always the hardass

I guess I'm doomed always to be regarded as the hardest instructor no matter where I teach or who teaches the same levels with me. Why am I always surrounded by people who feel the need to give EC out the wahzoo or provide final exam answers or find it necessary to coddle ostensibly adult students as tho they were in kindergarten???

I should have known Patty was a coddler the day I sat in on her lab so I could see from the students' perspective how our audio recording program worked. When she referred to one of her students as "Baby" my antennae went up only part way because I was concentrating on the software and because, frankly, here in Dixie it's not that uncommon for people to add various terms of endearment after addressing total strangers, much less students. She had started explaining to the SS how to use the software, where to click what when, and stopped for a second saying in 1st-grade-teacher-voice, "Now Melissa - are you paying attention? Now, baby, this is the kind of thing you might have trouble with so listen up!" To say nothing of the no-no of highlighting a student's technological (or other) incompetence in front of everyone else, I'm not sure but what such attitudes actually don't hinder students' maturation and development of some sense of responsibility.

The next proof at Patty's firmly being in the coddler column was the review sheet I saw on her desk the other day ready for class. It said "Final Exam Review" at the top. Imagine my face when I then noticed that it is basically a fraternal twin of our final exam - same exact formatting and same exercise setup all the way through, just the questions/cues themselves were different from the actual final exam questions. Well, frankly I AM the coordinator but it is something murky here; it doesn't mean I'm in charge of anything or the superior of the other instructors, it simply means that I get to do all the syllabi and try to talk the others into various more communicative practices or logical point breakdowns, etc., whenever possible. It doesn't mean I have the authority, certainly, to call others' activities into question, altho perhaps down the road when I'm less busy and more comfortable with the other instructors I can figure out a way to give someone a friendly hint that final exam-cloned worksheets are A Big No-No. For now, I'll choose my battles and conserve energy... and savor my firm status as Instructor Hardass.