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teaching the studentlets
Oct. 23rd, 2006 10:05 pmIt's ten and I'm sitting in bed with t'laptop. I am exhausted. This full-time work malarkey is an exhausting business, even without the Line Managers of Horror breathing down my neck. The students were fun today but even so, 'tis a tiring business, this teaching business. I did alternatives to Hollywood narrative today, and showed clips from Ozu's End of Summer, Godard's Pierrot le fou and Tarkovsky's Solaris. I cheat: I haven't even seen all of End of Summer but seeing the clip twice in a row I really wanted to. It's a rather weird, slow, compelling film making, with people framed by late 1950s curtains and strange yellow vases.
Then they had to discuss the reading, and nobody had done the reading, so I made them do the reading in class. *sigh* What is it with these students? These days they are paying for their degree, so why aren't they doing their work?? Don't they want to get the maximum back for their money? They are very young, that's what, and they don't think like that. One of them actually said, 'I wasn't here last week'. I felt like appending the 'Miss' for him. Yeah, right, and the dog ate it, and um, it's written in your module booklet wot u can read even if you weren't there last week.
I don't scold, though. This is a wise thing I learned years ago doing a seminar at the Institute for Latin American Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. The young lecturer who ran the seminar never got annoyed with anyone for not having done the reading; she always respected that we had a life and good reasons for not reading, and discussed the text with us anyway. This made me feel bad because I never did have good reasons for not reading, and it spurred me on to do the reading for next time. Getting told off doesn't help so I don't do it, except in a mock-shocked humorous way (pretending to faint, or telling students who haven't read the text to sit together in the naughty corner).
Then I pretend that I know they have good reasons or feign self-blame ('my instructions were probably not clear enough') and hope that the Protestant guilt trip will kick in. And actually, my instructions probably weren't clear enough. The thing is you have to train studentlets as you would pets. I set them a text to read last week but we did not discuss it in class so they evidently learned that texts needn't be read. This was Bad Training. I must remember the golden rule of first semester students:
1) Give them tonnes to do at home in the first 5 weeks.
2) Give them writing to do. Collect it. Comment on it.
3) Give them reading to do. Give them study questions on the reading with page references. Discuss it in class.
4) Spell out everything they have to do 3 x per session.
5) Schedule one task only to do per session. (This week I asked them to bring in a DVD and read a text. This overloaded their poor brains. They all brought in their DVDs! Also, then there was no time to watch everyone's clips as we had to read the un-read text in class.)
It amuses me that I have so many students on my Flist and read the grass from the other side. I have to say that LJ has changed my attitudes to students. After all, behind every hapless first-semester's face could lurk a potential slashbaby.
Speaking of which: Last week, after a film screening of Run Lola Run, one of the students came up to me and said, 'That was amazing, the way Lola controlled everything in the end, all the powers she had, very Mary Sueish.'
Very what?? I kept my composure, though, and just nodded blandly. Later I wondered if I should have outed myself. She seemed bizarrely confident that I would know what this term meant, which indeed I did. Mary Sue indeed. Gads, it's like having a gaydar: the slashdar. The Cor-I-wonder-what-fandom-she-is-in-dar. It makes the gap between Authoritative Lecturer and Guileless Studentlet shrink somewhat.
I used to be paranoid about outing myself to students in fandom. I used to pretend I was younger than I am until I discovered that loads of people were also not younger than I am, *g*. So now, hey, this is the grass from my side! And why oh why, dear students who are on my Flist, do you not do your reading?? Well, ahem, no doubt everyone on my Flist does their reading all the time so wouldn't know...
Then they had to discuss the reading, and nobody had done the reading, so I made them do the reading in class. *sigh* What is it with these students? These days they are paying for their degree, so why aren't they doing their work?? Don't they want to get the maximum back for their money? They are very young, that's what, and they don't think like that. One of them actually said, 'I wasn't here last week'. I felt like appending the 'Miss' for him. Yeah, right, and the dog ate it, and um, it's written in your module booklet wot u can read even if you weren't there last week.
I don't scold, though. This is a wise thing I learned years ago doing a seminar at the Institute for Latin American Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. The young lecturer who ran the seminar never got annoyed with anyone for not having done the reading; she always respected that we had a life and good reasons for not reading, and discussed the text with us anyway. This made me feel bad because I never did have good reasons for not reading, and it spurred me on to do the reading for next time. Getting told off doesn't help so I don't do it, except in a mock-shocked humorous way (pretending to faint, or telling students who haven't read the text to sit together in the naughty corner).
Then I pretend that I know they have good reasons or feign self-blame ('my instructions were probably not clear enough') and hope that the Protestant guilt trip will kick in. And actually, my instructions probably weren't clear enough. The thing is you have to train studentlets as you would pets. I set them a text to read last week but we did not discuss it in class so they evidently learned that texts needn't be read. This was Bad Training. I must remember the golden rule of first semester students:
1) Give them tonnes to do at home in the first 5 weeks.
2) Give them writing to do. Collect it. Comment on it.
3) Give them reading to do. Give them study questions on the reading with page references. Discuss it in class.
4) Spell out everything they have to do 3 x per session.
5) Schedule one task only to do per session. (This week I asked them to bring in a DVD and read a text. This overloaded their poor brains. They all brought in their DVDs! Also, then there was no time to watch everyone's clips as we had to read the un-read text in class.)
It amuses me that I have so many students on my Flist and read the grass from the other side. I have to say that LJ has changed my attitudes to students. After all, behind every hapless first-semester's face could lurk a potential slashbaby.
Speaking of which: Last week, after a film screening of Run Lola Run, one of the students came up to me and said, 'That was amazing, the way Lola controlled everything in the end, all the powers she had, very Mary Sueish.'
Very what?? I kept my composure, though, and just nodded blandly. Later I wondered if I should have outed myself. She seemed bizarrely confident that I would know what this term meant, which indeed I did. Mary Sue indeed. Gads, it's like having a gaydar: the slashdar. The Cor-I-wonder-what-fandom-she-is-in-dar. It makes the gap between Authoritative Lecturer and Guileless Studentlet shrink somewhat.
I used to be paranoid about outing myself to students in fandom. I used to pretend I was younger than I am until I discovered that loads of people were also not younger than I am, *g*. So now, hey, this is the grass from my side! And why oh why, dear students who are on my Flist, do you not do your reading?? Well, ahem, no doubt everyone on my Flist does their reading all the time so wouldn't know...