Topic: Bang Your Head on Your Desk - the thread of teaching despair!

[AvidReader]

If that was Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," it should explain somewhere that over-anthologizing a non-representative outlier from the preacher's homiletic corpus seriously skews modern-day understandings of dubious terms like "The Great," and the "Second Great Awakening" and unfairly leverages late 19th-century Unitarian historical proclivities to demean their so-called Puritan ancestors (Edwards was a New-Light Congregationalist, not a Puritan) in a revisionist effort to maintain competing claims for primitive arrival narratives while also upholding unitarian theological constructions as inherent in the earliest arrivants' intentions (they were not, as covenantal formulae and doxological suffixes to Psalmody show.)

If they got that straight, then, fine, pass 'em.

But not otherwise...

M.

LOL! Mamselle, I love it! Thank you for brightening my morning with this hilarious paragraph--and for teaching me something new, as I didn't know Edwards was a New-Light Congregationalist (which I'll go look up in more detail this afternoon). It was actually an extract from a sermon by John Cotton.

AR.

[Zeus Bird]

With the semester's end upon us, another stu trying to use the "screenshot defense from stu's computer" to explain why stu's series of weekly online assignments were not actually submitted weeks after the due date but were in fact uploaded to the LMS on time.

LMS analytics show stu went over a month without uploading anything. 

Once upon a time vendors said that LMS platforms were supposed to solve these types of issues.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Oh my dear sweet Lord! Some of these final exam answers are painful to read. One student tried to calculate the range of a projectile using the volume equation for a cylinder. Stu thought that the radius was the range.

This demonstrates a fundamental ignorance of mathematical principles going back to at least junior high.

But least the student might know the alphabet, as range and radius do both start with "r"

And velocity and volume both start with "v", so won't any formula including "v" and"r" work?????

Ha! This student has performed abysmally throughout the semester. Just had no clue.

[mamselle]

If that was Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," it should explain somewhere that over-anthologizing a non-representative outlier from the preacher's homiletic corpus seriously skews modern-day understandings of dubious terms like "The Great," and the "Second Great Awakening" and unfairly leverages late 19th-century Unitarian historical proclivities to demean their so-called Puritan ancestors (Edwards was a New-Light Congregationalist, not a Puritan) in a revisionist effort to maintain competing claims for primitive arrival narratives while also upholding unitarian theological constructions as inherent in the earliest arrivants' intentions (they were not, as covenantal formulae and doxological suffixes to Psalmody show.)

If they got that straight, then, fine, pass 'em.

But not otherwise...

M.

LOL! Mamselle, I love it! Thank you for brightening my morning with this hilarious paragraph--and for teaching me something new, as I didn't know Edwards was a New-Light Congregationalist (which I'll go look up in more detail this afternoon). It was actually an extract from a sermon by John Cotton.

AR.

Glad to have made someone smile today!

Now back to sorting out whether there were, or should be, or should have been, any theological, philosophical, or historical objections to the interpretations in some quarters (mostly N. French, but some Roman) of Palm Sunday processions as representational, presentational, allegorical, anagogical, analogical, metaphoric, or politially subversive to nearby underling monastic emplantations who routinely challenged the authority of the archbishops in whose towns they were emplanted.

All in a day's work...

;--}

M.

P. S. Oh, and OK, then, yes, John Cotton can be taken as Puritan: the marker for his home, uphill from King's Chapel, uses his Old England title of "vicar," consistent with the eponymous desire to purify the Anglican church from within.

He did Anne Hutchinson a poor turn, pulling the theological Turkeywork rug he'd hooked at St. Botolph's, Lincolnshire out from under her when she took his "law/grace" formulation at face value and tried to hold him to its application in a new context, but he had the rest of the Boston clergy yelling at him, so maybe supporting her in the first part of her trial was all he could do....

Which sermon?

Oh, and (to save you the trouble...) New-Light Congregationalists (and Baptists) and New-Plan Presbyterians were those influenced by George Whitfield's preaching campaigns (despite the discouraging treatment of Whitfield by the established clergy, who didn't much like being told that their studious effort to produce well-researched, well-thought-out sermons as they'd been taught--whether at Harvard, Yale (by then) or one of the Cambridge, (Cambridge. England) colleges--was insufficient as compared with the heart-warmed experiences the Wesleys and others proffered as "proof" of a saving faith).

Both together might have been (and still are, in some quarters) very good.

Polarizing the two formed the roots of the "head-vs.-heart" dichotomy that we still see playing up in American politics today.

M.

[apl68]

If that was Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," it should explain somewhere that over-anthologizing a non-representative outlier from the preacher's homiletic corpus seriously skews modern-day understandings of dubious terms like "The Great," and the "Second Great Awakening" and unfairly leverages late 19th-century Unitarian historical proclivities to demean their so-called Puritan ancestors (Edwards was a New-Light Congregationalist, not a Puritan) in a revisionist effort to maintain competing claims for primitive arrival narratives while also upholding unitarian theological constructions as inherent in the earliest arrivants' intentions (they were not, as covenantal formulae and doxological suffixes to Psalmody show.)

If they got that straight, then, fine, pass 'em.

But not otherwise...

M.

He's a very misunderstood figure, all right.

[AvidReader]

Which sermon?

It's an extract from Cotton's A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace in which he describes hypocrites as swine and goats: https://www.bartleby.com/400/prose/78.html. It is not in my area of expertise, but great for rhetorical analyses. (Except this student couldn't find any rhetorical appeals or devices anywhere in the text).

I have very happy memories of sitting on a bench in Krakow some time ago, only to have one of the Palm Sunday processions walk right past me. It was amazing to see, and that paper sounds fascinating.

AR.

[the_geneticist]

I've been meeting with students who used Chegg on their exam (despite explicit instructions that using Chegg or similar site is considered cheating and will result in an F).

To a person they are SHOCKED that I caught them.  Mostly shocked that I BOTHERED to catch them.  Their attitude is that online classes mean that everyone is cheating anyway, regardless of any proctoring. 

I wish there was a way that we could anonymously survey the students to get data to show the higher admin folks that students see online classes as an invitation to cheat.

I really, really hope that my classes are back to in person in Fall so that it's back to the staring at students while they take exams in person. 

[kiana]

I've been meeting with students who used Chegg on their exam (despite explicit instructions that using Chegg or similar site is considered cheating and will result in an F).

To a person they are SHOCKED that I caught them.  Mostly shocked that I BOTHERED to catch them.  Their attitude is that online classes mean that everyone is cheating anyway, regardless of any proctoring. 

I wish there was a way that we could anonymously survey the students to get data to show the higher admin folks that students see online classes as an invitation to cheat.

I really, really hope that my classes are back to in person in Fall so that it's back to the staring at students while they take exams in person.

Oh god yes. Except our brilliant college has decided that all online classes will continue to have online exams, and we're mandated to have at least one online section of each class.

I'm very seriously considering resurrecting oral exams.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

I've been meeting with students who used Chegg on their exam (despite explicit instructions that using Chegg or similar site is considered cheating and will result in an F).

To a person they are SHOCKED that I caught them.  Mostly shocked that I BOTHERED to catch them. Their attitude is that online classes mean that everyone is cheating anyway, regardless of any proctoring.

I wish there was a way that we could anonymously survey the students to get data to show the higher admin folks that students see online classes as an invitation to cheat.

I really, really hope that my classes are back to in person in Fall so that it's back to the staring at students while they take exams in person.

Daaamn. Really makes you wonder what the point of teaching (online) is sometimes....

[apl68]

Which sermon?

It's an extract from Cotton's A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace in which he describes hypocrites as swine and goats: https://www.bartleby.com/400/prose/78.html. It is not in my area of expertise, but great for rhetorical analyses. (Except this student couldn't find any rhetorical appeals or devices anywhere in the text).

Wow.  The student really failed to grasp it.

[mamselle]

Which sermon?

It's an extract from Cotton's A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace in which he describes hypocrites as swine and goats: https://www.bartleby.com/400/prose/78.html. It is not in my area of expertise, but great for rhetorical analyses. (Except this student couldn't find any rhetorical appeals or devices anywhere in the text).

I have very happy memories of sitting on a bench in Krakow some time ago, only to have one of the Palm Sunday processions walk right past me. It was amazing to see, and that paper sounds fascinating.

AR.

Thanks!

That would be so cool, to be taken by surprise by a procession like that...

M.

[Anon1787]

Student in a class where it is like pulling teeth to get students to participate or to ask questions wants to know if I am going to hold a review session before the final exam. If I call every remaining class meeting a "review session," will those magical words induce them to ask more questions?

[Langue_doc]

A "review session" is merely a meeting where you tell the class what's going to be on the exam.

[FishProf]

I had a "review session" for a class last night.  As I told them, repeatedly, in advance:  You have to ask questions.  If you don't ask questions, the meeting ends.  If you run out of questions, the meeting ends.

We met for 4 minutes.

[Diogenes]

Students goes to Dean of Students and my direct supervisor to say I'm "out to get them." Their words. They failed to mentioned they missed 7 weeks in a row. That was easily cleared up.