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

[Katrina Gulliver]

Student whose undergrad dissertation I am meant to be supervising didn't show to the group mentoring session today (I have 6 supervisees). Writes to ask if he "missed anything important". Please help me draft a reply.

[waterboy]

"yes"

[reener06]

I had one of my worst teaching days in years yesterday. Upper level methods course that I haven't taught in awhile. Full of students forced to take it b/c for various reasons, it's the only methods course offered in the department this semester. Most of these kids I've had in other classes and like them. Some are good, some are very good. Multiple ones have anxiety issues and miss class a lot and/or need lots of reassurance. One is new and very defensive about everything.

There are three reports due. First one was due 2 weeks ago. I know they waited until the last minute b/c they created a group chat mostly for access to the lab and I'm in on that. Lots of messages at midnight the day before it was due about requirements. Fine. Then I began grading. Each took me an hour, each was awful. No interpretation, despite a month of how to interpret results and 3 class periods devoted to basic descriptive statistics, plus readings and in-class exercises on how to do that, and homework, and lots of positive feedback. So, downhearted, I created a homework in which they could re-do the results section, with a handout that showed them how, to earn back the lost points. My focus is on making sure they learn to do this correctly.

In class I quickly realize how much I underestimated their abilities and how much more convoluted their analyses were. I was shocked. They averaged things that can't be averaged. They ran analyses on data from different data sets, but condensed the sets. I had to scramble in class while defensive guy is making loud noises about how it's so unfair to redo it all. Same defensive guy that sent midnight texts and blames me for all of this.

Last night, after anxious student sends three panicked emails about how she has a 4.0 and is going to fail and she just can't do it, I rewrite the handout to make it even simpler, and give an extra day to turn it in. I want to scrap the entire semester, and there is another lab report to go (with more detailed instructions) and a final paper. God help me. I'm going to redo this whole class after this semester.

It doesn't help that this state graduates almost anyone from HS so they can show a high graduation rate; that this university is the flagship of a sinking ship we call the state, and that my department doesn't allow any prerequisites so we keep class numbers up and students don't feel intimidated and drop out of the major. Ugh.

[Aster]

I was grading homework today. It was well evident that most people who actually turned it in (many did not) spent only a fraction of the required time to do it.

Indeed, it was painfully obvious that most assignments submitted this week were done in their car right before class, or literally in the few minutes in the physical classroom before I started collecting the assignments. The handwriting were very hasty scrawls. Complex components were almost all missing. Much of what was submitted showed evidence that the instructions had only been superficially skimmed.

On the plus side, this new low to student investment is much easier for me. It is much faster for me to grade mostly incomplete homework than it is for me to grade plagiarized or copied homework.

I realize that spending 5-8 hours glued to one's smartphone screen is a new normal for today's youth, but it's not doing any favors to improving academic performance or time to graduation.

[Parasaurolophus]

Student whose undergrad dissertation I am meant to be supervising didn't show to the group mentoring session today (I have 6 supervisees). Writes to ask if he "missed anything important". Please help me draft a reply.

Did I Miss Anything?

[ciao_yall]

Student whose undergrad dissertation I am meant to be supervising didn't show to the group mentoring session today (I have 6 supervisees). Writes to ask if he "missed anything important". Please help me draft a reply.

Dear Stu,

Well, what do you think the purpose of the group mentoring session was today?

That's what you missed.

[spork]

Student whose undergrad dissertation I am meant to be supervising didn't show to the group mentoring session today (I have 6 supervisees). Writes to ask if he "missed anything important". Please help me draft a reply.

Did I Miss Anything?

"You were the only student who did not attend the mentoring session. Everyone else made significant progress on their dissertations and is in good shape for completing before the deadline. You're now far behind. You might want to think about changing programs."

I was grading homework today. It was well evident that most people who actually turned it in (many did not) spent only a fraction of the required time to do it.

Indeed, it was painfully obvious that most assignments submitted this week were done in their car right before class, or literally in the few minutes in the physical classroom before I started collecting the assignments.

[. . .]

I set assignment deadlines several hours before class for this reason. Anything not submitted by the deadline, barring extreme exceptional circumstances, gets a zero.

[Katrina Gulliver]

"You were the only student who did not attend the mentoring session. Everyone else made significant progress on their dissertations and is in good shape for completing before the deadline. You're now far behind. You might want to think about changing programs."

I wish I had the nerve to send this.

[mbelvadi]

I hope you'll accept a librarian's "teaching" in this thread. I had a student come to me for help finding sources for her paper. Intro criminology class, choose a theory from the class and apply it to modern crime in Canada. She wanted to do "inherent good and evil" - her prof told her to research "demonology". I persuaded stu that he was kidding (my fingers were crossed) and after a long discussion about modern scholarly concepts of "inherent", stu was happy to leave with a lot of references to neuroscience relating to crime. I'm banging my head over the prof, not the stu.

[Parasaurolophus]

I hope you'll accept a librarian's "teaching" in this thread. I had a student come to me for help finding sources for her paper. Intro criminology class, choose a theory from the class and apply it to modern crime in Canada. She wanted to do "inherent good and p]evil" - her prof told her to research "demonology". I persuaded stu that he was kidding

My guess is that the prof probably actually said "deontology". Although I have zero confidence that someone teaching criminology has a good handle on that ethical theory.

Although demonology would be great...

[mbelvadi]

I hope you'll accept a librarian's "teaching" in this thread. I had a student come to me for help finding sources for her paper. Intro criminology class, choose a theory from the class and apply it to modern crime in Canada. She wanted to do "inherent good and evil" - her prof told her to research "demonology". I persuaded stu that he was kidding

My guess is that the prof probably actually said "deontology". Although I have zero confidence that someone teaching criminology has a good handle on that ethical theory.

Although demonology would be great...

Duh! I'm going to confirm with the stu, but I'll bet you're right!  That actually makes some sense, particularly if the prof falsely assumed that the stu meant good and evil of the actions rather than the person. Since she had in mind the person (I had to convince her that she was not going to successfully prove that most crime in Canada is caused by the fundamentally evil character of the criminals, which was what she wanted to do, especially in a sociology rather than religious studies course), "demonology" seems almost eggcorn-like in terms of how she leaped to that mishearing.

[0susanna]

Problem student-athlete turns in annotated bibliography with citation errors we have discussed how to correct in class. Since student-athlete rarely listens in class (persistently checking their phone), this isn't really surprising, but when errors are pointed out, they blow it off with "That's the way my advisor said to do it."
Me: "Your advisor isn't responsible for learning how to do this. You are. And your advisor shouldn't be telling you how to complete your assignments."
Student-athlete: "She just helped me."
Student-athlete obviously knows that athletic academic advisors (or whatever they're called) aren't supposed to be doing students' work for them, but I'd bet money that's pretty much what happened in this case.
>headdesk<

[downer]

I hope you'll accept a librarian's "teaching" in this thread. I had a student come to me for help finding sources for her paper. Intro criminology class, choose a theory from the class and apply it to modern crime in Canada. She wanted to do "inherent good and evil" - her prof told her to research "demonology". I persuaded stu that he was kidding

My guess is that the prof probably actually said "deontology". Although I have zero confidence that someone teaching criminology has a good handle on that ethical theory.

Although demonology would be great...

Duh! I'm going to confirm with the stu, but I'll bet you're right!  That actually makes some sense, particularly if the prof falsely assumed that the stu meant good and evil of the actions rather than the person. Since she had in mind the person (I had to convince her that she was not going to successfully prove that most crime in Canada is caused by the fundamentally evil character of the criminals, which was what she wanted to do, especially in a sociology rather than religious studies course), "demonology" seems almost eggcorn-like in terms of how she leaped to that mishearing.

Most moral philosophy ends up with a Platonic view that everyone aims at their conception of the good, which makes it hard for them to provide an account of evil actions or persons. They tend to end up saying it is due to the agent's ignorance. I've always liked the idea of demons who fully embrace evil, with no confusion or ignorance of what is good. So she might be better off with demonology than deontology. But she will still need a theory of how demonic possession works.

[apl68]

I hope you'll accept a librarian's "teaching" in this thread. I had a student come to me for help finding sources for her paper. Intro criminology class, choose a theory from the class and apply it to modern crime in Canada. She wanted to do "inherent good and evil" - her prof told her to research "demonology". I persuaded stu that he was kidding (my fingers were crossed) and after a long discussion about modern scholarly concepts of "inherent", stu was happy to leave with a lot of references to neuroscience relating to crime. I'm banging my head over the prof, not the stu.

When I worked for a university library, I felt like banging my head over profs as much as over students quite often.

[artalot]

Grading exams. I've been using the same type of question for 5 years; it is linked to the same reading/homework and in-class activity. We spend a whole day in class covering this concept. Every other year 90% of the students get a C or higher on this question. It's supposed to be a gimme that separates those who studied from those who didn't. This year about 40% of the students bombed it (D or below).
I have no clue what is going on. Attendance is somewhat low and I've got a few who are glued to their computers, but not 40%.