I do know I come off as quite the beeyotch in here most of the time; I mean it IS my own personal venting arena after all! The main drawback is that people then have a wrong image of how I actually am in class; a friend recently expressed surprise at how many of the comments on me on Rate My Professor are fairly positive despite the impressive amounts of negativity I exude here in adjuncthellland. Very sneaky of me to be Mrs. Ickiness here and Mme Really-Not-That-Bad in the real world (unless you ask the Aggressive Whinies, that is, among others).
I have posted a few more positive things in the last few months and will continue to do so - it's like anything tho: most of the time when you need to spout, it's not about the good stuff! Plus most of my more positive posts have highlighted the occasional favorable student experience, but I don't often post stuff in here lauding My Self (self-defense blurbs and justification/explanation isn't the same as that of course) or even matter-of-fact goings-on to counteract all of those which lead most readers (I imagine) to believe I'm a way bigger hardass than I really am.
So now hear this... I did a potentially very nice thing today, at the risk of damaging my image as the hardest instructor in our French department (this is not a myth - I have heard this from numerous students - mostly previous students who have overheard 1st years talking now and then and email me accordingly, usually, I'm happy to say, chiming in that they agree but that they appreciated and even benefited from my class's having somewhat more rigid parameters than some others'...) Come to think of it, I did three nice things at once...
Graded the 102 test and compos last night and they were pitiful; that is, good spread but the whole thing shifted down about 10 percent from what you would see on the first test in 101. Now, this is something kind of common at the beginning of 102; half the students are still saturated and overwhelmed by the scariness of 101 (that's not sarcasm - we do these 1st year French courses at lightning speed) and the other half has forgotten everything thanks to Christmas break or summer, depending on semester. (For the record, even tho I knew all this, and again risking my hardass rep by the mere admission, I immediately started combing thru the test to make sure it wasn't at fault. I then pulled out grade records for the 12 people [half the class] who are in there and were with me last semester and did a Really Quite Anal and Paranoid comparison of their former test scores, test averages, and final course grades against this test score. Every single person was right in line with what I would expect based on their prior performance.)
So! I thought long and hard about curving and decided against it. No surprise there; I've curved exactly 3 times in my Entire Teaching Career - not THAT long but long enough to know what works and what doesn't: 12 years and counting. Two of those times were when we were still writing the stinking asinine 4-page common tests that la P used to make us do and which worked great for her hodgepodge pedagogy but did not mesh in the slightest with how the rest of the group was teaching, i.e. communicative method. When left to my own very capable devices, the fact is I write fairly short tests which are very representative of my classroom work and homework activities and usually that is borne out in the results; there aren't very often any surprises on my end when I see the resultant student performance. (...Even tho, my consistently good test-writing notwithstanding, I do tend to freak on those rare occasions when something seems amiss and start going thru the test and student grades and any other data I can get my hands on, as elaborated above, to make sure it isn't the test [i.e. Me] this time... Oh come on, you didn't know that the Best perfectionists are really just insecure paranoiacs at heart?!) The proof this time was that the two most problematic parts of this recent test were almost exactly the same as two activities we had spent a fair amount of time on in class. My conclusion: the problem is on the student end, not chez the test.
However, beyond the test itself and student prep for same, or lack thereof, there is another issue. With these results and what I know of test performance in 102 (i.e. it generally goes steadily down throughout the semester due to the cumulative nature of the material + human nature; it's almost impossible to go through without missing something now and then and that always snowballs later since Language Skill "X" is therefore not super strong for building upon with subsequent more advanced skills - so with some students test scores and general skill retention & prowess go down quite steadily and quickly and with others it only just barely goes down, but it almost always goes down). ANYWAY with these test scores, I know that a good number of these people will not be able to build upon a pretty large percentage of the current skillset, which is going to be pretty rough for their attitude the rest of the semester (not towards me or the course necessarily, tho there is that, but towards the material to come). An already very difficult row to hoe will be needing a steam shovel in a month or two (scary metaphor alert - ha). Of course in addition to attitude/morale problems many of them will really start stagnating on a practical level, skills-wise, in a little while, too (apply hoe/steam shovel metaphor again here), not to mention their dwindling chances of passing the course, tout simplement.
So I decided that since we won't have time later to revisit certain lacunae and even tho we can ill afford it now, I would figure out a way to motivate them to start taking their French studies a little more seriously, reinforce the skills to date if at all possible, and hopefully put a bandaid on their outlook at the same time. If it costs me some points here and there I think it will be well worth it whatever compromises it costs me and my image :)
Et voilà:
Compos - they need to correct and turn back in by Monday; they will get half credit added on anything corrected. If they don't know what they did wrong they are to see me and they will still get their credit even if it's a case of going through the whole thing together.
Tests - if they make an appointment and come & see me by the 15th to discuss their test and do some quick in-depth practice of problem areas I will add 10% back onto their test grade (10% of their original grade that is - I really don't think this needs explaining but several of the students were fuzzy on it so I'm clarifying here just in case - so a 60 would become a 66, etc. You guys knew what I meant, right? eyeroll) I told them they absolutely have to make an appointment for this (the hope being that they will take it seriously then) and that if they wait til the last minute not to be surprised if they find themselves SOL.
Altho I of course did not say "SOL." :)
Altho of course I wanted to. :)
Note: I would absolutely not be offering either of these options if I were teaching more than one section of 102 this semester - I'm not insane, for crying out loud! One can only be so gracious, you know... even tho over the years when I've opened similar doors for multiple sections, fewer and fewer students take advantage of it so you don't quite see the stampede to office hours that I used to see in such cases in the 90's.
I also decided to do one last thing. The bulk of their homework is out of our online workbook, which they hate (I could do a whole entry on my thoughts on this now inspired, now quite iffy and fucked-up tool and students' quite iffy and fucked-up approach to it so I won't unload this time). I have tried different approaches to this thing over the years and my current one is to give them multiple attempts on each exercise but to hide all feedback except the grade so that they, theoretically, are motivated to SEE ME for problems, which of course only 2 people have done. So there is no end to the griping since most of the other instructors, and myself last semester, set the workbook to reveal all feedback, including answers. The philosophy is that that way they can try to figure out for themselves what they did wrong but I'm not convinced that they use the answers constructively at all, which is why I changed tack this semester.
Anyway I think I kinda scared them with this part. I told them they have one chapter to prove to me that having the answers showing is really helpful to them in internalizing the skills and vocab. I reset the workbook to show answers for this chapter only and I told them if they can get their next test scores to average 5% higher overall than on this last, I will leave the feedback set that way the rest of the semester. I urged them to use the feedback thoughtfully and that if they can't figure out why their answer is wrong and the workbook's is right that they must see me for help. (Again for the record, the workbook stuff is only 10% of their final grade -divided by the 5 chapters' worth of work- so those that do just copy/paste won't be getting much for free, esp. when you factor in that they still won't have cemented any of the stuff it was supposed to help them with and will therefore come back to bite them in the ass on tests and final exam.)
I know what you're thinking. Based on what I said before about test scores going downhill normally in 102, they have precious little chance of hitting the bar. True, but honestly I'm probably going to accept something lower than the 5%. I just didn't want to admit that and have to completely demoralize them on top of their crappy current test grades by explaining to them that scores always go down. So if the next average is roughly the same or slightly higher (i.e. about 5% higher than I expect it to be rather than 5% higher than the last one) I'll still seriously consider leaving the workbook feedback all reveal-y. I really am curious about it, so we'll see. Anyway if I decide it made no difference and/or was detrimental (due to some people simply copying the answer into their final attempt without making an effort to learn from their mistake) then I'll hide answers again. If nothing else that way maybe eventually a few people will reach a point where they have to come see me out of desperation.
I've been curious about the workbook thing for ages and this might be a good chance to make a tighter comparison... or else it won't show me anything at all, which is fine, too, since in the meantime I think it will be a nice little morale-booster.
Anytime you can do that with little or no effort on your part is a win-win. So I might not be a total bitch, but don't go nominating me for Magnanimous Instructor of the Year or anything.
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