This is my third summer teaching in this program, and this has been, by far, the most challenging session yet. I had never encountered such a large percentage of students who absolutely refused to participate in the class in any way (meaningful or otherwise).
Luckily for them (and me?) most of them decided to get their head in the game the last couple days, once they realized that if they didn't, they would fail my class, and have to either retake American History during the regular year, or take it in summer 2014.
A couple days before the end of the session, I put together lists of missing assignments for all of my students. This prompted the following exchange with one student, who had an exceptionally long list.
Student: What is this? You expect me to do all this in two days?On Friday, when I finally got all my grades in, I found that most of the students I was most worried about had managed to squeak by in the low 60% range. Only two failed, both in the 20% range.
Mr. C: No. I had expected you to do all this over the past two and a half weeks.
When session 2 starts up again in August I'll be teaching the second half of American History to a much smaller group. There are several familiar names on the roster, but not many. We'll see how it goes.
On a completely unrelated note, if you're interested in teaching related blogs, check out one that a friend of mine recently started. I quoted him once before, when he was living and subbing in Alaska. Today he is teaching in South Korea.
I suggest starting with his introductory entry, A Long Time Coming.
No comments:
Post a Comment