life, apparently

I’ve taught 2 courses and I’ve made two students cry.

The first was a methods class that all grads taught. The students hated it, partially because it is SUCH a boring class (I hated it as an undergrad) and partly because they knew grad students taught it and they felt ripped off. It was pretty easy to prep because it required little thinking. Randomization is randomization - no tough questions to think through, no source papers to read. The students plagiarized and I was angry. I made a smart girl cry (purely a misunderstanding - I used a sentence from her paper as an example of how NOT to plagiarize but she thought I doing the reverse). She burst into tears in the middle of class. It was very dramatic. I wrote her an apology and gave her candy. I really didn’t know what else to do.

The second course was Intro to MyArea. I volunteered to teach after McDreamyProf suddenly bought out (turns out he was getting a divorce). I did it purely for the money. My car had just broke (poor Cecilia) and I needed to buy a new-to-me car. The class was very difficult to prep. I’m only an expert in maybe 2-3 chapters of MyArea. Some chapters I knew NOTHING about. So I read a lot. Students asked a lot of good questions but questions I certainly did not have an answer to. I tend to be a hard grader; 70% is a C- not a B+ and students just don’t like that. I don’t believe it teaching the book. Come on man. You paid $50 (at least) for the book and you are perfectly capable of reading - why should I simply summarize the book for you? I do teach the important stuff but I also include stuff not in the book. I made a chubby girl cry (IN MY DEFENSE: Before the first day of class, I randomly assigned a question for each student to answer as a sort of learn names/break the ice sort of thing. Well, there was this strange thing where two people worked at the gym and two people’s hobby was working out at the gym and that group had a little personal communication and it was funny, everyone was sort of giggling (“oh, when do you work?” “yes, I’ve seen you there” There was some flirting going on between 2 of them.) Immediately after that was chubby girl and her pre-assigned question was “What is your favorite food” Her answer was something I don’t remember but something really bad for you and I said (because I think I am funny) “oh, you should meet those guys at the gym.” ONLY then did I realize she was a bit chubby. I myself am chubby and I rarely notice the size of others. See what I mean. So chubby girl and I had a long talk. She was actually very brave - she called me (and/or emailed) and told me I made her cry all day and she wanted to resolve this so she could move forward and stay in the class. We talked about it and everything was fine after that. She came in for help often and struggled a bit in the class but pulled through. I saw her in later semesters and she told me my class wasn’t nearly as hard as her current classes. I also apologized to the entire class and told them to let me know if I ever offended them.

I am teaching in the fall. Who’ll be next?

// posted by apparently @ 10:02 PM