thru a croc darkly
I don't blame students for not knowing things. Basic grammar, major genocides, how to dress themselves. What drives me absolutely crazy is their attitude of automatic disinterest bordering on scorn for anything they don't already know.
Frustrated with a difficult passage, a girl in my class this morning burst out: "the only words I know in this sentence are "a," "by," and "one."
I did not experience a life-flashing-before-me-teen-becomes-teacher moment as I said "that's what this amazing thing called wordreference.com is for, so that college students who were formerly too lazy to open a dictionary can not look up the words they're reading because they're using their computers to maintain 5 simultaneous open chats while deciphering major works of literature." And then I turned to the blackboard and wrote:
<3 READING jk lol
They get annoyed at the text, and at me for assigning something so "random," "difficult," "without a clear point." I mentioned that they shouldn't take my courses, because I don't usually assign presidential campaign pamphlets, instruction manuals or tax forms in my classes. And anyway, even tax forms strike me as highly ambiguous.
I caught a student plagiarizing an essay. This had never happened to me before. I decided that I would be a magnanimous blend of just antiauthoritarian enough to acknowledge that surely this student has a story and a side to be heard (thus refraining from majestically blowing the ETHICS trumpet as a way of asserting distance between myself and her) yet severe in the moment of addressing the apathy toward the world behind her complete ugg-difference and l33t ennui. In other words, I would handle it myself rather than calling in some kind of administrative narcs.
I confronted her tactfully, privately, expecting her to lie and/or start crying. I had visions of her tearfully thanking me for being so cool and understanding of the divorce/breakup/academic crisis/mental illness fucking with her flow.
Instead she says, blasély, "umm, yeah, I like didn't have time to duh it?"
[Pause] "Right. Yeah, evidently you didn't have time to do it, and so this is your opportunity to explain yourself to me rather than to academic services."
She goes, "I was just, you know, like I had summat else to do suh..." and trails off.
She says some analogous things for a while, refusing to get out of first gear of complete morbid slothdom. I am itching to make personal remarks about time spent choosing which crocs go with today's outfit and applying copious amounts of waterproof bodyglitter.
Finally, she says, "I just hate your class. I hate literature, I hate philosophy, I didn't want to take the class in the first place."
Have to go teach my next class now!
And hello everyone.
Frustrated with a difficult passage, a girl in my class this morning burst out: "the only words I know in this sentence are "a," "by," and "one."
I did not experience a life-flashing-before-me-teen-becomes-teacher moment as I said "that's what this amazing thing called wordreference.com is for, so that college students who were formerly too lazy to open a dictionary can not look up the words they're reading because they're using their computers to maintain 5 simultaneous open chats while deciphering major works of literature." And then I turned to the blackboard and wrote:
<3 READING jk lol
They get annoyed at the text, and at me for assigning something so "random," "difficult," "without a clear point." I mentioned that they shouldn't take my courses, because I don't usually assign presidential campaign pamphlets, instruction manuals or tax forms in my classes. And anyway, even tax forms strike me as highly ambiguous.
I caught a student plagiarizing an essay. This had never happened to me before. I decided that I would be a magnanimous blend of just antiauthoritarian enough to acknowledge that surely this student has a story and a side to be heard (thus refraining from majestically blowing the ETHICS trumpet as a way of asserting distance between myself and her) yet severe in the moment of addressing the apathy toward the world behind her complete ugg-difference and l33t ennui. In other words, I would handle it myself rather than calling in some kind of administrative narcs.
I confronted her tactfully, privately, expecting her to lie and/or start crying. I had visions of her tearfully thanking me for being so cool and understanding of the divorce/breakup/academic crisis/mental illness fucking with her flow.
Instead she says, blasély, "umm, yeah, I like didn't have time to duh it?"
[Pause] "Right. Yeah, evidently you didn't have time to do it, and so this is your opportunity to explain yourself to me rather than to academic services."
She goes, "I was just, you know, like I had summat else to do suh..." and trails off.
She says some analogous things for a while, refusing to get out of first gear of complete morbid slothdom. I am itching to make personal remarks about time spent choosing which crocs go with today's outfit and applying copious amounts of waterproof bodyglitter.
Finally, she says, "I just hate your class. I hate literature, I hate philosophy, I didn't want to take the class in the first place."
Have to go teach my next class now!
And hello everyone.