This has been an eye-opening week.
I feel old. Scratch that. I feel like I’ve landed on another planet.
Why?
Kids today.
(This is where I shake my fist menacingly and yell, “Get off my lawn!”)
- A student approached me after class one day and asked me, in all seriousness, if I would change the time of a required class next quarter because she doesn’t “do 8 a.m.” classes. Because she is a very sweet student, I nicely replied that I couldn’t help her with that, but I was sure she would be able to rise to the occasion. And I reminded her that college (usually) leads to a job where she would be required to perform on schedule.
- A student has missed a number of classes because he “slept through” the alarm repeatedly. The class meets at 11 a.m.
- A student who informed me he needed an A in the class stood me up for the meeting where we were supposed to discuss his progress toward that goal.
These students are all interesting, talented people who are paying to go to college. Yet I seem to care more about their education than they do. So I don’t understand what is going on here.
Back in my day …
Wait a minute.
I seem to recall sleeping through a 9 a.m. history class. And I may have tried to get out of that class because it met at 9 a.m.
I still don’t have an explanation for or experience with the other two scenarios.
At least I don’t have helicopter parents making my life miserable. One such person called my husband to request that he wake up her son to go to the gym.
Now THAT’S truly alien behavior!
I emailed this to Dr. Lough yesterday and meant to tweet you, but feel this is a more appropriate place for it. Have you seen this? http://www.npr.org/2012/02/06/146464665/helicopter-parents-hover-in-the-workplace
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Good lord!
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Now I’m nervously racking my brain to see if I ever asked you to move an 8 a.m. class for me. It certainly seems like something I would have done in my younger, more foolish years!
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No, you did not. Your only foolishness was that you were often quiet in class!
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So Rosie (6 yrs. old) invented this little instrument of modern day torture when I told her your story… Require said student to use an alarm clock that has a live video feed to all her professors, future employers, and potential significant others. [Editor’s note: Alarm clock could be SCAD-issued.] Thoughts?
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EXCELLENT idea! Tell that little corker that I approve!
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Last semester, a student stayed after class to yell and swear at me for several minutes. He thought I had treated him inappropriately by telling him, in front of the class, that he either needed to stop playing “Angry Birds” or leave the room. (I had previously talked to him several times about not playing the game in class, and he had chosen to consistently disregard my requests.)
During that same class session, I told another student to leave or else take out his plastic vampire teeth. He’d popped them in and started hissing at me because I’d told him, for the fourth time, that no, I would not give extra credit in class. (He was a homeschooler whose mom obviously gave him all the extra credit he needed to earn As in everything.) The vampire teeth were actually funny–I think they were meant to intimidate me, and I wanted to say, “Oh, honey, you have NO idea who you’re dealing with!”
This semester, though, I have the opposite extreme from disrespectful kids: a 50-something man who seems to think he’s the teacher of the class (and that it’s political science 101, aka all the things Obama does wrong, not English composition). He interrupts, talks over me, gets belligerent when I “silence” him, etc. He’s been somewhat better lately–I think another instructor may have had a word with him, just as I was about to do the same.
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You win. These stories are so much worse than mine!
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LOL I wasn’t trying to compete, just commiserate. 🙂 On the whole, I’ve found that community college students are very motivated, smart, conscientious, and delightful. But the exceptions are…well, far more exceptional than I could have imagined!
I can certainly relate to the sense that I care about some students’ education far more than the students themselves. Fortunately, those are not the norm.
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The exceptions make GREAT stories!
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Actually, here’s a question that sort of goes with the “Am I just getting old here?!” theme. Have you had students miss class repeatedly because of work? I don’t remember this *ever* being an issue when I was in college (for my friends or for me) and only rarely with my students at Penn State. It seemed like employers understood that they had to plan around class schedules, and students refused to miss class for work.
I’ve just received e-mails from two students telling me they won’t be in class tomorrow morning because they have to work. One has missed nearly 50% of the classes so far because his boss keeps scheduling mandatory meetings at the same time the class meets. Do employers value education less than they did when I was in school? Are students are less willing to say no to employers because of the economy? Do students not care whether they miss class? Or has “work” become a convenient excuse for absence because it sounds better than “I overslept”? (I’m starting to suspect the last!)
Unlike SCAD, we don’t have a school-wide attendance policy, but I do have an attendance requirement for my class.
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This has happened only once that I can remember, and it was about two weeks ago. I do think the economy has plenty to do with it, but there’s always slacktitude.
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