So I'm not sure if my students just didn't really do the reading, or if they just didn't get it, but we were supposed to be discussing Berger on Wednesday and they brought absolutely nothing to the disucssion table. A couple were brave enough to venture questions on parts that they didn't understand, but the vibe I got generally was either, "we didn't get it, tell us what it meant. That's your job, you're the teacher," or "I didn't get and why would I, I really don't care." I had one kid practically sleep through 90% of the class, which didn't really faze me because it's his participation grade if he doesn't care enough to even fake attention... My first instinct was that I was just doing something wrong, feeding their disengagement. But, I suppose it's also possible that Berger was just that opaque and uninteresting to them. I was also a little frustrated because the journals they'd turned in from the previous class (Monday) largely didn't address the prompt. Tie that in with my failure to eat breakfast and it made for a pretty unpleasant teaching experience, let alone their learning experience. I just wasn't prepared to show up and have them claim to have understood nothing. I'm just not inclined to believe that, as many of them also claimed not to have known that they were supposed to bring a printed copy of the article to class. Being reminded 3 times counts as nothing in their book. I told them that, for their own selfish long-term future benefit, they might want to show a minimal amount of courtesy/appreciation to professors who have taken the time to scan articles and provide them to them online, rather than require them to purchase expensive additional books and bring said additional texts to their classes, as opposed to their having to tackle the incredibly onerous task of downloading a PDF and printing out a couple of pages. Not sure if that sunk it, but I had the hunger induced Aretha-Franklin-Snickers-commercial-diva-persona on, so they at least must have picked up on my generally projected irritation.
So, Friday, Berger round two. :Þ
Ugh. One of those days. I have found it to be true every fall that the freshman will either a. not read and/or b. read and not want to talk about it because it is difficult.
ReplyDeleteI think some of this is helping them evolve out of the h.s. mentality: the work we assign is necessary for the class to function because the course is a seminar . . .
One thing I might have done if confronted with what you were was had use start at the beginning of Berger, read aloud and "translating" what he is saying.
How do you feel now that this was like two weeks ago? I mean, I found that some of my frustrations have dissipated after getting past those first challenges, or maybe it's that my students are (for the most part) actually doing the things I am asking and I can see the changes in their attitude and responsiveness now.
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