Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Student Musings

I've only done the bare minimum on my blog recently, which usually means Dreaming of France, and sometimes Tuesday Intros, just because books are still available to distract us from things.
Of course, I'm still teaching college (university) and the students frequently either infuriate me or delight me.
Like the student last Friday who walked up to the desk to turn in his assignment.
Student: I just wrote down some ideas instead of a whole counter argument paragraph.
Me: That was the whole point to write the counterargument and the rebuttal.
Student: Oh, I wasn't really listening.
Me: (tearing my hair out)
We only had class on Monday this week because of Thanksgiving (Lucky me!).
This is a class selfie from a long ago class. My current classes
have 15 to 20 students in them, but it's the only class picture I have.
One of my students, Tyler, who has missed a lot of classes, stood in front of my desk with an essay in his hand. "I'm so sick. The only reason I'm here is because of you," he said. I could tell that he had a cold, runny nose, sneezing.
"Well thank you," I responded. Then I added the same thing I tell my children, "If you make sure you don't miss classes unless you're sick or an it's emergency then it isn't a big deal when you do miss because you have a cold."
As he started to walk back to his desk, I called out, "One of the students in my 8 o'clock class has chemotherapy every week and he's still in class every day, but thanks for coming while you have a cold."
Nothing like a little guilt to make students feel bad.

I don't want you to think that all of my students are slackers though. I was chatting with my class about how happy I was to spend Thanksgiving with only my husband and my three children. I said that after dinner, we'd have game night. Then I pondered how happy my 24-year-old, 23-year-old and 20-year-old would be to stay home and play games with their family.
"Wow! You have kids that old?" one young female student asked. "I thought you were like 30."
Her grade is now being adjusted upward.

The semester is nearly over now, three more weeks,
and aside from one student who emailed to complain that I shouldn't have talked to the class about the election, my students have pretty much been a delight this semester.
Hope it's the same in January when we start all over again.

4 comments:

Just Me said...

Lol. I so enjoyed this posting. It was as if I was there in the room with you.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing this! Students can be so delightful and so infuriating. This is such a great reminder.

Paulita said...

Just Me and Francetaste, Thanks for reading and being part of my online life. Sorry if all of my posts have been kind of downers recently. I'm working on it.

But you are in France, Madame said...

Yes, the 'ups' can be truly magical and the 'downs' so demoralising. There is no doubt that teachers give a lot of themselves both physically and emotionally. Time to take a break over the holiday period.

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