December 14, 2011
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The Daily News1 The field has been lined; the stadium is filling up, and it is game on. Finals for the next three days.
2 Actually, the finals are really on the students. I gave them some light busy work, which I affectionately now call Bud Light. and called each student with missing work to my desk to see if they could turn in anything missing.
3 This is an extremely generous thing to do, and an extremely stupid thing to do. I got at least twenty new papers to grade, all because they were unconscious when the work was to be turned in.
4 It's astounding to me how some students could forget to turn stuff in. I stamp their work the day it is due, and an unbelievable amount of work that WAS done was simply not turned in.
5 Next semester I won't be so nice, because I created more work for myself by being excessively forgiving. But I know that a lot of these guys are multi-tasking to the point of senility. Some teachers are ridiculous with their expectations, and it causes my class to become less significant.
6 It's always been my contention that "rigorous" teachers are insecure people on a psychological power trip. We have a teacher that gives tons of chapters of study each night and then gives ridiculously detailed tests at least once a week.
7 As a colleague, I don't often criticize, but a couple of teachers just pound the students with almost unethical demands. It is suggested somewhere in the ESUHSD that teachers should limit homework to a half-hour a night. I can't remember where I read that, but it makes perfect sense, if you ask me.
8 Homework should NEVER require two or three hours of the students' time. To me, that is unconscionable, and an insult to the teachers who are sane. It is also abusively cruel to students who are involved in clubs, activities, sports, music, etc.
9 I guess their families and friends aren't important.
10 If each teacher gives a half hour a night, the students STILL have two to three hours of homework a night.
11 So if even two teachers give two to three hours of homework a night just to prove that they are "rigorous", the students become zombies, sleep in class, do the least they can in your class so they could bow to the queens and kings who declare themselves infallible.
12 We have them; YB had them, and every school has them. To me they are egomaniacal cretins who should be in show business or politics if they need so much "admiration".
13 Dude.
14 Get out of the business.
15 What irks me is that I have often been accused (by other teachers) of "spoon-feeding" or of making things way too easy for students.
16 Huh?
17 All I do is think up ways to keep the brighter lights completely engaged and to reach the students who might be "slow of study". I wasn't the smartest guy in the world when I was a teenager. I was great in English, but just okay in a lot of other subjects.
18 Part of it was my organizational skills, which consisted of my math homework in my back left pocket of my pants, my science homework in the right pocket of my pants, my social studies stuff in a shirt pocket, and my English homework neatly organized in my clean binder.
19 I remember distincly going up to teachers and questioning my grades, only to have them open their gradebook and show me the stuff I had missing. I couldn't remember whether I did the assignments or not, and I had no reason to think that the teacher might have screwed up.
20 Maybe that's why I'm a bit sympathetic with students turning in late work. It it's stamped, it means it was done on time. I don't always collect the work the same day it is due, so the student might have been absent when I collected it.
21 And every couple of weeks I tell them to hand in anything with a stamp. I also have make-up vocabulary at lunch every single Thursday. And student STILL don't remember, or forget to come in to take a make-up test.
22 So next semester I won't be quite as kind. It's just that I see a LOT of students who are getting juked by the "rigorous" teachers, and their ability to multi-task has been completely distorted. They are going a hundred miles an hour every which way. They look absolutely like zombies.
23 And people will say, "Well, they have to learn responsibility."
24 I don't teach responsibility. I teach English.
25 It's funny, because I'm often asked by people who find out I'm a teacher, "What do you teach?"
26 My answer is always this: "Students." It's never smart-alecky or anything, and most people love the answer.
27 I love the answer too, because it is exactly how I feel. The students are my priority. My ego or whatever is way down the list. I simply want my students to learn the subject I have been hired to teach. I believe I do that, and do it on a daily basis.
28 My classrooms have always been a bit of a safe haven for students who get abused daily by tyrants and megalomaniacs. I never mention other teachers to them, nor do I ever criticize other teachers or their methods.
29 But I'm not afraid to post this publicly, since I am using no names.
30 And really? I really wish more teachers would teach students.
31 They would be much happier with their lives.
32 I gottago. It's the morning of, and the field has been lined; the stadium is filling up.
33 Game on.
34 Peace.
~H~
