the joy of my life
I don't really want to go into this fully now, and it really hasn't been that bad overall.
But.
The students. Really, it's ok mostly. I can tell that my teaching is so much better now that I've done it. I do my best to catch their mistakes well in advance, and sometimes they even listen.
But.
I was grading papers yesterday. The first class was fine, maybe not great, but fine. Then I got to the second class, which is generally my problem class already. Two people, who work in the same group, turned in three of the exact same graphs. With the exact same captions, word for word. And the exact same mistakes and misspellings. Then in the same class I found another pair of exact same graphs. With the exact same captions. And the exact same mistakes. Aaarrrrrrggggghhhhhhh.
The one girl, one of the cheaters, is definitely my problem student at the moment. She's the one who said [about the homework assignment, and some problems we've been having with cheating] "but it's not cheating, it's just Lon Capa!" And there was a time the very first week that she had a question, and I was trying to explain where she'd gone wrong in her calculations, and she kept interrupting me with how she thought they should be done, and wouldn't let me explain how to do it right. Aaarrrrrgggghhhhhhhh.
And last week I reminded them that the midterm was coming up in two weeks, and that anything from the experiments or homework could turn up on it. They asked me to email them the powerpoint presentations I give at the beginnings, and I said no, because if the ppts get out, people will think they don't need to come to class any more. So the whole class got mad about that (which means they have been paying no attention whatsoever to me when I'm up there talking, which I already knew). And one girl, yes the same girl, said something along the lines of "well then I'm not coming anymore, because it's not like they take attendance anyway." Ok, so I'm not certain she was talking about my class, but: you need to come to class to run the experiments. And I do take attendance! Just because I don't stand in front of the class mispronouncing everyone's name does not mean I don't know who's there.
Aaarrrrggggghhhhhhh.
Ok, I'm done now.
But.
The students. Really, it's ok mostly. I can tell that my teaching is so much better now that I've done it. I do my best to catch their mistakes well in advance, and sometimes they even listen.
But.
I was grading papers yesterday. The first class was fine, maybe not great, but fine. Then I got to the second class, which is generally my problem class already. Two people, who work in the same group, turned in three of the exact same graphs. With the exact same captions, word for word. And the exact same mistakes and misspellings. Then in the same class I found another pair of exact same graphs. With the exact same captions. And the exact same mistakes. Aaarrrrrrggggghhhhhhh.
The one girl, one of the cheaters, is definitely my problem student at the moment. She's the one who said [about the homework assignment, and some problems we've been having with cheating] "but it's not cheating, it's just Lon Capa!" And there was a time the very first week that she had a question, and I was trying to explain where she'd gone wrong in her calculations, and she kept interrupting me with how she thought they should be done, and wouldn't let me explain how to do it right. Aaarrrrrgggghhhhhhhh.
And last week I reminded them that the midterm was coming up in two weeks, and that anything from the experiments or homework could turn up on it. They asked me to email them the powerpoint presentations I give at the beginnings, and I said no, because if the ppts get out, people will think they don't need to come to class any more. So the whole class got mad about that (which means they have been paying no attention whatsoever to me when I'm up there talking, which I already knew). And one girl, yes the same girl, said something along the lines of "well then I'm not coming anymore, because it's not like they take attendance anyway." Ok, so I'm not certain she was talking about my class, but: you need to come to class to run the experiments. And I do take attendance! Just because I don't stand in front of the class mispronouncing everyone's name does not mean I don't know who's there.
Aaarrrrggggghhhhhhh.
Ok, I'm done now.