Forgive me if this post is more rant than reason. But tonight I have to grade some essays written by the very same students I'm about to rail on, so maybe working out my frustration here can help me be fairer to them later.
How can I get students to realize that fundamentally, I don't care why they can't make it to class--that fundamentally, I only care that they show up and make some kind of effort?
How can I get students to realize that I make no distinction between an excused and an unexcused absence, that they all count the same, that this is why I set a maximum number of absences?
How can I get students to realize that showing up an hour late to a one hour and 45-minute class cheats themselves, their classmates, and their instructor?
How can I get students to realize that if they schedule a doctor's appointment that makes them late to class, it was their choice and I don't fundamentally care if they had it scheduled that day at that time for the last six months, that they're still missing class and missing important information?
How can I get students to realize that school is as serious as their jobs and requires the same kind of time management?
I know, I know--I'm taking the high road, and how can a little old thing like a college education compete with bills, divorces, court dates, and the mayhem of life? But I just don't understand why some of these people who don't have it together, and clearly don't have the attention or energy for going to school, don't at least take one semester off.
But I have to remind myself that my college experience was not the same as theirs is. I didn't have to work, raise a family, battle daily traffic, or (mostly) scrape for money all while going to school. At the same time, I like to think I understood the severe importance of college and took it pretty seriously. Some of these guys--I just don't think they understand that. They want the same experience they had in public high school, which is, unfortunately, to be passive recipients of information they can then spit up on a test. Just to get through it, to endure, to survive.
We're all players in this game, all of us--from students to teachers to administrators to an advertising-saturated world that tells us we can do it all and then some. Touting online classes, our school essentially tells prospective students, "You can go to school in your pj's! You don't need to change anything else about your life! We'll make it convenient for you!" And convenience is nice--but if that's all we sell, then how are we different from your average Wal-Mart Supercenter?
A former department chair (who has since left and taken another job) nailed it on the head in a department meeting when he said, "This school doesn't care about quality of instruction; it only cares about numbers." Indeed, our numbers are impressive and getting more so every year, but how many of our students are truly getting something resembling an education? I'm sure that somewhere exists a record of how many students who enter our doors actually hang on long enough to either get a 2-year degree from us or transfer to a 4-year school. And I'll bet that's a record no one's eager to make public.
Still, we offer a chance. And that's what many of our "customers" come to us for: a chance. And it's far better to grant them the chance, and give them what they need to become better, than to get too riled up about how they don't belong--as I was doing earlier.
One of my long-time friends, a librarian, once told me, "Just because they didn't learn it doesn't mean you didn't teach it." So being at heart a control freak, I have to relinquish my desire for control whenever steam begins to pour out of my ears. I can put an absence policy in the syllabus. I can give them reading quizzes and written assignments. I can stress how summer classes require even better time management than fall and spring classes. But they have to have the presence of mind and the desire to do the work and get better.
2 comments:
You know...maybe you could just list those EXACT things you just told us on your syllabus. I put something on my syllabi about how I don't do the "excused/unexcused" absence thing, and that I give a certain number of absences just so students can deal with sick kids, unreasonable bosses, personal illness, family crises, court appearances, carjackings, alien abductions, etc. And once they're out of days, they're WF-ed out of class. PERIOD.
You said it really well in your post. Put it on the syllabus, and let the pooping of drawers begin.
I actually do list a good many of those items--and they still don't sink in! And I go over the syllabus the first day of class. A lot of 'em simply don't read the syllabus, and/or they think their cases should be exceptions, and/or they don't think they'll *really* fail for excessive absences. I have news for 'em.
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