In the spirit of CaliforniaTeacherGuy’s post on finding the good in his students, I’d like to make a note of some happy early-term observations.
Ben was the first student scheduled for a personal appointment at the beginning of the semester. His appointment was at 9 a.m. I was already in my office, and I heard him and his friend in the hallway outside my door, talking at the top of their lungs as a certain type of insecure macho sixteen-year-old is wont to do. “Where the f@#$%* is [office #]?” Ben boomed, loud enough for everyone in every office and classroom along the corridor to hear. I felt all the skin on my neck and back go into spasm. Here we go, I thought. He finally found his way to my door, slumped into a chair, and stared at me with vacant eyes. After greeting him with as much warmth as I could muster, I pulled out the writing sample he’d done in the first class and explained that he had a lot of writing errors and might want to consider doing a workshop to try to improve his grammar and sentence structure. His response went from initial blankness to mild defensive protest to resigned but slightly curious nodding of the head. When I sent an email out to ask which students would like to attend a grammar workshop, Ben was one of the first to respond. Since then, he has come to every class, struggled valiantly even the most difficult tasks, and has shown every symptom of being sincerely engaged.
This weekend, for the first time, I set up an online class forum for discussion of a text we read last week. Almost every student in the class contributed, and they were all positive, professional and encouraging in their responses to one another. They made repeated references to ideas we’d discussed in class – clearly, they were listening.
Almost no one is playing with their cell phones, even though I’ve abandoned the practice of confiscating every electronic device I see. When I spoke sharply to two students who were playing with a phone under their desk, they were at first affronted, but when I made it clear that I wasn’t holding it against them, they got over it, and have been friendly since.
Caroline, who argues ferociously when her answers to grammar exercises don’t correspond to mine, also raises her arms in victory when she gets one right, and smiles almost constantly.
My 101 classes have had almost perfect attendance, depsite the fact that I’ve made it clear that attendance per se will not affect their grade. The same is not true for my post-intro class, but as there are 40 students in that one, I’m actually grateful that about 5 of them have never appeared. Generally speaking, about half the students who don’t show up to class email me to apologize.
The three loud boys in my 4-6 pm 101 class are, generally speaking, loud on task. They wrestle with one another for a place to write on the blackboard and ask more questions than anyone else.
The students in my Travel Literature class are writing such interesting things that I’m enjoying marking them. I don’t remember the last time this happened (actually, I do…it was a long time ago…) but perhaps I have been subconsciously influenced by a note that The Science Goddess appended to her inspiring post on grading and feedback:
I had a teacher ask me today if I thought grading was the worst part of teaching. I told him that I didn’t, but he didn’t believe me.
I understand what he meant—I have felt the drudgery many times in my career. But the difference now is that I’m learning things from the kids as I read…not just looking at it as marking papers. What wouldn’t be interesting about grading now?
So far, so good. This is, of course, the honeymoon period, but it’s the best honeymoon period I’ve had in quite some time.
