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

[Caracal]

From what I've been hearing here, a lot of you all's students seem unable to make the connection between their desired outcomes and the fact that effort needs to be expended on their part to reach these outcomes.  They're thinking just doesn't seem to join up.

Yup.  And it isn't restricted to my students, I'm seeing this all over the place.

I mean it is a basic part of learning to be an adult. Either do things and see if you can try to make the desired outcome happen, or don't do them and live with that. It is the basic anxiety behind the dreams so many of ushave where its the end of the semester and we haven't come to class or done anything. I need to get a decent grade! This was important! What have I been doing! As a person in my early 40s, I'm having that feeling about all kinds of things. "I thought I had things I wanted to publish, why haven't I written them!?" It's just that some students are trying to externalize the problem and make it about their professors or some other factor besides their own choices. I get it, it's just annoying.

[OneMoreYear]

Dear graduate student,
When I ask you to tell me about a measure you will be using in my research methods class (actual assignment more specific), I am not asking you copy and paste 3 paragraphs from an article you found into a word document and hand that in. You are expected to describe it in your own words.  If I wanted to read another person's description of a measure, the assignment would have been: locate an article about the measure and upload it. Now I need to do all the student conduct paperwork.
No love,
Dr. OMY

[the_geneticist]

Dear graduate student,
When I said "score student presentations using the rubric" why did you think that meant you didn't need to keep track of WHICH STUDENT gave which presentation?  Were you just hoping they all earned the same score?  Planning to randomly assign grades to names?
Yes, that does mean you need to go back and look through ALL of the presentations and score them AGAIN.

This quarter can't end soon enough.

[apl68]

Dear graduate student,
When I said "score student presentations using the rubric" why did you think that meant you didn't need to keep track of WHICH STUDENT gave which presentation?  Were you just hoping they all earned the same score?  Planning to randomly assign grades to names?
Yes, that does mean you need to go back and look through ALL of the presentations and score them AGAIN.

This quarter can't end soon enough.

I've noticed similar failures to put two and two together among some of our younger library staff members.  It's just remarkable the degree to which seemingly obvious things have to be spelled out when giving instructions.

At least the presentations are presumably recorded so that it's actually possible to go back through them.

[marshwiggle]

Dear graduate student,
When I said "score student presentations using the rubric" why did you think that meant you didn't need to keep track of WHICH STUDENT gave which presentation?  Were you just hoping they all earned the same score?  Planning to randomly assign grades to names?
Yes, that does mean you need to go back and look through ALL of the presentations and score them AGAIN.

This quarter can't end soon enough.

I've noticed similar failures to put two and two together among some of our younger library staff members.  It's just remarkable the degree to which seemingly obvious things have to be spelled out when giving instructions.

At least the presentations are presumably recorded so that it's actually possible to go back through them.

My impression is that young people have increasingly come to see tasks, assignments, and requirements as inherently hoop-jumping exercises lacking in any intrinsic purpose. So they don't see skipping those things as having any implicit consequences for them.

For example, students working on projects will ask "How do I do X?" to which I'll say "Remember the lab where you had to do X? Go back and look at that." Since they only do about a dozen labs in total, it's hardly like any particular one would have been lost in the multitude.

[fishbrains]

It's pretty common for a student to tell me, "Hey, that's the third time you said that!" and my response is, "No, that's at least the fifth time I've said it." Then they stare at me like I'm insane.

I'm not sure how much better I was when I was their age. Memory loss/malfunction about how smart I was(n't) back then isn't always a bad thing.

[OneMoreYear]

Colleague essentially came out of retirement this semester to provide coverage for 2 upper level specialty courses that none of us are qualified to teach (we've lost several colleagues recently to retirement and better opportunities).  Students are giving Colleague such shit that we're lucky he's not quitting. To survive the class, he's stripped the course down in service of just getting through the basic material from the text. Our chair is involved and attempting to provide support, but it's gone off the rails.  It's really unfortunate because he's a practicing professional in the field and having the opportunity for someone like him to teach these courses is something students should be begging for, not burning it all down. I completely understand that this is a departmental problem--I'm aware of the drivers that have led to this. As an NTT, I have 0 ability to spearhead the changes we need to make. I'm just watching it happen and hoping we're going to be able to reset.

[the_geneticist]

Another quarter and another batch of TAs.  Most are solidly good, a few are excellent, and there are two that are making me wish it was finals week already.

All jobs have minimum exceptions like "show up on time, prepared to do your job, and stay your entire shift".

Seriously.  I have 2 new graduate students that would get fired from the Walmart.

The list of casualties includes:
being late to teach, letting the students leave a HUGE mess (and class ended early!), ignoring the grading guidelines, ignoring the safety expectations, and showing up late with no lab coat at a required lab training.

I'm just glad there wasn't anything expensive, fragile, or hazardous in the room in Week 1.

[Aster]

There are certain "tells" that the poorest performing students will say during class that I will recognize as coming from the poorest performing students.

For the 3rd year in row, "I'm So Confused" is topping the charts.

[onthefringe]

Apparently the hill I have decided to die on is refusing to convert the documents that lay out my expectations for our class project extremely clearly into some kind of grid format so that students will be forced to acknowledge that they do actually have "a rubric" for what I expect.

[downer]

Apparently the hill I have decided to die on is refusing to convert the documents that lay out my expectations for our class project extremely clearly into some kind of grid format so that students will be forced to acknowledge that they do actually have "a rubric" for what I expect.

Who is asking for this? Admin or students?

[onthefringe]

Apparently the hill I have decided to die on is refusing to convert the documents that lay out my expectations for our class project extremely clearly into some kind of grid format so that students will be forced to acknowledge that they do actually have "a rubric" for what I expect.

Who is asking for this? Admin or students?

Students. Lots of whining about how they couldn't possibly know how to write a good paper if there's no rubric. This is despite LOTS of communication via many tracks that all the expectations for the project can be found in the posted/linked/attached document helpfully labeled "project expectations". I was venting to a colleague who pointed out that I could easily convert that document into something students would recognize as a rubric. But as noted I have, for the moment, decided this is my hill.

[FishProf]

I feel the same way about making a study guide.  They already have one.  If, that is, they took notes.  If they didn't, I don't see how a study guide would help anyway.

I have students in a course that has all open-note quizzes and exams, who still don't take notes. 

[downer]

Apparently the hill I have decided to die on is refusing to convert the documents that lay out my expectations for our class project extremely clearly into some kind of grid format so that students will be forced to acknowledge that they do actually have "a rubric" for what I expect.

Who is asking for this? Admin or students?

Students. Lots of whining about how they couldn't possibly know how to write a good paper if there's no rubric. This is despite LOTS of communication via many tracks that all the expectations for the project can be found in the posted/linked/attached document helpfully labeled "project expectations". I was venting to a colleague who pointed out that I could easily convert that document into something students would recognize as a rubric. But as noted I have, for the moment, decided this is my hill.

All power to you. Sometimes we have to cave when admin demands BS work from us, but we don't with students.

[ciao_yall]

I feel the same way about making a study guide.  They already have one.  If, that is, they took notes.  If they didn't, I don't see how a study guide would help anyway.

I have students in a course that has all open-note quizzes and exams, who still don't take notes.

Or an outline for the paper. I gave them the general outline as laid out in the textbook "On page 10 is the outline of an X plan." Each week I explain what I'm looking for in each section. It's all on the LMS, including suggested research sources. If they want to plan ahead, they can because it's all there. If they stay caught up week by week, the paper takes care of itself.

If they want to wait until the last minute and bs off of an example of another student's paper, well... I must have told the story about the student who wanted to do a pizza delivery business, found a business plan for a floral delivery business, and then replaced the word "flowers" for "pizza?"

All hilarity ensued.