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.

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 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.

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’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.

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.

One the positive side, I had a show-up rate of about 90% which is very high on the day an assignment is due, and the first reads I did yesterday evening showed promise.

On the negative side, the death toll has already begun: so far, four grandparents, one aunt, and one “good family friend” have succumbed to the grim reaper. (Each of these sudden deaths occurred either Saturday or Sunday, and each required the student be out of town on paper-Monday.)

Real death is a significant loss, but the continued and predictable death-in-conjunction-with-due-dates makes it hard for me to believe anyone.

The first essay is due next Monday. I wonder: should I post my class list to allow my readers to ascertain whether or not they might be related to one of my students and by extension, be nearing death?

. . .you can be as evil as you wish because I have favor with God. I can make it with out the belief of others. See you in class Wednesday and also…. thanks for nothing!

As happy as I am to be rid of that problem, I am not at all impressed by the way in which things transpired.

Simply disrupting a class over two consecutive periods and then sending a threatening e-mail are not sufficient grounds to send a student packing, nor does anyone on my campus think the student needs counseling—in fact, my suggesting such was met with warnings from very well-meaning people that “[I’d] be going down a dangerous road” for suggesting such a thing.

Remember, this student is a grown adult who had been verbally aggressive and abusive in class, and who has military training.

While I don’t want to blow things out of proportion here, can anyone say Virginia Tech? The irony of events such as those at VT is that no one claims to have seen the thing coming until it was all over. During the same week that lots of fingers were being pointed at instructors and administrators at VT, I was telling the people at Sacramento City College I had a volatile student in class, and all I heard was a warning of how to act so as not to have the student complain about me.

At one point, the discussion turned to whether or not other students in the class would report this student’s behavior as disruptive. (Unfortunately, I’d left my crystal ball at home that morning, and I had forgotten my word wasn’t sufficient.)

This student called me EVIL.

This student implied I HAVE NO FAVOR WITH GOD.

The subject line of the e-mail read “Thanks for nothing. . . BITCH.

Yes, I can see where I might have difficulty explaining my reasons for feeling threatened by this student’s behavior.

The student is someone else’s problem now: arrangements were made to move the student out of my class and into someone else’s.

The message: treat your instructor as the pile of shit you think she is, and if the instructor expects something different, we’ll take care of you.

I love beginning a semester in chaos.

Now, switching rooms makes finding a shady parking space right next to the building look like child’s play—getting it done is like winning the World Series of Poker, say, five times in a row.

I had been dealt some very good cards, however: first, the room holds only 22 and the class cap is 28. Second, there is a mandatory grammar and punctuation component, and the room has no chalkboard. Third, there is absolutely no desk space, and note-taking at the level I am teaching in that class is paramount.

The process was begun, and my dean is reliable, so I felt certain I’d get a change, but the inevitability of time—as in it’ll take time to find a room or switch a room, so you’re stuck there for now—was unavoidable.

I walked back upstairs slowly: I had about one minute to reorganize my day’s plans in my head, and while reorganizing, I had to consider the distinct possibility I’d be stuck in that room for a week or two—all of which made my plans very confused: I needed a chalkboard.

Not surprisingly, every single seated student was busily surfing the internet, chatting, and/or gaming by the time I returned. After asking everyone to shut down his or her machine, I climbed over and around bodies to shut down the machines of those to whom “please power off the computer in front of you” meant nothing.

Returning to the front of the room, I spread the word that a location change was in the works, and then I went about the task of getting rid of fifteen bodies: those who were not enrolled and/or who were not in the top five on the waiting list.

While this trimming of students came with many of the routine pleads to “let me stay: I really need this class,” I was spared the “why do I have to leave? There are plenty of empty seats in the room” remarks.

By 12:30—in a class that began at 12:00—I had settled the 33 students (the cap plus five) and begun reviewing the course syllabus and assignment sheet. I was unable to begin the overview of writing I use on the first day because I feared writing on the freshly painted wall behind me might be frowned upon by someone somewhere, and orally, the information simply isn’t worthwhile.

I figured I’d give it another session, and if I didn’t have a new room by then, I’d insist on a purchase order for a sandwich board and a commercial roll of butcher paper. If I were refused, I was simply going to write on the walls in dry erase markers—really.

Fortunately, by the end of the day, I had been reassigned to a new room—in the Business Building. (Think getting soaked in rainstorms. Think loads of papers and journals causing shoulder injury. Think a room too far from my office to run back to should I forget something. Oh well.)

I’ve taught in several rooms over in business, and they apparently have more money than the English Department. Their rooms are nicer, larger, and decked out with great desks and really big, long white boards.

When Wednesday dawned, I wondered just how lucky I’d get with parking: it was going to be another hot day in the state capitol, and as much as I hoped for shade, what I really wanted was close. (Yeah, right—like that was going to happen again.)

But it did: I didn’t score shade, but I scored close to my building—again. The rest of the morning was just as uneventful as Monday had been, and other than needing a key I didn’t yet have to get into my new room, all was bliss.

(The key story will need to wait, but it’ll be worth it, I promise you.)

The room to which my class was reassigned was new to me, and when I walked in, it was a bit like entering a mansion.

I can get rained on for this, folks.

I began taking care of the administrative things that bog down the first few days of class beginning with sending away new arrivals and those who were in the wrong place. That taken care of, I checked prerequisites while my students completed a little writing assignment.

One student—who I think will provide a positive dose of levity to the course—gasped when I ask they take out paper and write.

“Now? Already? But we haven’t learned anything yet!”

Before I needed to point out to her that writing was something she’d been doing for a few years, she caught herself and began to giggle. The giggle was infectious, and we all laughed.

Several minutes later, I stopped the writing and began returning eligibility forms: I reinforce names and faces by passing things back to students, and while returning forms, I realized that although I had excused those who hadn’t been present on the first day because the class was full, I still had a new face in the crowd.

Generally, I recognize faces after the first day, but on occasion, I’ve mistaken a “new” face for one that simply didn’t stick, so here’s what transpired:

“Excuse me, you in the checkered shirt.”
“Who, me?”
“Yes. Did I call your name this morning?”
“No.”
“Well, as I said earlier, I don’t have any room to add anyone in this class. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I’m not trying to get into the class.”
“Okay, well, I’m going to need you to pack up your things and leave.”
“Why?”

There it was: my first moment of the semester during which I have no idea what to say or do. I begin to get pissed off, and my students start staring at this guy and rolling their eyes. I breathed and thought and recovered.

“Why do you need to leave? Well, oddly enough, because you’re not part of this class. Beyond that fact, you need to leave because I asked you to.”
“But I don’t want to.”
“Look, I’m not going to ask you again. Gather your things and get out of here, and do it now.”

I begin to lament leaving my cell phone in my office, as I feared I would soon need to get the campus police involved. Goodie.

“But it’s really hot out there, and it’s nice and cool in here.”
“I think you’ll find the library has a similar environment, but if you don’t get out of my classroom right now, I’ll make sure campus police helps you.”
“Seriously?”

I have two returning students in this class, so I ask one of them to go around the corner to alert the Business Department Dean to call the campus police. She gets up and leaves.

“So, you’re serious? I can’t just sit here?”

I’m not going to engage him anymore, so I look at the remaining students and shrug my shoulders.

“Sorry guys, it looks like we’re going to have to wait for the cops to drag this guy out of here before we can get on with class. I’d like all of you to look at him, wave, and say ‘thanks’.”

My students love that we are a team, and to a person they turn, wave, and ‘thank’ him. Some of the ‘thank you’s’ come out sounding a bit like other things, but what can I say?

“Whatever. I’m out of here.”

Our visitor gathers his things while muttering under his breath and then walks out. As he opens the door to leave, standing right in front of him are two campus police officers—who says there’s never a cop around when one is needed?

After air-conditioning boy mutters a shit under his breath, the campus police officers take him aside and away. (My student was standing with them and did the ‘that’s him’ thing.)

I was trying to think of the best way to get things back to normal when the writing-phobic student from earlier blurts out sarcastically,

“Dang—he got to sit here and didn’t even have to write.”

The grin was still spreading across her face when another student remarked,

“Seriously.”

We all cracked up, and for the remainder of the period seriously was the mantra.

This group has real potential: I seriously hope I can keep up.

Each of these items separately is something akin to winning the lottery, and I scored on both counts. (Did I mention the predicted high for the day was 104°F?)

The next phase was photocopying a few things I needed, and that, too, went without incident.

I settled in, ate a bit, reorganized things, and found even after grading a large stack of assessment essays, I had time to do a bit of non-teaching related work.

When the noontime hour approached, I gathered my things and headed upstairs to my first classroom—that’s right, this semester my classes were scheduled for rooms in the English Department building! (Think rainstorms without getting soaked. Think loads of papers and journals without shoulder injury. Think rooms close enough to run back to my office should I forget something.)

I’ve taught in room RS-311 several times, and I know it’s a decent location—decent meaning sufficient seats for the class cap (28) and a chalkboard of reasonable size—so I was taken completely aback when I walked into a room transformed into a 22-seat computer lab with long tables where once desks had ruled and absolutely no chalkboard.

Of course, when I walked in, all I was immediately aware of was the 50+ bodies packed in the room like sardines, but once I gulped my share of the diminishing oxygen, the transformation hit me.

So much for the shine of day one.

- Read Part Two -