Remedial courses

[kaysixteen]

I just lined up an adjunct class for this semester, at a suburban religious SLAC.  This is 'reading for college'.  This is actually exactly the sort of work I have been looking for for 2 years, since it was suggested to me by the expensive career counselor I hired.  I have a reasonable set syllabus that I cannot change much this semester, though the head of the student success department, who hired me, is pretty psyched to have me develop it further going forward.  The pay and commute both aren't great but the resume opportunity is, and she has also intimated that there may be more permanent work for me in the future as well.  I have taught these skills in hs before and am eager to get going here this week.  But here's my one question for the fora... This class is a remedial one, assigned to freshmen who scored below a certain threshold on a diagnostic test.  It will be graded, appear on the transcript, and factor into GPA, but earn no college credit.  This, combined with the text, demonstrates the class is essentially at an hs level.  I would therefore like advice as to how to properly teach it so that I neither condescend or patronize the students, which I am really not that concerned about, or blow them away with excessive academics, as though these were honors upperclassmen at a high powered prep school, which, given my person academic experience and background experience, I am concerned I might well do.

[dr_codex]

You need to give your own diagnostic at the start. I do some of our own in-house placement, and my expectation is that faculty will double-check in either the first or second class meeting. You may well find that some students were not correctly placed, and should be in a different course. Moreover, you need data. What skills do they have? What do they most need? How can you most help them?

Expect some pushback. Students in these courses often resent it. Unlike HS, they are paying for it directly. It also sets them back a semester or more, depending on discipline. You'll need some good answers to the question "Why do I have to be here"?

I hate many aspects of the new Common Core, but I have come around to the idea that the ability to read, analyze, and discuss non-fiction is a pretty good indicator of general readiness for college work. I taught a section of Comp I to students who all had just completed the remedial course. I assigned a few New Yorker "Talk of the Town" readings. It was very revealing. If your students blow this away, raise the bar. But don't be surprised if at the end of an hour they cannot begin a summary.

Honestly, I think I'd go in with a version of your post: You've taught a lot of these skills before, and know the kinds of things that prep schools do. Don't over prep, follow the syllabus, and see how it rolls out. As long as the students think you know what you're doing, and that you are responsive, they will go along with a lot.

Good luck!
cd

[wareagle]

Kay, the fact that you are eager to get going is in itself the most important factor.  Students will tune into your attitude toward themselves and the class, and if you bring positive enthusiasm, they're more likely to get on board with you.  I've worked with remedial and developmental classes for years, and I think this is the most key ingredient - a competent caring teacher.

There are a huge number of adults out there who do not read well.  Their situation is common and nothing to be ashamed of.  College-level reading is a high bar to reach, and your students can get there - they just need encouragement. 

If I could fix one thing in our education system, it would be reading.  Fix that, and so many other things fall into place.  You're doing crucial, important work.  Good luck!  Check in often this semester, and let us know how it's going.

[hungry_ghost]

Kay, the fact that you are eager to get going is in itself the most important factor.  Students will tune into your attitude toward themselves and the class,

I agree with this very much. Last week, I told my class (honestly) of beginning freshman, I love coming to work, I love teaching you guys, and I hope you also love coming to school. Some looked surprised. Some looked pleased. None looked hostile. A good start.

The students you're teaching have not been super successful thus far, or they wouldn't be in that class. Treat them with compassion; some of us do our best and just don't get very far, and some just don't know how to give it their best.
This is all attitude advice.

You also need to figure out where they are (advice given by dr_codex). They may need you to break down assignments (heavy scaffolding), they may need a little extra coaching on time management. There may be more going on than just low reading scores.

About grades, find out what is standard at that school. If it's a grade inflation place, get out the pump.

Good luck. I hope you love this gig and your students love you back. Check back in.

[kaysixteen]

Thanks all.  After three classes so far I have several observations.  In no particular order of importance, these would be...

1.  I am pretty much expected to use the syllabus and text provided... There are three other sections of the course being taught this semester, though I have never met the other professors.  My syllabus is a barely tweaked version of one of the other teacher's one, given to me by the head of the ' student success program', who is our supervisor and who hired me.  This woman does want me to be able to learn and experiment for the future, for next semester, but I am pretty much stuck with this syllabus and text for this semester.  The class has a heavy class participation requirement slash expectation, though I did reduce the grade percentage for this from 25 to 20.  Thing is, even this level is shaping up to be an annoyance whose pedagogical value is also deeply dubious to me.  I always have a CP req in hs classes, but at that level you can do several things,, most especially contact parents, to enforce this, teachers are expected to do that, and at strong prep schools parents and at least some pf the kids do too.  Also, in courses such as the foreign language ones I often have taught, participation really is essential.  But in this remedial college reading class, where the students are not going to get actual college credit, are required to take it, etc., and where I as prof have little if any power to compel participation *during* the semester, being a hard ass seems more trouble than it appears to be worth.  Quite frankly, being a cop ain't my calling.  That said, the students do need to bring the required readings, text and handouts from me, and they should be taking notes too.  Indeed, though it wasn't on the syllabus, i spent most of Thursday teaching notetaking and precis writing skills, quite correctly assuming, upon my asking, that most of these kids had never been taught such things before.  There is a lot to cover in the syllabus, and I am also going to have to have the students retake their freshman orientation reading diagnostic test at the end of the semester, to see how much their reading skills have improved.  If the students do not have their materials and try to participate at least somewhat, they will not get much out of the course.  I am thus conflicted and would appreciate any tboughts, especially taking into consideration the remedial non credit nature of the class.

2.  Related to this, two other points have presented themselves after the first two weeks.  First, the students seem to be adjusting to the different atmosphere of a college class vs a hs one.  The first day one kid seemed to ask whether he could go to the bathroom.  I told the class that one need not ask for bathroom permission in college, but mrrely could. Get up and go.  This seemed to have inadvertently opened up the floodgates, and several students are quite frankly abusing this in terms of the length and frequency of their trips something which is sadly greatly exacerbated by the extremely cozy classroom size, with the one door being right up front.  Should I attempt to set some limits here?  Similarly, cell phone use and chatter, while not excessive, is perhaps ramping slightly up, and I do want to nip this in the bud, especially since the syllabus language I inherited also contains strong expectations that part of the expectations of this class are to teach college class 'etiquette'.

3. Lastly, a thorny question has arisen which has taken me unawares.  Several of the students, one in particular, are not native speakers of English, who speak with thick accents and have limited, obviously limited, English reading skills.  This one young man the first day, when I asked the students to pass in index cards listing their names, email address, and majors, actually asked me how to spell 'engineering', and observing him listening to me lecture also makes me wonder how much he is getting.  I really am at a loss as to what to do here...

[Hegemony]

I think the unspoken rules for leaving class to go to the bathroom are that you plan ahead so that you go before or afterwards if at all possible, and you only leave to go during class if you are having some kind of stomach attack or situation where going is urgent.  And you recognize that you are disrupting the class by leaving and coming back, and so you do so as unobtrusively as possible.  Students should leave class to go to the bathroom maybe once during their college careers, if that often.  (Extra allowances for girls to go, for biological reasons you need not elaborate on, but they should also recognize that it's a stroll-out-any-time-you-wish situation.)  So do make that clear to them.  Future professors may not be as relaxed about it as you have been.

As for the foreign students who may speak little English — it sounds as if you should find out what kind of provision your place has for supporting them academically — an institute, an office, an administrator, a series of remedial classes?  And then you can judiciously direct them to those resources, while making as many allowances and the situation warrants, providing they are working diligently.

[dr_codex]

Kaysixteen,

If you'll pardon the phrasing, #1 is a solution to #2. That is, students don't just get credit for showing up; if they take 30 minute bathroom breaks or spend half the time texting, they cannot be participating. Once they've dropped 20-25% of the possible grades, they cannot pass the course. Which is fair: if they aren't "there" in any meaningful sense, they aren't taking the course. (I'm assuming, here, that you are asking them to actually do things in the class -- take notes, read, discuss, question, respond....)

#3 is a different issue altogether, and a problematic one. Ideally, English New Language students should have their own course sequence. They need radically different skills, and range widely in their fluency. Some, for instance, will have very strong grammar skills, but almost no aural/verbal ability. Others vice versa. Even relatively strong non-native students can struggle in college-level classrooms. We had an articulated agreement with another country, part of which included some ENL teaching; however, the students had no accommodation in their other courses, and often really struggled. One coping strategy was to read everything on Wikipedia in their native tongue. As I say, problematic. As Hegemony suggests, your institution may well have resources that these students can access, and you can and should make reasonable adjustments to the curriculum for them. There's no point asking for a critical summary from a student who cannot reliably identify a verb tense, but there's lots that you can offer.

[mamselle]

Did you do your own diagnostic (dx in my world) test suggested above?

What were the results?

If you get clear feedback from the test that there are clustered issues around English, socialization, and, say, test-taking issues, you might subdivide the class, based on those findings, and have the groups research and present on their topics: "How do US norms differ from those in other places?" " What types of tests does one encounter in college, and how can one study for them?" "If your native language is something besides English, what are 5-6 strategies you can use to become an effective learner?"

Have a set time slot mid-class for group work, with very clear task subdivisions that you oversee, walking from group to group.

Keep pushing them for that day's task: "OK, what 5-6 strategies does this group have? Who's going to cover #1? #2? I want to see your list of topics and names at the end of the group time; please get that ready to hand in."

Go to the next group, same spiel.

Second meeting, you want a three-bullet-point outline from each presenter: what are they going to emphasize? All turn those in on a single page (rotate group scribes) at the end of the time.

Etc.

Keep close oversight, turn into the little English sheepdog, nipping at their heels, about each stage in the work.

This can be done jovially, but with intent: they will enjoy the energy while catching onto the seriousness with which you mean each goal is to be met on time--"so you uphold the respect of your teammates."

After 6 weeks, they do presentations.

It's really about getting them to talk,read, write, and recite to each other--looping them all in as the commentators on understandability, logic, and responding to new social cues, while creating a sense of urgency and interest around their work.

I'm basing this on a Saturday math program I once taught in which I had kids from 8 different school systems: some were ready for pre-calc, others were struggling with geometry and hadn't had algebra II yet.

I turned it into a one-room-schoolhouse, had the more skilled working to develop lesson plans to teach the less skilled, as well as to expound on their more advanced topics by doing transparencies for the class together.

Wed do 1/3 same-skill groups, 1/3 paired-off helpers' groups, 1/3 shared presentations.

I'd subdivide your groups with a balanced number of those less-skilled in English in each group, etc. (based on what your dx test finds); maybe mix it up in other ways by doing 1-on-1 conversations on current events with reports back to the class in 3-4 sentences, and pairing them up in different ways for that each time.

Takes some advance planning, and I was dead but delighted after every class.

I stopped teaching for this group when, in response to a new all-state testing program, we were given packets of (really insipid) old ditto-master-type exercise pages to use each week instead....and we had to use them. Yuck.

M.

[hungry_ghost]

On the phones, I tell them bluntly:

Cell phone use is not allowed in class. If you use your phone in class, I can see--you may imagine that I can't, but you're wrong. And, you put me in a really awkward position. I have two choices: I can warn you, which is embarrassing and makes us both feel bad, you feel like I called you out, and I feel bad for doing it. So that's a bad choice. Alternatively, I say nothing, and quietly give you a zero for participation for that day. That also seems awful, since wouldn't it be better for me to let you know?
It's just not good, either way.
So, please don't use your phone in class. 

About stepping out for a "biology break": treat class like work, or like a business meeting. The reason you don't have to ask if you're allowed to go potty is that I assume you're a responsible adult and won't step out to be excused unless you're really very uncomfortable. Part of being a responsible adult is planning ahead, going before class, and not stepping out to go unless you really must.
I would tell the class that unfortunately, there has been a disruptive amount of wandering in and out of class, and if it doesn't stop, you're going to have to downgrade the college policy to a high school policy.

It is late at night and I am not phrasing this well, but basically you need to help them understand that they get these privileges because they are (pre-)adults, and that with privilege comes responsibility of acting like adults. You're not responsible for them now, they are responsible for themselves, and for the effects their choices have on their learning, their classroom environment, and their instructor. Phrased right, this can be a very significant and inspiring lesson. Phrased wrong, it is just more blahblahblah.

[Aster]

I am so envious of the TV/film portrayals of college where the professor collects everyone's' cell phones and places them on his desk during class.

[Dismal]

I think it is a really good point made earlier that the class participation grade can include refraining from cell phone usage during class, refraining from wandering in and out of class for bathroom breaks, etc.  Perhaps now is a good time in the semester to discuss the concept of class participation as something more than the number of times a student participates in discussion.  Contributing to a good class environment is important.  CP includes attendance and the quality of that attendance.

[mythbuster]

In terms of attendance and phones, you can use the lost points model. In this, they all start with the maximum number of points and then lose some portion of the total for things like absences or phone violations. I usually give them a freebie absence or two, and one warning on the phone. I keep this column in the gradebook and start will the max number of points loaded in. Then you just adjust the points when they do something wrong. It REALLY gets their attention because our system pings them an email every time the grade book changes.

[apl68]

Bathroom breaks from college classes are really a thing now?  Wow.  I honestly can't recall a single time the issue came up during my years as a grad teaching assistant in the 1990s.  It's like people 18 and up just knew better then, without having to have it pointed out to them.  I saw and heard about students pulling some egregious stuff, but they had at least sorted out the potty break thing during their K-12 years.

[downer]

It is instructive to observe students leaving other people's classrooms during class.

There's bathroom breaks and "bathroom breaks." All involve using phones I expect, but the latter can involve long conversations or texting interactions. They may also involve vaping or inhaling substances.

[kaysixteen]

Again, thanks all, and thanks especially for the ongoing offers from several of ye to continue to ask questions as I wend my way through this actually rather new endeavour.  Now that I'm three weeks in, and have had some graded work to ponder as well, I can raise a few more points and questions, again in no particular order of importance... Please forgive me, it being late.

1.  I haven't given my own diagnostic test, as there's really no time in class to do so, and, perhaps more pointedly, and honestly, I'm just not currently qualified to write such a test.  I do wish I had seen the diagnostic test the school gave these kids in orientation, and seen the students' scores, but truth be told I am not even sure the dept head would give them to me and I'm not sure I want to pester her.

2.  That said, I have now seen the results of two written homeworks and one quiz, and several things are standing out.  First, the remedial nature of the class and why they're assigned to it, is sadly obvious.  Three students out of 9 passed the quiz, none with a grade higher than 74, and it just wasn't that hard.  Lack of study time may be the answer in aome cases, but methinks that ain't the big reason.  Indeed, despite the fact that the quiz was mostly on study skills, notetaking, reading context clues, and test taking strategies, they seemed not only not to have used these skills in studying, but in several cases not to have understood the points I was teaching about them.  This was a high school level assignment, but, recalling my own experiences teaching these things in high school, these kids are very much behind.  In some cases this is due to their limited English proficiency, and/or decidedly crappy high schools they've graduated from( all of these kids did attend hs in the U.S., but mostly in crappy inner city ones).  However, in an actual hs class, I would go over the thing tomorrow and requiz Thursday, but here I'm handicapped by the set syllabus I'm stuck with this semester, and will have to move on.  I don't like th is but don't have much of a choice, as I am expected to cover all these topics, use the inappropriate textbook as much as i can minimally justify (augmented by the right to pass out supplimentary photocopies), and use the assignment structure I inherited.  I will be able to make significant, perhaps wholesale, changes, for next semester, but I can't this one.  It's true that the kids clearly weren't putting in as much effort on their written hw last week as the should, but nonetheless I still have major concerns as to how well many of them were understanding it.  I can remediate some of this in class, and use carrot and stick approach somewhat, but I'm less sure about what to do about the nonnative speakers?
3. I am even less convinced now about the overall value of significant class participation grade component for a class such as this one (let alone how to assess this fairly).  This also doesn't even consider the large individual and group project class presentations that I'm also stuck with doing this semester, but I gotta do 'em so any advice or feedback about how to induce/ evoke maximum performance and effort here would be most appreciated.  Me, at least for now, I think most of the teaching should be coming from me as the 'sage on the stage', and/or facilitating individual students' answering of homework based reading questions.  Btw, it has also been proving very difficult to get students to volunteer answers to randomly posed class questions, such as 'what is context?'... I'm not sure whether regularly posing such questions rather than just telling them the meaning of such terms directly myself is worth it, but I'm eager to hear your thoughts and strategies here nonetheless.

4.  Lastly, and this is more than a little bit embarrassing, because this school is just not paying me very well, as in maybe 2 thirds a course (and of course I'm only teaching the one this semester) as much as I was paid to adjunct at the other two local unis here 3 to 5 years ago (current commute is twice as long too), I realized I was simply unable to appreciably reduce the hours i have to work my pt retail job.  I really have little choice.  This means, however, that I just can't hang around campus after class.  I'm not required to do office hours, though the dept will schedule someplace to meet kid for appointments if any actually ask for one, but this is not ideal.  I am probably spending about two hours prepping for each class, and could do somewhat more, maybe even double this, but I do wish I could do more, and would eagerly do much more next semester if the school is able to offer me mire than just the one class.  Indeed, dissatisfied with the current text and also eager to generally revamp the syllabus significantly for the future, I have also begun to order various texts and other books on collegeg reading skills and on teaching these skills from the library, and, as resources allow, from Amazon 3d party vendors, and am eager to spend as much time as I can this fall reading 'em.