The Pissed Off Professor

Well, I’m back. I tried to stay away: I really did.

I have lots of things on my plate, and there is even more where they came from, so I made a choice: no more The Pissed Off Professor.

Who needs cyber-idiots e-diots showing up and mucking with a perfectly good, perfectly logical rant?

Who wants to have battle after battle of wits with unarmed people?

Not me, I said over and over to myself. No. Definitely NOT me.

For awhile, it worked. I’ve kept busy—very, very busy.

I approached the current semester with more of an if you don’t care about your education, neither do I attitude, and I added a serving of my way or the highway to the mix. After all, there are plenty of other classes for the excuse-ridden and lazy to invade.

I even loosened up my paper policy and added some extra credit to the mix.

But NOTHING works.

Lazy, argumentative, ill-prepared students are being spawned at a rate of speed that needs to be saved for the dwindling Salmon population.

I began getting e-mails and posts asking where I was, and while I had brief moments of wistfulness, I resisted the urge to return.

Then, yesterday happened, and everything became clear: I had to come back. I had to post this thing. It’s bigger than me. Bigger than any of us.

It may be the most idiotic thing EVER.

So, I’m back, and in a day or two, once the shock of my return wears off, I’ll spill the beans about THE INCIDENT THAT PROMPTED MY COMEBACK.

I don’t normally waste my time mocking people, but sometimes, it has to be done. My motto in this area is pretty simple: I’m willing to let a person take the first couple of swings at me, and I give him fair warning that it’s time to knock it off and/or leave before making him fodder in my world.

Dumb just hasn’t gotten it, so before I send him into the virtual airlock for good, I had to share this with the rest of you while sending one more shout out to the genius that is Josh Dumb.

Here is a peek at one of several similar comments I blocked:

“ok shawn..why don’t you email me then..its in the form… since you dont want my freedom of speech on here to be displayed then email me big man”

Uh, Dumb, if you’re still out there, I’ve decided to make you a deal. Aside from the obvious errors in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure, if you can find either of the two glaringly idiotic mistakes you’ve made here and indicate them in a comment to this post, I’ll invite you back. (I suggest you keep the comment short and sweet so as not to taint it with the confusing language you seem to prefer.)

I’ll even go a step farther: if, after thinking carefully about this, you can’t figure it out, Dumb, just scroll down. (I’ve provided partial answers for you.)

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Hint #1:

“. . .my freedom of speech on here. . .”
“. . .email me big man. . .”

Are you still confused? Oh, all right: scroll down more.

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Hint #2:
If you didn’t get it from the first hint, you’re never going to get it, Dumb.

And by the way, my little spy-timer shows me you scrolled down to get the hints before you even thought about the errors in what you’d written. CHEATER.

Dear Dumb,

Visitors to this site are welcome to their opinions; however, comments (such as yours) demonstrating a complete lack of control of the English language will be removed to spare other readers from suffering unnecessary idiocy.

As a repeat offender, you have been banished: I laugh at you and your ignorance, and you can’t do a darn thing about it, can you? Ha-ha-ha.

Your comments have consisted of nothing more than/or combinations of text-speak, sentence fragments, redundant ellipses, more swearing than logic, and/or instructions about what I ought to do to myself, and they have been eaten by this site’s spam filter. (Okay, all but two have: I wanted other readers to experience just how poor your thinking and writing skills are so they could laugh at you right along with me.)

Since you keep trying to comment, here’s a tip: you might as well pack your pathetic bags and take your ire elsewhere, Dumb. You have proven your utter unworthiness to be in my presence—and by extension, the presence of other readers here—and I’ve done what any thinking person would: I’ve banned you, Dumb.

You are an embarrassment to humankind in general and students in particular.

While I understand the frustration of crybabies like you, Dumb, I get my fill in the classroom, in my office, and out in the world. This is my site, and I smote you. (I know: you have no idea what smote means. Don’t worry, Dumb: you need to learn to think and write in complete sentences before you need to concern yourself with knowing any verbs.)

There was a time I might have pitied you your ignorance, Dumb; however, I’ve learned at the hands of whining, complaining, ignorant, lazy, self-centered students like yourself that you serve no valid purpose in this world, and wasting any of my time on you—unless, like this, I simply enjoy the power I have to mock you and celebrate your ignorance—is pointless.

In essence, Dumb, I refuse to have a battle of wits with you because you are a completely unarmed person.

Now, take your pity-party to the doorstep of another evil teacher and blame your shortcomings on him or her.

Or, keep trying to comment here, and I’ll continue to use you as the shining example of just how true it is that some people don’t belong in college.

We’re in the midst of week ten of a sixteen week semester, and last week was midterm time, so over the weekend, the last significant wave of drops took place.

For the better part of yesterday, I had the feeling I was teaching at the Twilight Zone’s main campus.

Several of the students in my classes this semester are repeaters of one type or another: either they’ve taken one level of English from me and are continuing at the next level, or they are repeating a class with me.

The student I once referred to as Ms. Numerous Deaths and Tragedies Girl did it again. Well, sort of.

There weren’t a string of deaths and/or tragedies, she just stopped showing up. And again, she was earning an “A.”

Sigh.

I have a hard time reconciling where I stand when it comes to technology in education, and I blame my students.

I see the benefits of many technological advances; however, much of the positive is outweighed by students’ failing to take appropriate advantage of the tools at their disposal.

Here are a few examples:

E-mail:
When I was in school, I had to take the office hours of my professors into account if I wished to communicate with them outside the times and days we met in class. Often, my professors’ office hours conflicted with other things I had to do and/or were on days or at times I was not on campus.

This forced me to make a point to speak up in class if I knew it was my only option, or if meeting with my professor(s) was difficult.

It also meant I had to prioritize my activities: I often had to make a special trip to campus at the expense of my free time, or arrive early/stay late on class days to be around during a particular instructor’s office time. Occasionally, I even had to change a work shift to meet with a teacher.

The good part about meeting with an instructor face-to-face is the ability to truly interact. It’s not often something is missed or misunderstood when having a live conversation. It also allows instructors to delve more deeply into a student’s inquiry. The added benefit for many students is learning their teachers are not nearly as frightening as they think they are.

Today, students (and parents and other teachers) expect instructors to be available via e-mail. This never seems to work as well in practice as it does in theory. Too many students try to converse via e-mail, and it’s just not the correct medium for it. Other students replace in-class participation with e-mail, and that does no one any good. Then there are the students who think e-mail is like text messaging: that they’ll get an immediate response—at 2 AM—on the morning the essay they’ve had three weeks to write is due.

My favorite abuse of e-mail goes something like this:

Professor Hansen, did you get my e-mail?
Yes. Did you get my answer?
No. I haven’t checked my e-mail in a few days. What did you say?

Electronic communication is so readily available, it is abused: no student would take the time to go to an instructor’s office in person, ask a question, and then walk out without an answer. Likewise, few students would take the time to meet with their instructors to ask a question the answer to which is readily available on the course syllabus or a handout. Because e-mail is so effortless, students abuse it.

The Internet:
Like e-mail, the internet wasn’t a staple of my educational years. I shall never comprehend the reason so many people think everything they see on the internet is true and comes from a reliable source.

I know: not all of what is heard on the radio, nor all of what is broadcast on television, nor everything printed in newspapers and magazines is true, but most would agree the probability of accuracy is greater in any of those arenas than on the internet.

I once had a student incorporate into his research paper the fact that Roe v. Wade had been overturned because he’d found it in an article in The Onion. Now, I’m not ready to claim with absolute certainty the situation would have been different had this student held a copy of The Onion in his hands, but I can promise you this: he couldn’t have performed an internet search and gone directly to the article thereby avoiding the other content and the opportunity to ascertain the type of paper The Onion is.

The Word Processor:
When I was a student, I had a typewriter. I went though the painstaking steps of lining up a sheet of paper, typing exactly what I’d written/revised/edited onto the page, and turning it in. Like many of you other old timers out there, I recall the process involving many flubbed pages, a ton of preplanning to prevent even more flubbed pages, and the utter frustration of trying to type over liquid paper (once it existed).

Most of my students have never seen a typewriter in person let alone used one. The concept of preplanning an essay seems nonsensical when one can copy and paste things here and there at will, so real writing has gotten lost. Given the ease with which everything else happens on a word processor, the thought that one might have to manipulate the formatting is out-of-the-question. (In fact, many word processing programs are so helpful they auto-format things, and if the computer decides it’s right, it must be—whether or not it looks anything like the sample a teacher has passed out.)

The Bottom Line:
I am extremely thankful I can communicate with people electronically. I love being able to learn about a variety of things at the touch of a URL. I get downright giddy when I’m working on a piece and can make changes at will without wasting paper or time. But all of these things are what they are for me because I spent the first twenty-five or so years of my life unable to do them.

This is the reason I sit on the fence when it comes to technology in education: I’m not certain the tools of modern society are the most effective learning aides.

Back in the beginning of October, Christina Mallon, a teacher at Williams Field High School in Gilbert, Arizona, was placed on paid administrative leave for performing a cheerleading routine during one of her classes.

The performance was captured by a student on his camera phone video recorder, and the student subsequently uploaded the video to YouTube. The publicity eventually led to the teacher’s suspension/paid leave while the routine was (and continues to be) played and talked about in the media.

What I find most disgusting and amazing about the whole event has nothing at all to do with the teacher or the performance.

No one seems to care about the student’s behavior: he recorded the instructor without her consent, and unless he had his camera phone in plain view, he most likely violated the law.

If he did violate Arizona law by secretly taping his teacher, the moment he uploaded the video, he violated federal law.

But the student’s misconduct isn’t the issue, right?

Let’s imagine for a moment we were back in the stone ages—you know: that long-ago time before the every-one-has-one cell phone. For this event to have occurred, the same student would have had to carry a video camera to class, take it out, and point it at the teacher—an act that would have been a bit harder to hide even with the smallest of camcorders. And let’s not forget, YouTube was born in February 2005, so as we traveled back in time, the video never makes it to millions of viewers.

I wonder: does Williams Field High School have a student cell-phone policy in place? If they do, I’m willing to bet my last month’s paycheck the student who recorded the teacher violated that policy.

But let’s not worry about the student’s misconduct.

While watching the report, the comments of several parents struck me: in a nutshell, they each said if cheering was what it took to keep the students’ interest, then they were all for it. Yeah Team. By all means, let’s leave it up to the teacher to entertain the children while said children are in the classroom—after all, learning for learning’s sake is just plain boring.

Then there were the students who made comments describing the routine as “a waste of students’ educational time” and “immature,” and several who argued “teachers get paid to teach us [. . .] not to cheer” and who complained students “are here to learn.”

Now, I’m confused.

If the students are all for learning, why do educators have to devise ways to keep them engaged?

If the students are all for learning, why are they playing with their cell phones in the classroom?

One other thing concerns me profoundly, and it’s another issue no one is talking about: the inherent copyright protection for original work and performance.

Just because a teacher delivers a lecture or performance in a classroom does not mean the information and/or performance is unprotected. In many cases, the lectures, performance, handouts, and course materials of an instructor are considered “derivative works” and are copyright protected.

It is entirely possible the recording and posting of the performance in question violates United States copyright laws.

But I’m sure the student didn’t know that.

Let’s go smaller: posting what amounts to the instructor’s original work and performance is a violation of YouTube’s policy (emphasis below added):

6. Your User Submissions and Conduct

B. You shall be solely responsible for your own User Submissions and the consequences of posting or publishing them. In connection with User Submissions, you affirm, represent, and/or warrant that: you own or have the necessary licenses, rights, consents, and permissions to use and authorize YouTube to use all patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights in and to any and all User Submissions to enable inclusion and use of the User Submissions in the manner contemplated by the Website and these Terms of Service.

I’m going out on a limb here: I don’t think the star of the show gave her okay to be uploaded and featured on YouTube.

My refusal to allow cell phones into my classroom is a subject of much debate among my students: given I would never cheer in my classroom, I wonder what my problem is?

Welcome to my contribution to Blog Action Day!

What’s it about?

On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.

In honor of the day, I decided to look into some things I could do around my home to make myself and my family more environmentally friendly.

I visited The Union of Concerned Scientist’s Green Tips Page to see what I could do, and here—in no particular order—are the five most doable and/or interesting things I found:

1. Dry Cleaning Clothing is Really Bad for the Environment

In about 85 percent of dry cleaning shops [the] solvent [used in cleaning] is perchloroethylene (or “perc”), a chemical that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers both a health and environmental hazard.

While I don’t do a ton of dry cleaning, I do some, and several articles of clothing I own are marked Dry Clean Only.

It’s not rational to throw these items away, and it seems I don’t have to:

Dry cleaning is not always necessary; clothing makers often place the “dry clean only” label on tags because they can list no more than one cleaning method and can be held liable if an item is damaged when the owner follows the listed procedure. [M]any of these items can be safely washed at home, either by hand or using a washing machine’s delicate cycle.

2. Appliances account for about 20 percent of a household’s annual electricity use.

Reading up on household appliances, I learned a lot about my refrigerator/freezer.

Refrigerators have to work harder to stay cool if they are located near heat sources such as dishwashers, ovens, heating vents, and direct sunlight.

I can’t do much about this, but I will certainly keep it in mind if I ever move and/or redesign my kitchen.

There are actually recommended temperatures for both the refrigerator and the freezer: between 37 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit (ºF) for refrigerators and 5ºF for freezers.

Check your settings!

Keeping the refrigerator and freezer full will help in cold retention, so if either is sparsely filled take up the extra space with water-filled containers.

Very cool! (Pardon the pun.)

3. Many dishwashers have internal heaters.

This means the machine heats the water so one’s water heater doesn’t have to. Often, water heaters are set to 140ºF to accommodate the heating needs of dishwashing. For those of us who have dishwashers with internal heaters, we can turn our water heaters down to 120°F.

4. What about Washers and Dryers?

While there are times one needs to use hot water to wash—and these times are rare—there is no reason to RINSE with hot water.

Drying multiple loads of laundry consecutively will allow each load after the first to make use of the residual heat that remains from the previous load. The last load can likely be dried using the cool-down cycle as the remaining heat will do the trick.

5. What Impact Am I Making on the Environment?

I visited The Nature Conservancy’s Web site to see just what kind of damage my family was doing.

The good news is that we are below the national average. The bad news is we are well above the world-wide average. The worst news is there is very little we can realistically do to reduce our numbers in the near future.

Afterward

I certainly learned a few new tricks, and I’ve already begun implementing them; however, my overall feeling in all of this is how difficult it is for change to occur at the consumer level.

I had little control over the design of my kitchen, but the contractor did: why not mandate designs that take into consideration appliance location for the most environmentally friendly results?

In fact, why is it that every single home now being built isn’t environmentally friendly, energy efficient, and solar powered? (Each time I read about alternatives, the ideas began with “the initial cost is higher.”)

Why isn’t every vehicle now being manufactured a hybrid? (Can you say the power of the oil companies?) I can’t just get rid of the vehicles I have, but down the road, there is no doubt our replacement vehicles will be hybrids.

My frustration stems from the fact that we have the technology and know-how to make obsolete many of the products most harmful to our world, but because of politics and profit, not enough is being done to ensure responsible consumers can afford to be green.

Until that time comes, I’m keeping up with my good habits, and adding a few new ones to my arsenal.

Hail to the Earth!

I’m not sure why other people teach, and there are days I don’t know why I do, but I’m willing to bet none of us does it as a means to undermine the success of students.

There is very little joy derived from students who don’t succeed, and even if the lack of success is completely out of my control, it’s never pleasant to inform students they’ve fallen so far behind the end isn’t just near—it has arrived.

That’s how I spent part of my Wednesday: advising several students (each of whom had failed to write a 4-page paper in three weeks’ time) they could no longer pass the course.

I’m amazed by the number of students who are shocked by my telling them they can no longer pass the class. I clearly state it on my course syllabus in the section dedicated to “How to pass this course.” One of the items is “all formal writing assignments must be completed in a manner timely enough to receive credit.”

I repeat this statement on my essay prompts, and I discuss it when I pass out the assignment.

There is always a group of students who ignore all of this because the first essay is worth only 5% of the final grade. (This is after I’ve explained it as my way of making certain everyone has the chance to get settled in, to learn my standards and expectations, but that failing to turn in that paper in a manner timely enough to earn credit will result in an automatic failure.)

It doesn’t matter: somewhere in between the multiple chances students are given in high school, in other college courses, and in life, they just don’t get that sometimes a deadline is a deadline.

I am, of course, personally responsible for their lives falling apart because I:

• a. am so mean.
• b. am completely inflexible.
• c. don’t understand what it’s like.
• d. All of the above

Because the answer is “d,” it also follows my sole purpose in the classroom is to undermine my students’ success.

Because it’s my fault they couldn’t write four pages in three weeks’ time.

Because I had the audacity to ask them to write an essay in the first place.

In a composition class no less!

I have to go plot my next scheme now: I have more lives to ruin.

Maybe another essay?

A reading response?

No—how about part of a research paper? Yes, that’s it!

Muwaaaaaaaaaaah.

I used to try to hold regular class meetings on the days formal writing assignments were due, but I’ve learned how foolish it is to expect the average (i.e. procrastinating) student to finish up a paper and read something for a class discussion.

I’ve come up with a few ways to solve this issue:

• The quick meeting: I collect papers, go over any pressing details, and dismiss the class.
• The in-class workshop: I assign an in-class reading and a discussion follows.
• The trip to the library: I escort my students to the mysterious brick building that takes up one end of the campus and show them what’s inside.

The first solution serves a dual role: I don’t have to put on a show for an entire period, and late students miss turning in their work—this leads to stiff penalties. The second solution is a bit dicey: the brain drain of paper-completion usually means even in-class work goes poorly. The third solution works reasonably well, but most students notice if I take them to the library more than once per semester, and this is confusing for them.

Monday, was a paper due date, and I went for option #3, so it was a hi-ho hi-ho it’s, off to the library we go day.

Monday’s task was to introduce the class to the wonders of online databases. The utter joy of being able to access full-text articles from a computer—even while seated in one’s home—is lost on most of my students because they have lived their entire lives in a world in which the internet was always at their fingertips. Most have never looked up a book using a card catalog. (Actually, most have never checked out a library book. Ever.)

I get downright giddy over online databases, but I’m a bit of a geek.

They didn’t get very giddy, and I just don’t get it: they have research papers to write, and being able to complete some of their research online is such a big gift, they ought to be celebrating.

Perhaps they were so overwhelmed by seeing thousands of books in one location they simply couldn’t take in the databases.

Grading essays is such an odd task: it combines evaluation with instruction, but each message is often lost on its audience. Marking papers is a time consuming and exhausting process, and not getting paid to do it only becomes more frustrating when I consider the effort is probably going to be ignored by the student who wrote the crappy paper to begin with. (After all, had the student paid any attention in class, the paper wouldn’t be bleeding.)

There are all kinds of theories floating around regarding how best to grade/mark papers including how much to say; how to say it; and whether or not using red ink will somehow destroy the psyche of students.

I find discussions in this area rather comical because no one ever discusses how many red marks a math teacher ought to put on a paper. I’ve seen plenty of math exams with big, fat zeroes on the top of them, yet no one looks at the math teacher and shakes a head over the damage done to that student’s self-worth.

After all, math is an exact discipline, but English is subjective.

That’s a load of crap. Picking up a novel is subject to likes and dislikes, but grading an essay is absolutely not. How can I be so sure? Who in her right mind would actually choose to read a 10-page research paper written by a first-year college student? There is so little chance any student of mine is going to fill page after page with enlightening information that if I were operating on a subjective level, I’d toss all the pages away and be done.

I’m not saying I don’t get chills over well-written papers: I do. I’m not even saying I don’t get the occasional new idea: I get those, too. What I am saying is there are only so many ways a particular rhetorical assignment can be written given the level of challenge I can attempt in a first-year, GE course.

A math teacher doesn’t just ask her students to fill a sheet of blank paper with every formula, equation, and theorem known to them any more than an English teacher turns students loose to write anything and everything.

There are areas of focus whether in a math class or an English class, and those are concrete, easily weighed, exact things.

But grading essays is still an enormous undertaking, and the more I can refine the process, the better.

I’ve tried many things, but I may have hit on something this time: samples.

For the first paper, I asked students to focus on framework; specifically, a solid thesis with logical, analytical support. Not surprisingly, some students succeeded and others failed.

Because we had thoroughly discussed and practiced these things prior to the paper’s due date, marking all the stuff students didn’t do—after being taught/told to—seemed wasteful and redundant. So I didn’t do the same level of marking I usually do.

I chose five of the best and five of the worst papers, took the thesis sentences and the major point of support from each, and placed them in pairs on a handout. (The writer’s remained anonymous.) I placed “The Good” on one side of the page and “The Not So Good” on the other. (Look: I coddled!)

I prepped the class for the handout by telling them what was coming and explaining anonymity would be retained as long as no one revealed himself/herself.

I noticed an immediate straightening up in seats. I also noticed several students who were on “The Not So Good” side of the handout turn a bit green.

We went over each pair of “The Not So Good” work first. I allowed the class to discuss the problems in each example, and I forced them to work with the language from the handout I provide regarding thesis sentences. I also had them refer to the grading rubric to reinforce how significant a thesis is to an academic piece.

From there, we moved to “The Good” and followed the same pattern. I saw lots of nodding and plenty of note taking.

Once we’d completed this exercise, I passed out papers, and for the first time in many, many years, I got no complaints, no under-the-breath grumbles, no snide remarks. Instead, I was asked relevant, specific, logical questions by the very students who needed to ask.

Of course, the degree of effectiveness of this exercise remains to be seen: if the essays due Monday show improvement, I may have just learned something.