look at the Grad Dip at the end of this teaching session.
With regard to this I have had two guest speakers both cancel their talks later this semester but I am seriously worried in trying to get substitutes if the attendance is the same as that of the last couple of weeks. I think I'll try to arrange one and then give you some catch up time with the other - but please let me know what you think.
Because it really has been insane. It's like ... one class has wanted to completely kill us with assessments and what they want verses the ability they are giving us to do it in. For example, the report they want us to write? Well, let's give you all 1500 words, expect you to do it like grad student quality and then make you lose marks because you decide to go with either the word limit or the quality. It's just not possible. To me it's either ... you want crap that is surface quality because you all are too lazy to read papers that are more than two pages ... or allow us to get into some detail that is not backed up by anything ... or you can say "to h-ll with the crazy low word limit, let's see what you've got - bring it". Now ... I saw something I liked when examining work from last semester for the assignment we need to do (that is creating an assessment task and criteria task) where the students were given a minimum, but not a maximum word length. I don't know - it's not even the assignments that are worthwhile to do that are the issue - it is all these stupid assignments that have next to no indication of how we are as educators or whatever.
I am really happy to have Dr. A - I like that he actually cares. And my 621 tutorial person really cares too. They both realize that there is so much and it is all about assessment right now. But the rest of them ... The rest of them think that whatever subject it is, well, that is the ONLY assessment you have and the only class. It sure seems like that. I don't know how anyone is handling working part time on top of that. The only sane people in this entire program.
Speaking of crazy ... I had to do my presentation thing in WPL tonight where you give a brief taste of a lesson while being hit with at least two people that are misbehaving which you need to use effective behaviour management strategies ... It seems that I did not do what she wanted. One of the situations I got was this guy who was disengaged and reading a magazine and then bothering the people around him. I tried the standing close bit but he got more and more agressive and didn't respond to that - so I told him to go for a drink of water. And then he storms off and when he tries to come back in he was still pissy so I told him to go and wait outside of the class. The other situation was two girls who wanted to go to the toilet together. I paid a little too much attention to secondary behaviour but whatever. Oh, this was meant to be a year 10 English extention class. Yeah ... And then when I had them working, I went outside and talked to him. Blah blah blah. And then it was all about what I had done wrong (not even what I had done right). I didn't even hear him swear at all which according to everyone else he did. Ahhh so dumb. "oh you didn't give him a choice" "oh you didn't debrief" blah blah blah. Whatever.