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

[the_geneticist]

I finally reached critical mass on the number of students emailing me to tell me they are missing class today that I felt compelled to cancel. I just couldn't run the activity I had planned with less than half of them gone. Which is too bad because it was supposed to be fun. But we'll do it when they come back next week and they'll just have less project work time. Which they probably weren't going to use much anyway.

Wow.  Maybe I'm mean, but I'd give a small bonus assignment just for the students who showed up.  Leaving early for vacation =/= a valid reason to be absent.

[FishProf]

Caffeine, chocolate and comics.

Manga or western?  Just curious.

Stand-up

[Istiblennius]

I finally reached critical mass on the number of students emailing me to tell me they are missing class today that I felt compelled to cancel. I just couldn't run the activity I had planned with less than half of them gone. Which is too bad because it was supposed to be fun. But we'll do it when they come back next week and they'll just have less project work time. Which they probably weren't going to use much anyway.

Wow.  Maybe I'm mean, but I'd give a small bonus assignment just for the students who showed up.  Leaving early for vacation =/= a valid reason to be absent.

You are not mean. I am (today, at least) tired and a little spineless. I could have managed with the smaller group but it just wasn't going to be as easy for me either. And I thought "why should I have to suffer dragging less than half the class through an activity that won't go the way I planned it?" Because at this point having class was going to be harder and more work on me than it was going to be on any of the students. So maybe it is a victory in that I didn't go in on a sunk cost fallacy? I don't know.

[the_geneticist]

Triage and do what you need to do to get through the week.  No shame in changing plans.

[statsgeek]

Stu:  I didn't know we had class yesterday because my other class was cancelled. 

My fantasy reply:  uh...even though the course calendar clearly states we have class and we ended class last week with preparation for the activity for yesterday? 

My actual reply:  Not a safe assumption.  I'd strongly recommend you refer to each individual course syllabus/calendar unless there's a university-wide closure. 

(At least this one contacted me.  I only had about 1/4 of the class in the room yesterday.  The activity, that I'd spent a lot of time prepping, only sorta worked.  Dang short week before Thanksgiving break.) 

[apl68]

Stu:  I didn't know we had class yesterday because my other class was cancelled. 

My fantasy reply:  uh...even though the course calendar clearly states we have class and we ended class last week with preparation for the activity for yesterday? 

My actual reply:  Not a safe assumption.  I'd strongly recommend you refer to each individual course syllabus/calendar unless there's a university-wide closure. 

(At least this one contacted me.  I only had about 1/4 of the class in the room yesterday.  The activity, that I'd spent a lot of time prepping, only sorta worked.  Dang short week before Thanksgiving break.)

I don't remember there being such wholesale absences in the days before holidays back in the 1990s.  There doesn't seem to have been such a widespread assumption that the last days before the break could be treated as additional break time.

[FishProf]

Isn't the day before Spring Break "Mid-Term Exam Day"?
It is for me...

[marshwiggle]

I heard a quotation many years ago, attributed to some source within the British admiralty:
"Don't schedule meetings on Wednesdays; it spoils both weekends."

[Istiblennius]

My fantasy reply to the "but my other class is cancelled" is "that's because your other professor is lazy. How about instead of complaining to me, you complain to them about not giving you your money's worth?"

Although there are all kinds of reasons why classes get cancelled, I do share a group of students with a chronic course canceller and that person is pretty dang lazy.

[dismalist]

My fantasy reply to the "but my other class is cancelled" is "that's because your other professor is lazy. How about instead of complaining to me, you complain to them about not giving you your money's worth?"

Although there are all kinds of reasons why classes get cancelled, I do share a group of students with a chronic course canceller and that person is pretty dang lazy.

Higher education is the only product where the consumer tries to get as little out of it as possible.

[Parasaurolophus]

Hello professor [misspelled], I was wondering about how we are supposed to cite the articles from the syllabus for the essay as they are in a  PDF fromat.
Thank you.

I can't even today.

[Dismal]

After releasing the midterm 2 grades on Canvas today, I received an email asking  if I was curving the grades (answer: no) as the student felt that her score was unexpectedly high.
I added the points again and she did receive the correct score.

That's it - no despair but an unexpected exchange.

[FishProf]

We have 10d remaining in the semester, and 16 of 23 students in my online course are currently failing, 10 of which have not done ANY assignments in one of the 3 categories.

[AmLitHist]

We have 10d remaining in the semester, and 16 of 23 students in my online course are currently failing, 10 of which have not done ANY assignments in one of the 3 categories.

Sounds like several of my classes, FishProf. 

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

We have 10d remaining in the semester, and 16 of 23 students in my online course are currently failing, 10 of which have not done ANY assignments in one of the 3 categories.

Sounds like several of my classes, FishProf.

Daaaang! And I thought I had it bad with some of my students. Well, I still do :) with some of them. They are totally fixated on not believing that they are failing. All I can do is deliver the grades that they earn at this point.