Few things can get to me like teaching frustrations. What's odd is that I can cope with pain-in-the-ass students, complaints, whining, and so on, but what I can't cope with adequately is when it feels like a class is failing and I don't know why or how to fix it.
My evening Lit class, which is a tiny group of fairly quiet folks, seems like it's always stalling out. We got going with a rough start because they didn't do the reading the first week and there was only so long I could slog through with the spoonfeeding. After that we had to change rooms and now we're in this large space that makes the quiet group seem even smaller and quieter. Perhaps I won a little bit when we took a field trip to Starbucks on about week 4 and had class on the patio, and it seemed to be even more of a success when we repeated the trip the following week. Then we needed to take a unit exam and I gave them a take home because we were so behind. It was due tonight, and I was looking forward to talking about poetry, but only half of them showed up and I knew I'd just have to repeat everything again next week so I let them go - less than a half hour after the start of class because I didn't know what else to do. We've missed so much class time, but sometimes it's just too hard to keep forcing my way through, and I feel like it's me who's failing. Logically, I know I am not - in fact, I daresay that they like me and the class time - but I don't know how to get this ship out of port. In contrast, I have another section of this class that I practically have to shove out the door at the end of class because they want to keep talking.
I'm open to ideas here. Really.
Me! (don't get too excited...)
- It's not pretty underneath...
- Angsty, obsessive, uber-organized, stupid-joke loving, overachieving thirty-something with an axe to grind against modern culture and not enough hours in the day to throw the first stone in the impending revolution...
5 comments:
jus' curious - what are you guys reading?
Have you tried belittling them? This was a tactic much loved by English and Philosophy professors I had in college/university. I had one English professor who was so frustrated; he started pulling names from the attendance sheet. If the student hadn’t read the material, he would make some snappy comment. Of course not too many people liked him, but the class started reading and offering up discussion points.
Re: Ted - we're reading poetry now, which is tough, but we've been reading fiction (short stories and Palahniuk's Lullaby, which is always a hit).
RE: Aimee - LOL! I often jokingly belittle, but I cannot force myself to be genuine about it. I too have suffered under the evil tactics of former profs...so the question remains (a la Machiavelli): "is it better to be feared or loved?"
Oooh, yeah. Here I am thinking I'm all mature and shit, vs. "those damn kids", but put a book of poetry in front of me and I'll run off looking for the nearest frat party! (or whatever the college kids do these days)
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