How Old Are We?

This time I refer not to students, but instructors.

This semester I am enrolled in a Teaching Methods course. This is a 10-week, on-line course and it will extend my technical college teaching certification for 2 more years (I'll be good through 2014). It only requires 4-5 hours of time a week, and because it's on-line, that time is at our pace, at our convenience. Sunday marks the beginning of each new week and we're given new learning and assessment activities. By Wednesday night at midnight we have to post these on our on-line interface. We then have until the following Sunday to participate in discussion about each other's activities. It's not too difficult and I have gotten some good ideas so far.

This week I posted my 4 page Word document regarding my classroom management strategies on Tuesday - I usually aim for Tuesday to give myself that one day buffer should something unforeseen occur. Today I was browsing the other posts to find ones I wanted to comment on and happened to look at my own - which had no comments yet. Instead of copying and pasting my document, I uploaded it as a link. I clicked on the link and to my horror found that it didn't work and just lead the clicker to an error page. S--t.

I quickly went to my Word document and fixed the problem by copying and pasting the paper and reposting. I wrote to my instructor and told her that I fully understood that this would be considered a late assignment, but did just want to let her know that I had fixed the issue if she wanted to look at my work.

None of this is what upsets me the most.

When you click on someone's post there's this little bar that shows you the view count. It give you an overall number of views and lets you know how many of those are your own. My post had a view count of 39 - 4 of which were mine. That meant that between Tuesday and today 35 people (or some combination of people adding up to 35) had viewed my post. That means that 35 times people saw that I had a non-functional link. Number of people who replied to my post to let me know that I had a non-functional link - ZERO. Come on people.

I forgive the instructor for this - she's the instructor and if one of her students was an idiot this week, it's not her job to save me. I do not forgive the other people taking this course for this. We're all instructors - we all know what it's like to teach and be taught. Not to mention the fact that it would take about 2 seconds to reply to my post and let me know.

Why would someone not take that time? I'm really struggling to understand. Did they also take the typical instructor point of view and figure that it was my problem to know whether or not my link worked (not necessarily wrong, but we're all in this together)? Did something like this happen to them, they weren't warned and so they are bitter and won't help others out anymore (because I'm going to be in this category from now on, believe me)? Is this schadenfreude - where they saw that I would get a lesser grade this week and that somehow made them feel better about how they did on their assignment?

Here's hoping that I don't fail this course by the one point I would have gotten by getting this assignment in on time......

Every Grade is a Fight

I find myself dealing with a new personality this semester - the student who will fight over every single point on every single graded item.

Of course students always check their grades and over last semester and what has gone by of this one I've gotten a few questions here and there but for the most part students accept their grades and move on.

In my new course though, I have one student who is now consistently raising some kind of issue with virtually every graded thing we have done. This began a few weeks ago just a couple of days prior to the first exam. She wrote frantically to me on Sunday (the exam was Thursday) and explained that she had to be at her son's school that Thursday morning at 9AM (I give exams from 8-9). What could I do for her? I reminded her of the policy that I will be happy to let each student take a late exam once with no penalty so this was not really a big deal. I also reminded her that of the 3 hours that make up class, exams will only ever take up the first hour, so if she really had to have an appointment on an exam day making if for after 9 would be fine. Of course it's not ideal to miss lecture/lab, but easier to deal with than an missed exam. We discussed when she would take the make-up and I thought that was that.

Not exactly. Over that week I got several e-mails from her suggesting that this exam should not count as her make-up exam. Her reasoning? Her excuse was really good (this was true, on the grand scale of excuses). I don't think she made up her reason for not making it to the exam, but as I explained to her when I said that yes, this really is your make-up exam, I refuse to be the judge of what is a "good" excuse and what is a "bad" excuse. I cannot allow some students to have 2 make-ups and others only one. Happily, she did seem to understand this and we've moved on......for now.....there are 5 more exams to go this semester.

One effect of her missing that class was that she also missed a lab. She was able to make that up during the following class as well and while most people needed to have their reports in last Thursday, hers would be due on Tuesday. This Tuesday came and went and I didn't have the lab report. What I did have though was an e-mail telling me that she was trying to finish the next report (which again, she was passing in a day later than everyone else) but I hadn't graded the last one and so she was going to wait until she saw how she did before passing this next one in. What? I didn't have the report - or so I thought. Turns out that she just handed it in with all the new ones passed in by everyone else. I had zero time this week to look at those so her late report just stayed with the pile and I had no idea it was there. We've fixed this problem - I asked her just to mention to me from now on when something late is coming in so this doesn't happen again. But I'm not sure I'm enjoying her flexible relationship with due dates - and the fact that in her mind she seems to find it justified since it was "my fault."

Next issue - on Tuesday the students took a lab quiz, very short, very simple, grade out of 6. Yesterday she asked if I had her quiz - I didn't. Did I have a blank copy - I did. She proceeds to go over the answers with me and she knew them all. Great. Then she starts with the "so I don't understand why I got 2 wrong on Tuesday." I told her I would take a look at her quiz when I got home. By the time I was at the house I already had an e-mail from her telling me to not forget to check the quiz - this is going to get old, fast. I did and found that she had swapped two answers around. I'm sure she knew the answers, but we all make mistakes like that which is what I told her when I e-mailed back. I also reminded her that there would be 2 lab quiz grades dropped so she shouldn't worry too much. Imagine my joy when I got the e-mail back that said "I don't know about that quiz. I knew all the answers." So now I have to take her quiz back in next week to prove to her that SHE got things wrong and that I'M not out to get her or unable to read.

We have about 7 lab quizzes, 8 lab reports, 5 exams, 1 research paper, 2 spelling quizzes and a couple of other random graded things left this semester. I'm not sure I can make it if there's going to be a fight over everything. But I will look upon this as a good experience. Every new personality I have to deal with just makes me a better teacher. I hope.

Excuses, Excuses

Yes, I'm back to the excuses thing. I had a mini-episode last week when I got this barrage of absences complete with all the requisite excuses from both of my classes. Some of them were absolutely legitimate. For example, we got a huge snow storm last Tuesday and most school districts were closed. Mine, however were not so while we had class, things like day cares were closed leaving the working/going to school moms a little bit up the creek. I get that and I sympathize.

Then I had a few like "I worked later than I thought last night and I'm too tired to come in." And my personal favorite was a kid telling me that his Dad who was in Japan at the time of the snow storm had told his son (my student) not to drive to class on Wednesday morning because of the snow (a - you're in Japan - what do you know about road conditions here? and b - THERE WAS NO SNOW ON WEDNESDAY). I had one woman bring me a doctor's note telling me that she was sick all week and couldn't study for the exam (she's in her 40s).

And so this all added up to my husband and mother both having to listen to me rant about the craziness of excuses.

But here's the thing (to steal a phrase from my husband) - last semester I would have bent over backwards to help these people make up their work and labs and quizzes. I was writing out my own lecture notes for people and posting them on-line. I was waiving late penalties. I really didn't want people to do badly in my course.

I STILL don't want people to do badly in my course, but this semester something has changed. I simply don't care what the excuse is, legitimate or not, if you missed work I'm not going out of my way to help you and that's it. You signed up for the 8AM class. You scheduled an appointment for an exam period. You didn't check Blackboard until 9PM the night before the exam.

I don't want to sound mean and horrible. I'm not, in fact I'll still bend over backwards to help you.......but only if you were trying to help yourself first. Otherwise I'm not so much assisting you through the course as much as I am carrying you through the course and that's not in the job description.

Part-Time Job Number 2

Things never happen in a nice neat way and that's kind of the story behind my new part-time job.

This all started in early January. I was at school for a meeting with the other instructors who would be teaching Biology with me this semester and one of the FT instructors told me about some PT Anatomy & Physiology positions at another nearby technical college that needed to be filled ASAP (this was two weeks before the semester started). Now, A&P certainly isn't my forte, but I know enough that I could get through a course and I figured I had nothing to lose and I applied. I wasn't incredibly surprised when I heard nothing and a week into the semester I assumed they weren't interested.

Flash forward to Sunday, January 31st. I checked my e-mail around 11AM and found an e-mail in my inbox with the heading "URGENT." It was from the associated dean at the other technical college (from now on, my original school will be TC and the new one is NTC) saying that they still needed an A&P instructor, the course would meet 3 times a week for 3 hours each and let her know right away if I could do it. I debated for about 20 minutes. When I applied to teach an A&P position, I really didn't think I'd get it - and so I was now faced with having to teach students this subject that I wasn't that comfortable with. Also, NTC is actually in downtown of the city we live near and would be about a 45 min drive each way. Of course, more teaching experience is never a thing to turn down and the extra 9 hours of pay a week (I get paid by the hour, not a flat rate for a course, but that actually works in my favor) wasn't something to laugh at. I wrote back and said I'd do it. Five minutes later the associate dean called.

She began my thanking me, then explaining a little bit about the course and then started mentioning how, after looking through my CV thought I might be more suited to teach a Microbiology course. True, but what does that have to do with filling an A&P spot? Turns out that through a series of unfortunate events they also had a Microbiology course that was in need of an instructor. We agreed that that was the best route for me and so I was hired around 1PM on Sunday. My first class was going to be Tuesday at 8AM - and the course had been going on since January 25. So not only was I walking into my first week AMAZINGLY unprepared, but I was walking into a class mid-semester.

I went to NTC on Monday to meet everyone and get the paperwork started. That night I was up until midnight cramming Microbiology notes into my head. Tuesday wasn't the best lecture I've ever given, but I must say that the students were incredibly patient with the fact that I had just been hired. That whole week was rough - I didn't have keys to any rooms, I didn't have a copy code, and most importantly, I didn't have access to the NTC intranet - no e-mail, no Blackboard, which was a huge problem. I made it though and this week has been far more successful. I can post my lectures on Blackboard, I can contact my students and post their grades. Overall, everyone involved is much happier.

I'm incredibly busy right now, but I'm thrilled to be working more. I finally feel like I'm contributing again and I like not having a lot of time where I wonder what I should be doing. All I need now is one more PT job and I'll basically be working full time. All the baby steps in the right direction will get me where I want to be someday soon