I cannot believe I am in countdown mode but there are only 8 weeks left in my semester. I get some time off then and follow that up with an opportunity to teach classes online–classes that can readily be taught from the beach. I gotta get better internet first, of course. That’s another post. This one is about the relief I have knowing that this semester nears its conclusion. I gotta be honest, this one is breaking me in new ways. I, once a champion of dev ed, have become wildly cynical and more than a little angry in regards to the rampant disrespect foisted on me by the dev students in particular and the majority of classes in general.
Yep, rant warning.
The problem is that I continue to care quite a bit more than everyone else in the room. This is not how it should be but is clearly how it is most of the time. The one exception would be the novel classes where the students want to be there as much as I do and there is (or appears to be) a mutual respect there. In the case of dev that respect for me, for each other, for the learning doesn’t exist. I spend more time reminding them not to talk when others are talking than I do delivering content. Its a problem. It is one that forced me to build in a military-esque structure to that class, one in which there are structured writing prompts and response points throughout each period that drive students through a single essay. Yeah there is some good to that but there is as much bad, especially when you think about creativity. That is lost in the lock step of the thing.