Clearly, the students aren’t reading their own papers.
Usually, a typo like this—”Who Wants to Be a Milliner?” instead of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”–would crack me up, but now I’m depressed and looking for my lost smiley face.
It has come to my attention that maybe, like many marriages, a career in teaching isn’t suppose to last a lifetime.
I fear I am not effective enough.
Despite my efforts, completion rates are not rising in my classroom this year: they are falling. Students are stressed out, depressed, apathetic, sick, lacking health insurance, broke, unemployed, under-employed, supporting unemployed parents, unable to transport themselves to class because of cancelled bus routes and rising gas prices.
They are too busy caring for loved ones who are dying, or maybe they are so stressed out by the drama in their life they can’t think straight.
They are, of course, as always, dropping out of school to get an apartment and move out of the house. They are trying to have some fun, make their boyfriend happy, go to school, work, and keep it together at home, but they are overwhelmed, in addition to being, as we know, under-prepared.
and this is what I found: war bonnets.
Unlike peers, students are great because they still contain at least a glimmer of unadulterated hope, and in turn I hope the very best for each one that comes into my classroom, in person or cyberspace, but I am demanding. One student recently thanked me for being “firm but effective.”
The ones who are still around by this point late in the semester and even some of those who have stopped attending—I must commend them. Living in a Facebook world that does not support sustained reading, nevertheless many of my students really try to read at my request.
But they aren’t prepared to find and read an entire book on their own after the monotony and lifelessness of their K-12 experience.
Here I am, teacher/cheerleader/sergeant, administering English Boot Camp 101, the last required ENG classes most students ever take: Comp I and Comp II. They understand my request and its passion. They even want to become readers. They can see the benefits from afar–if only reading required less effort! But why start reading now for credit? They’ve gotten along so well most of their young adult educational career without really doing it.
Sadly, they have a hard time waking up to their own minds, just when they need them most.
It’s depressing to watch so many students meekly try and fail.
~ * ~
Another young black man bit the dust this week.
I am very worried about young black males in our area.
Where are they?
They aren’t many in my classroom on Day One, and they tend to register only in the single digits on Day Fifteen, if at all.
Despite the fact that this young man is very bright and articulate, he could not move himself to somehow acquire and read a book in the first three months of class. Yet he attended empty handed and fully unprepared anyway, Week 12, when most others who could not push themselves to read have given up.
Showing up as he did, completely bare handed, is a position that can result in nothing but failure in terms of coursework, as the young man fully realized, yet he still showed up, I believe, because I am tough and clearly care about the welfare of students.
There’s no getting around completing assignments, no get out reading free cards ever issued in my class.
But the student, like so many others, seemed to want even my negative attention, my firm response.
And if I did give him a get out of reading free card, I’m sure that would have been okay, too.
Outside the classroom and away from the students, it’s a completely separate much colder world.
Can you feel the clouds roll in?
It’s the time of year at Land of Motown Community College when faculty position themselves for the most kickback and the easiest teaching schedule for next year, so the talons come out. Do not step between a person able to pad their paycheck and their state of Michigan constitutionally protected pension.
Not unless you expect to bleed.
Unfortunately, one can’t mandate integrity.
~ * ~
“Who wants to be a milliner?”
I do!
Making bonnets sounds good.
Are bonnets selling?