The Pissed Off Professor

Summer Session Enrollment Watch:

ENGWR 100 (College Writing): 29/28 (Change = +10)
ENGWR 301 (College Composition and Literature): 33/25 (Change = +3)

Summer school is an odd beast. It’s a period during which an eighteen-week semester is crammed into six-weeks’ time. That means each day in summer session is equivalent to about three-days’ of class, or each week of summer school is equivalent to about three weeks’ of school.

It is not for the faint of heart, the overly-busy, or the average student.

The same holds true for teachers: the pace is such that even the most productive and disciplined among us are frazzled most of the time.

Unfortunately, many of the students I see in summer session classes are attending to get a particular class over with. They are not generally students who are strong in their English skills, and often, they are students whose ability to transfer rests on passing my class. (Translation for that last part: if they don’t pass, I have ruined their lives and/or destroyed their scholarship opportunities.)

Intellectually, I am opposed to summer school as even the good students (and teachers) must cut certain corners and make certain concessions to make it through the class in the allotted time. (The less advanced the course, the more detrimental this fast-paced, corner-cutting becomes.)

Far too many students have been told (or presume) summer session is shorter; therefore, summer session is easier. I try to set my students straight on the very first day by asking them whether they want a whole grade or merely one-third of a grade. (It’s an excellent test of which students are strong thinkers: the strong students make the connection, but the weak students do not.)

I do break it down for those who can’t do it for themselves by assuring everyone that while shorter in time, my class isn’t shorter in terms of assignments or expectations. I emphasize that to earn a full grade, one must complete the full amount of work.

That’s what I say, but this is what many of them hear: “blah-blah-blah.”

I’ve tried to approach this truth in a number of ways—none of them very successful—because many students are merely stuck in the rut of getting their classes done so they can get on with their lives.

Fair enough: I was once there myself.

This summer, I’m going to try something new: since the majority of students hear “blah-blah-blah” when I talk about the pace of summer session, I’m going to skip that speech.

I’m going to save my breath, pretend I don’t need to insult anyone’s intelligence, and move along to other things. I’m certain it will save me a good deal of frustration in the end.

After all, these are adults I’m dealing with, and the real world doesn’t come with a syllabus: it only comes with an assignment sheet.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 24th, 2007 at 9:35 am and is filed under College, Education, English, Students, Teaching, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.