The rantings, observations, and snide remarks of one marginally poor and yet-to-be-tenured English Professor!
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Today, this is how I feel, except, I have a Master's Degree.
MASTER's DEGREE? Yes, Master's.
I know what you are thinking: "You should be rolling in the dough"... But alas that is not the case.
While we are all told that education is "valuable," my meager paycheck says otherwise... Clearly education is an elaborate ruse to line someone's pockets, but the sure aren't mine!
However, my love for teaching draws me back each semester despite my frustrations...like a fly to honey
I guess MJ was right when he said:
"You can win child, You can't break even, And you CAN'T Get out of the Game!"
Liked what you read? Of course you did! Then hit the little follow button It would make me so happy to see your face there. OR, just leave me a comment! Reporting from the Trenches...
Whitney Houston once said (pre-crack): "I believe the children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way. . . "
OH, WHITNEY! Whitney, Whitney, Whitney. . .
SHE HAD NO CLUE WHAT TEACHERS/PROFESSORS DEAL WITH ON A DAILY BASIS, OR SHE MIGHT HAVE SAID IT DIFFERENTLY.
Children are our future - YES; But let them lead the way? I think not! That is actually an erie thought.
My students scare me sometimes with the things that surface out of the SEA OF STUPID (a phrase I am officially borrowing from another SNARKY friend of mine) that is their minds.
They hardly want to learn, and that definitely disqualifies them from being leaders....(shudders at idea)
After a thrilling weekend of grading such underwhelming work and preparing for the week of classes ahead, I can't help but wonder what our future holds if we produce such shining minds as this:
from iwastesomuchtime.com
This child (according to Whitney Houston) should be our leader. . . As an educator, this makes me laugh aaaannd think it might be time to relocate. What do you think?
Liked what you read? Of course you did! Then hit the little follow button It would make me so happy to see your face there. OR, just leave me a comment!
Reporting from the Trenches...
So this new batch of students seems to really get my teaching style. One student even asked me if he could turn my name in for the "Best Teacher Ever" award. While this could have been a mixture of honest elation for my stellar teaching abilities or brown nosing at its best . . . . I prefer to believe this student truly meant the former.
There really is no other way to show how my students this session come across to me than to simply leave you with this image from "IWASTESOMUCHTIME.COM":
This is a piece entitled: "I FREAKING LOVE SCHOOL"
TRUST ME STUDENTS, EVEN FOR PROFESSORS, ENTHUSIASM NEVER GETS OLD.
The end of the semester always seems to reveal to me the "FRUITS OF MY LABOR" or rather the lack of fruit . . .
It's always a mixed bag of much improved young writers - like shiny apple trees, slightly changed and detached students who scraped by - like wilting corn stalks begging to be shucked so they don't have to suffer in the heat of academia, and those handful of "crab apples" that plagiarize with no regard for the time and effort I put into teaching them how to cite correctly or my discussions with the class about the seriousness of the Final Research paper and the work that it requires.
I still get a bit insulted by the students who believe that I am just too stupid to recognize their plagiarism and do it with such flagrant disregard for how hard it is to create original work. (They don't seem to see anything wrong with stealing the creative, intellectual property, which makes me wonder about the citizens we are producing in society)
Needless to say, my first summer session was not a good harvesting season! But who knows . . . seasons change and the next harvest might be better?! Here's hoping . . .
Sometimes, I have pity on my students and extend deadlines. I remember feeling unprepared to do college level writing when I was in college. Although I prepare them fully to do the work they have to complete in the course, I know I am competing with a myriad of educational deficits that they have accumulated over the years in their primary education. This is not to say that I blame their teachers...it is a complicated web in primary education: parents, peer pressure, life pressure, neglect, lazy students, lazy teachers, apathetic administrators, an onslaught of standardized tests or evaluations (of students and teachers). But, oftentimes, there is no real learning going on. I was only in that sphere of education briefly, but I realized it wasn't for me.
Nevertheless, that is the foundation that ALL students come to college with and the same foundation that professors have to build on OR overcome!
Yesterday, I chose to go back and REBUILD that foundation, and once it was in place I informed my students that "I will not be taking papers up today." I went on to tell them that I wanted them to be successful students and without a proper understanding of the skills they need to write/construct an argument/supplement their opinions with adequate evidence and acknowledge ETHICALLY said information (ESPECIALLY IN A RESEARCH PAPER) they would surely fail OR PLAGIARIZE their papers. (plagiarism is a rampant problem in education when it comes to writing, but that is for another blog post).
In short, several students exhorted, "I LOVE YOU! YOU ARE THE BEST TEACHER EVER!" I know this was said with a mixture of relief and thankfulness on their part, but I was happy to see that many of them cared enough want to do better.
It's nice to know that my students care and even nicer to know that they really appreciate my desire to raise the bar and push them to get a "real education" (which 5 students came up to me after class and confirmed).
I am a believer in incorporating technology in the classroom, but somedays (earlier this week is a good example) I find that it encourages students to be LAZY learners or not to be learners at all.
I don't allow laptops in my lectures because they have crippled students' ability to spell, take notes efficiently, and, of course, pay attention. BUT, I have not yet figured out how to maintain the level of attentiveness (Active Learning, if you will) that I want them to be at while lecturing using technology.
Anyone who teaches English understands this dilemma. The finer points of MLA format, grammar, punctuation, and structure can all be a bit daunting to illustrate fluidly on a chalkboard (plus volunteers to correct sentences are always few and far between) and you never want to bombard your students with worksheets (they checkout and you have tons to grade), so you turn to TECHNOLOGY! However, when you put up Power Points (no matter how interactive...AND MINE ARE SUPER INTERACTIVE....I'm talking movie clips, sound bites, practice sentences with answers so it's like a game, images, cartoons to examine...THE WORKS!) its like students switch into HIBERNATION mode. Pens stop moving, eyes glaze over or begin to droop, heads slowly become acquainted with their new best friend, the desk. I literally have to go for shock value in my lectures that include technology or resign myself to the class morphing from ENGLISH 101 into REM CYCLES 101.
I didn't have the luxury of tons of technology in the classroom when I was in college, but that made me a better student. A student had to stay on his or her toes. If you didn't take notes well, you learned. If you wrote too slow, you learned to speed up or else you would miss important information. We all made friends with one another so that if we missed something the teacher said, we could consult each other, not blame the teacher/professor for not "POSTING" the information to said school/courses website. We came to class and were engaged in discussion and debate, instead of asking "WILL THIS PPT BE ON BLAHBOARD?" because we wanted an excuse to mentally checkout! (I don't think one professor I had on college posted notes, you came and learned or you were not granted the "pleasure" of gaining their knowledge) In essence we were more actively involved in what went on in the classroom because it was our RESPONSIBILITY... a concept that I feel is very lost on many of my students.
I guess this is a different generation of students and the demand for technology in the classroom is here to stay. Maybe, students will miraculously change, become more engaged with the technology in the classroom, and I will learn to love technology it...
This cartoon brings up a question that I present to my students as a final exam question almost every semester: Is a college education really worth it? (I obviously give them a bit more of a structure to follow and a clear direction for their essay to head in, but essentially this is the question that crops on every essay final)
In all seriousness, I wonder if they ask themselves this when classes become overwhelming or exceedingly more difficult. When they have persistent attendance issues, complain about not being able to pay for overly expensive books (all semester long -- despite having on brand new clothes and shoes or in some cases new hairdos), not having enough time to do their work because of job, family obligations, or emergencies, or flat out say they have other, more important, things to do than attend class, I wonder if some of them really see a college education as worthy of the sacrifices they have to make in order to be successful at it.
I sometimes come to pseudo-conclusions based upon their class performance, but I don't know what they contend with in their personal lives. I only see what they bring to the table in the classroom.
Basically, with the cost of education rising exponentially and the time and energy and effort that is needed to truly be successful in a typical set of classes, many of my students either fall by the wayside of education or else they barely scrap by with lackluster grades and end up feeling like they wasted a lot of time and money. They are not alone in these feelings though.
As I ponder returning to obtain the coveted Doctorate degree (or becoming a FUD as my dad calls it) I find myself wondering if it is even worth it anymore.
