The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I guess in general, in teaching, I’ve been lucky.

I’ve never really had any problem students. Nobody who was actively trying to disrupt my class or anything, you know? I had some people who cracked jokes and stuff? But that’s just fun, and most of them would contribute for serious as well. I welcome that sort of person. I am that sort of person sometimes.

This semester, I don’t know. Today’s reading class went REALLY badly, both because of disruptions and it throwing me off my game enough that I couldn’t think of anything else useful to do. (Okay, the fact that I am really feeling fairly sick probably didn’t help!) But I have these two guys. They don’t do their homework, and they sit in class and they talk the whole class. It’s not subtle in a class of 6 people to do that. When I have to talk over them, and they’re not doing a very good job at trying to whisper, that’s a problem.

Normally I’ll do one silly thing, or I’ll just stop and stare for a moment, and that snaps people out of it, and they’re no longer a problem when this happens. I started first for calling on them to answer something from homework I knew they didn’t do, so they’d pay more attention. Their reaction was actively complaining. “I wasn’t here for last class, why would I have the homework done?” To which I responded “Because you were here Tuesday, and I post assignments two classes ahead. You knew what was due.” To which they said they didn’t have any way of knowing and I was wrong. So I pointed out they were wrong, and moved on. It didn’t stop them from talking. I stared at them, silently, in the middle of a lecture. Stopped them for mere seconds. I stopped them and said “Hi, how are you doing? Everything going okay? Comfortable?” Again, only stopped them for moments. I did my hi routine again, and one of them said to me “Is this some sort of sarcasm thing?” That caught me off guard. I said “No, just wondering what’s going on.” They stopped talking then, but they were just actively doodling and not giving a shit the whole time.

I’ve never been bothered by underachievers before. That’s their choice: they can waste their money and not learn anything if they want. But what they were doing just felt so… active. It felt different. It felt like they were trying to get in my way. I didn’t understand why. They could go get a fucking burger or something and get out of my classroom if they didn’t even give two shits about what I was saying. I wouldn’t pester them about it. Hell, one of these guys has just walked right out of the class in the middle of an activity with no explanation, and I could see him outside the window just chatting on his cell phone happily (as in, it really didn’t seem like an emergency to me!). I didn’t give a shit about that. Do it, dude! Just leave! Do what you want!

Whatever. Just… don’t try to fuck up my class, okay? I am trying to help people here.