Well there were some nice ego boosts lately student-wise including a couple of new positive RMP comments (which I check out occasionally despite myself and knowing that at least 50% of the time I can bet on my ego taking a dive and several hours of serious contemplation of how I have to rethink my entire teaching strategy – yeah, for some hyper-reactive blow-off who probably never came to office hours or ever tried to talk to me about their issues during the semester). Anyway this time: yay! Also someone from last semester’s oh-so-fun 2:00 class wrote that he and a couple of others were really missing me. Frankly part of the reason they are missing me is that they don’t like their new instructor but still it was nice.
Then I ran into James from the 3pm the other day and we caught up a bit on his plans for study abroad in Spain, etc., and then as we parted I told him to keep me up to date and check out my webpage for any extra travel, student discount, hostelling, etc., info he needed and he said he wanted to keep in touch anyway… that he’s trying to keep in contact with all of his “more influential” instructors as contacts or mentors. I laughed and said it was the first time (to my knowledge) that someone has thought me influential. I still am not sure I can live up to that but it’s fun and made me feel good anyway.
Currently the classes are going pretty well – 8, 9 and 10. Crazy 8 o’clock is actually fairly awake and upbeat, tho in a respectful calm sort of way. Also lots of strong speakers in there.
9am is quite shy but I’m starting to pull them out of it. They get intimidated easily with iffy material, so every day they are a little bit different. For about a week they felt like last semester’s 11am; i.e. dead, silent, a little hostile. This Monday in addition to that I actually had kind of a talking-to with them which was not good – we were doing this activity and about 4 people in a row had no idea where we were, etc. – I think they only saw about 15% of my anger but still not good – afterwards I broke them into partners and tried to be a little over helpful to show all was well, but… Anyway I left so bummed – partly at myself but mostly because I could not figure out how to turn it around and I could see them turning into that crappy group from last semester. Wednesday I went in and the first couple of minutes they remained pretty non-reactive, etc., but after the quiz I just somehow (almost unconsciously) decided to go for broke; shifted into high gear and tried to ignore the dead faces for these random conversation questions I ask them each time. I went ahead and joked, etc., like I do with the other two classes and pretty soon they were almost having a decent time; true, not to the extent of the 8 and 10 but much better than before.
Today was much the same, so yay. Anyway it taught me that I’m still capable of rising above such situations. A big part of why the 11am last semester seemed extra crappy to me was because I knew I had contributed to it by taking their apathy personally and after a while I had stopped trying… or at least stopped trying hard enough. I would go in with a new activity and if they didn’t automatically like it I just gave up thinking “I knew it. They don’t want to put any effort towards anything and they’ll never just jump into anything and make this hour more pleasant for themselves instead of resenting it, etc.” Wednesday somehow I reverted to my less fatalist perspective of old, not expecting them to just go from dead and grumpy and shy to TOTALLY ENGAGED within the space of two questions in a new kind of activity, but I continued to try to spark them the whole hour instead of getting discouraged. No brainer that today went pretty OK as well because based on that I felt good about continuing that way instead of expecting them to just wake up and be all happy and responsive in the blink of an eye. Realized a couple of little successes were at least optimistic and that gave me fuel to go on instead of getting discouraged and giving up.
The 10am is this semester’s 2pm, but with not nearly the ability. They are kind of a combo of the 8am and the 9 with a touch of good-natured boisterousness thrown in… the good attitude of the 8’s but the language anxiety of the 9’s BUT they aren’t afraid to make mistakes like the 9’s and are willing to try to make the best of the situation. I would say their levels so far seem spot on equal to the 9’s but deciding to go ahead and embarrass oneself on occasion and to be positive about the class in general makes all the difference. That goes triple for me probably, so obviously there’s a lesson in there as I endeavor to keep on my current mindset in the 9am (and in the others should they shift a bit later in the semester, which often happens).
I do have to say there is one drawback to the 10am. There is a kid in there who has had 3 gazillion years of French, studied in a bilingual program somewhere in fact for high school, whose mother is French and who visits France on a regular basis. I tried in vain to get him to take 1020 (really he should hightail it to the 2000 level or higher) but he insisted he needed the review. I warned him he would be bored, etc…. His French is not perfect by any means and so far his quizzes have been middling but he can think on his linguistic feet better than most of these people will ever be able to. He began the semester by shouting out all the answers as soon as I’d ask anything, sometimes even when we were in an activity where I was calling on people individually. Even for English stuff he is quite the know-it-all and in addition to this his filter for smart-ass-ness is a bit skewed. (Believe me I’ve shown considerable restraint in ignoring him.) On a handful of occasions he has made smart remarks about some joke I made; twice when I was laughing at something along with a handful of students he has said, “Hmph. Not that funny.” The second time I said, “Well, Vernon, it is to us.” An added feature day before yesterday was that he pulled out a copy of The Bell Jar to read during the lesson (sure, it could have been Heinlein or something non-homeworky but still...). I should have just given him a zero for participation but I didn’t want anyone to think I had OK’d this behaviour due to his obvious knowledge, so I stopped right away and turned and asked him to please put the book away.
Anyway for the French stuff in particular with his providing the answers 0.03 nanoseconds after I ask, I finally jokingly one day in class said, “Vernon let’s give others a chance, shall we?” He seemed to get the hint for about 2 days. The next week I sent an email then to reiterate. Now this week he is back at it and now that we have more communicative activities, I often will throw a phrase out for them to use which they haven’t seen before – usually it’s a preview of something coming up so they’ll see it written and applied in a few days but when we first play with it I want to do so exclusively orally with no written crutch available. This trains their ears to try to go ahead and figure stuff out, it trains their heads that things accessed through listening can be applied automatically and they don’t have to wait til they see it, plus it trains them in general to look over the material for that day since often it’s something that’s touched on in there.
Anyway today I modeled “Qu’est-ce que tu aimes faire?” (What do you like to do?) which I was going to model with a couple of people who’ve had French before and then offer a few answers “J’aime regarder…” “J’aime écouter…” (I like to watch..., I like to listen to...) etc. As soon as we dug in someone asked what it meant and normally I would have only provided the one word they haven’t really had yet “faire” plus we would piece by piece see what the rest was (which we’ve had). This helps them learn to figure the stuff out on their own rather than just freaking out when they see a complete sentence regardless of whether they are familiar with its components or not… Well of course as soon as the question was asked, our resident French know-it-all blurted “What do you like to do?” It went downhill from there. I’m not sure if he forgot his Ritalin today or what but there were a few minutes in there where it was less like French 1010 and more like Vernon’s French Extravaganza. I was too taken aback this time to be tactful if I said anything and I knew it so at one point I just gave him a very pointed but not cross look and nodded, then went on to answer the question at hand with “I don’t want you to focus on how it’s written today. Just try to process it and we’ll see it in next week’s lesson,” which everyone seemed happy to try.
I got back to the office and sent him an email. Now for a planned digression: Dr. DiOrio told us something incredibly wise when I was TAing way back when. Someone had been talking about not having been able to grade all their students’ tests on time or something and that they had apologized to the class and explained why. Dr. DiOrio said you should never apologize to students or make excuses in such cases. She elaborated that there is no reason to; it’s none of their business, it undermines your position, and most of them don’t really care anyway. If you are late with something the most that need be said is that it’s not done yet and they’ll have it Friday (or whatever). (Obviously this protocol assumes that you are a moderately responsible person in the first place and are going to get stuff back to them in a reasonable amount of time anyway, but she was absolutely right I think.)
I bring this up because I felt compelled to justify my teaching methods in that email to Vernon, explaining why I do that oral stuff the way I do it, etc., as I asked him to please back off and give others a chance. Now I regret that part of it. There was no reason to explain all that crap to him. But I can’t do anything about it now. I don’t feel like it undermined my authority to say it or anything, it was just TMI and none of his business and wordy. Eyeroll. Oh well.
I went on to say that I’m still a bit stymied as to why he stayed in this level of French but that if he was going to be there he would have to be prepared to be bored or frustrated a fair amount of the time. I also said (I like this part) that I do not like discouraging student input but that in this case I need to respect the needs of the majority. So that he would be clear I told him exactly when and how he was allowed to respond to stuff (yes, pretty anal, but I needed to avoid leaving the teensiest grey area) :
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...you can assume that:
--unless I actually ask "qu'est-ce que ça veut dire?"* I probably do NOT want the English offered even if someone looks really stumped.
--when I ask any questions of the class at large, including "qu'est-ce que ça veut dire," you should wait a hefty moment before answering to allow for others' thought processes and/or shyness...
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So there. We’ll see what develops. The other day he left early because some friend called him with a personal crisis. He let me know he was leaving by going out into the hall and, not knocking on the door, but simply standing there staring into the classroom until I realized he was beckoning me (we have these weird little narrow windows on the classroom doors in the building and they’re often difficult to see thru – certainly it’s not easy to see that something is in the window all of sudden since they’re so small). He was absent the next two classes and then came in Weds (Bring Your Great Books Homework to French Class Day) and today (I’m A Walking Talking Translation Machine Day) he left about halfway thru class without so much as a by-your-leave. (You're right, I'm far from minding, altho his participation grade might have a different opinion.)
At least it’s interesting I guess.
...Crazy, that reaction. I must really be mellowing!
*What does that mean?
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