| An educated mind is an opened mind. An opened mind is a liberal mind. Teachers don't have to intend to create liberals, it happens naturally. |
On the inside:
- Calm before the Storm
- Links to other education-related stories.
- As always, the topics will be whatever you want to discuss.
Door's Open...
| Calm before the Storm Yesterday I sat in a mostly empty computer lab. One of my students finished his final project, which is due Monday. In the afternoon, 6 of my colleague's students came by to work on their senior capstone projects, also due next week. I was there because I have a key to the lab. I was also there because some of my students promised to come and submit work that was overdue. They didn't. Finals Week starts here on Monday. For professors this is the proverbial calm before the storm. We have done what can to ensure student success. In the coming week we will determine whether or not we accomplished that goal. There is nothing more we can do right now short of leaking a copy of the final exam (that's a joke, except we sometimes know that even that wouldn't really be helpful in some cases). We sit and wait. The flurry of activity, the Storm, begins on Monday and oppresses everyone until the following Monday, when grades are due. There will be no fun breaks. Every hour will be dominated by testing, measuring, grading, assessing, and otherwise attempting to read the minds of our students, to perhaps discover some evidence within them that we have not been total failures as teachers this semester. Quite often we are pleased. But there are always the failures. And as any teacher can tell you, any failure gnaws at the gut and weighs more on the consciousness than dozens of successes. We spend so much time and effort arranging our course curricula in order to impart the wisdom we wish our students to possess, work dilligently to impart that wisdom, and all too often end up wondering if a student learned anything at all relevant to the subject...and seeking to justify giving credit for that which may be substandard. Why can't our students be just like us? Over the past two weeks three students from one of my classes showed up after disappearing for weeks on end. I should have dropped them officially from my rolls, but I'm a lazy procrastinator and it never happened. Actually, five of them disappeared after Spring Break, but one of them was a softball player who was doing quite well. Her grade can withstand the neglect, although somewhat damaged. The team made the playoffs. That's what is important to her. And it is why the school gave her a scholarship. So I may be annoyed, but I adapt. Another was a baseball player. He got cut from the team and hasn't been to school since. But the other three... They never connected to the fact that they were in a college level course and were expected to do college level work. And submit it. On time. Adopting the role of mentor didn't help. Being the parent didn't help. Cajoling didn't help. Begging didn't help. Nothing caused anything substantial to be submitted. Then they disappeared. But they showed up at the end...I guess to give me heartache. The question is always the same: "Is there any way I can still submit all the projects and pass this course?" The answer is always the same. it's my policy, big and bold on the syllabus on the first day and stressed. Everything but the final project may not be submitted after the end of the day before Finals Week (in this case, that would be yesterday). The verbal answer is: "Yes, you can..." The mental answer continues, "...but you won't". Yesterday I sat and waited for three students for seven hours. My time would have been more productively spent if I had waited for Godot.
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The Not-so-many Rules
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