For the most part, I love teaching. I'm a little overwhelmed by the paperwork - STILL need to get some semblance of organization going on here... It's so obvious to me that that has never been one of my strengths! - but I really enjoy my students, and the academic environment and watching the "ah-ha" moments when they "get" something. Especially in Math. Who knew I'd like teaching math so much?!
But today - oh today! Today hasn't been a bad day, but I think I've put too high of expectations on my students and then allowed myself to get frustrated when they were not met. Last Friday we started working on essays, and yesterday half of the class session was assigned to essay writing, and I expected them to at least have a couple paragraphs done by today so we could workshop them... Well, of my seven students this morning, one was brand new today (no essay), one had his three body paragraphs done, one had not been here yesterday nor worked on the essay at all, one had an essay written but she didn't want anyone to read it because it was "too personal," one was feeling sorry for herself about how tough it is to write an essay, one had his complete essay written and was obnoxiously telling everyone it was done, and the last one was here both Friday and yesterday and decided in class today he wanted to re-write it. UGH!
Unfortunately, I let my composure slip a little. I'll have to apologize for it tomorrow, but I said, "Guys, I'm having a moment of frustration here, because we've had two half days in class and the weekend to work on this essay, and I want you to at least have SOME of it done so we could do an activity with it in class today! Now I'm in the difficult position of needing to use class time to let you finish the essays you haven't got done, but for the people who have finished they sit here bored... and it's not letting you practice your skills on editing and correcting and revising, because we're still in the writing stage." Whatever responses I wanted to get today was shot with that statement... Sometimes students are SO finicky! It was like pulling teeth for the rest of the class.
Then the student that felt her essay was "too personal" wanted me to read it. It's a lovely tribute to people in her life, but much more poetical structured than prose. We went over sentence structure today: how do you teach that?! We talked about the importance of having a subject and a predicate in EACH sentence, but who knows if it stuck. I guess I'll see when the essays get turned in tomorrow.
Anyhow, I'm going to make sure I've got a good lesson plan for the math classes today, because one class of improvising halfway through class is about all I want to deal with right now.
Unlike the cartoon at the top of this posting, I'll try to keep violence out of my routine... Despite today's irritations.
1 comment:
I am sure it's going to be OK! Sometimes a good kick in the seat is what some students need. If they want to go on and get their AA...well, they are going to have to work some for it! :-) I had a student I tutored there at LCC... sigh. Getting her to write three sentences without me doing it for her was so hard, never mind a paragraph? I tutored her for two quarters and she requested me again for the third quarter, but I had to tell my supervisor to put her with someone else because I wasn't making any progress with her. She was nice enough, but she still wanted me to DO the work for her and that is not what we are there for, right? anyway. I am sure it is going to be fine.
I am so envious of your job, really! :-)
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