YESTERDAY I was about 20 minutes into my lecture when a student rose up and walked toward me, a small device in hand."My boss just texted me that I have to go to work now," the student announced. "Can I go?"
I looked at the student and then searched my brain for a reply. "I don't want to have this conversation now," I replied. I could see the rest of the class; they were becoming restless, shifting in their chairs.
"But my boss wants me now," the student continued. "Can I go?"
"You can do whatever you wish to do," I said. "This is not my decision; it's yours."
"Can I go?" The voice was plaintive now.
"I'm not going to tell you that it's fine for you to leave class," I said, "I'm not. It isn't. I am going to continue to do my job now, which is to teach this class."
The student stood there a moment or two and then returned to seat.
Previous to this exchange (in case you think I appeared peevish, testy perhaps, impatient, or unsympathetic), at the beginning of the class session, I was approached by another student. "I missed the last class," the student announced. "I need the handouts."
"I've posted them on Blackboard," I replied, feeling slightly triumphant, organized even, with a thin frosting of professionalism. I've been trying hard to make it easy this semester.
"I couldn't access Blackboard," the student went on. "Do we have a draft due today?"
"Yes," I replied, "and even if you missed the previous class, you should have known that because it was listed on the assignment sheet."
"I don't have the draft," the student replied. "Can I have the handouts for the last class?"
"I'll give them to you at the end of today's class," I replied. "Right now we need to get started. Even though you don't have a draft, you can participate. Take a seat."
"But I can't stay," the student said. "I need to leave now."
"Now?" I asked. "Why?"
"I have to go to work," the student said.
"We need to have this conversation another time," I replied. "You should have come to see me in my office before class. I have an office hour before this class. Now is not the time to talk about this.""I didn't know you had an office hour," the student said.
"It's on the syllabus," I replied.
"Can I have the handouts for the last class and for today?" the student asked.
"No," I said. "I need to begin class right now. We need to have this conversation another time."
Obviously angry, the student left.
I walked to the podium, placed my notes on it, only to be approached by two more smiling students.
"We need to leave early today," one of them said. "We have a game. Can you give us the work?"
18 comments:
Take a deep breath.
Exhale.
Keep smiling.
Obvious candidates for online distance education classes.
Isn't it only week 3?
I have similar experiences. My advice: tell them to get to and visit the Blackboard site often, and mean it. Sit down with them, if necessary, to help them get on to Blackboard, but never let them put the responsibility for having handouts and assignments (etc.) on you. That's total bullshit.
In other words, treat 'em like adults!
I cannot remember, ever, having or witnessing such a complete lack of respect for a teacher and for the educational process.
You were a class act, totally lost on these imbeciles.
and yet, Rebel Girl obviously feels conflicted - otehrsie she wouldn't post this. What do you do? How do you do it?
Is it ever right to say "no" to students when they are asking for information?
It may be less of a conflict than just the need to vent about this type of experience.
It's true, I felt like I didn't handle it the best way.
and yet....
Your classroom has a hole in the ceiling?
Hey, Reb, you were the essence of class, better than they deserved. Should you have had your own special little routine with them, at the expense of all the other students who weren't such little shits? And having to leave early--for a game? Sheesh. And what's with the text messaging in class--it should be banned outright.
This is why I couldn't be a teacher. I think I would end up just interrogating the poor student as to what kind of an asshole "boss" they have that they text the student IN SCHOOL, and ask them to leave. Then I would continue to lecture the student on why they should put their education first, and their current shitty work status second. You did fine though :-P
Hmmm... What would Bourdieu say? or Baudrillard? that these are not junior college, but junior high school students? or that yours is only a *simulation* of a Classroom? Crosby (not to put him in the same league with these other two, by any means) would probably say it's just more dialectical entropy. The result of Raghu's Hammer. Hey-- Occam's razor, Schroedinger's Cat, and now Raghu's Hammer! Could it be that this man has a future after all? as THE Raghu of Raghu's Hammer? (see Crosby's corruptioncollege.com website if you don't know what Raghu's Hammer is. Hint: if it aint broke... :).
crosby? is that you, you scum sucking nut case?
There's a hole in the ceiling of your classroom?
shouldn't you be grading papers?
Yes, tell them to go to the blackboard, and write 100 times, in Latin, "ROMANS GO HOME!"
This was amusing for a while, 8:17, some commentary about dialectics and all, but now it's just silly. I'm stopping the sketch.
What's really silly is not my website, but the Board majority authorizing nearly 1/3 million dollars in legal fees to be spent, mainly, to defend that mean, lying, Hershey Squirt Lise Telson's "right" to put her feces in student files (actually, that's the supject of a pending writ application to either the Court of Appeal or the State Supreme Court), and then suspend me because I wouldn't schedule a meeting to come to her office and listen to her bullcrap for a *third* time. (NO, she wasn't interested in my side of the story at all. She just wanted to yell and scream what a rotten individual I was. SCREW HER!!)
Take that $ 1/3 million and put it toward books in the library, or to hire extra faculty, and your 50% problem is solved. Too late for that now. Liebert Cassidy & Whitmore, I do not believe, gives refunds.
All of this money was spent to fight an absolutely frivolous defense of the indefensible-- calling campus cops on me because I was looking at myspace profiles of persons of the same gender as my own (which didn't show anything that couldn't be seen at a public beach), and then calling cops because I told Ana Maria Cobos it was her job, not mine, to make sure the library's audio listening stations were working properly.
Those of you who are teachers at Saddleback: why the hell didn't you scream bloody murder about BP 4000.2 years ago? This is a blatant attack on intellectual freedom. It is a policy which would be appropriate for the inmates Orange County, perhaps, but not "free" Americans. Why should it have fallen upon me to clean up this pile of dirt? Saddleback's library isn't that terrific anyway; plus beginning a year from now, it's not really going to be a "library" in the traditional sense of the word anyway. What's in this for me? You think I can win money out of this? I cannot. I'll tell you: this is a fight for principle. And if my litigation tips the balance for state funding, don't blame me. All I want is Telson's lies out of my folder, and the right to use the library without having campus cops called on me for trivial nonsense-- like headphones "too loud" at an audio listening station NEXT TO A COPY MACHINE. You call ME silly?
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