I think one of the most surprising things from this week’s readings was how it made me feel about myself as a future instructor and a former (undergrad) student. This mostly comes in response to the Lang chapter. I have noticed my strict attitude towards handling excuses for many issues, in regards to grades, deadlines, etc. I haven’t even taught yet and I feel like I’m strict. This mostly comes from the fact that I was very resentful and bitter towards other students when I was an undergrad. I was a non-traditional student with a daughter and 3 jobs and I still managed to get my sh** done on time. Why can’t they? With this attitude I formed an impression of how I would treat such issues when I was the instructor. However, reading Lang’s examples of what students were going through really made me take a step back and look at my attitude.
This brings me to my next point, which leads to the discussion surrounding “learner-centered” teaching. Those experiences that I described above formed an attitude in me. This attitude was that undergraduates are lazy and cannot be trusted to take charge of their own education. Before I am chastised for claiming to have this attitude, I should note that I hold this attitude to a much much lesser extent than I hear from a lot of faculty, not only at this school, but others as well. That said, after reading all the readings for today I feel even less strongly about this. In fact, while I was reading, I took some ideas that I will put into place into my classes. However, there are some downfalls to some of the learner-centered approach, particularly for larger intro courses like the one I have to teach. I can definitely see the benefit of the exchange of power for upper division courses and graduate courses. The lower level introductory ones would scare me a bit, though. I do not think it is because the students are stupid, but more so that they are not invested in the course if it is just a general education requirement. Furthermore, NDSU seems to have a reputation of non-involvement. I may be wrong about this and I am curious how others view the school.
I have a couple questions regarding the readings and hopefully can get some answers or opinions. First of all, I had some trouble when reading the learner-centered chapter as it seemed a bit cluttered. Particularly, where does one draw the line? The author offers a clear example of the line being crossed, but there have to be less clear areas. One of my professors as undergrad did one of the author’s suggestions and I, as a student, felt s/he allowed it to go too far. I have to be honest I lost some respect and confidence in her/his ability to teach me. A second question is in regards to excuses. Where is the line there? Lang suggests being uniform in your decisions. This seems okay, but what about those students that have real excuses? Personally, a person that just lost their mother has a better excuse than a person that wants to go hunting. Also, at what point do we just stop believing excuses? We’ve all heard the “my grandmother died”, even though she also died last year examples. Any thoughts?
I similarly feel that students should be able to get their work done without needing excuses. Aside from family emergencies, I typically figure that there’s only one good reason (but perhaps not an excuse) for wanting extensions etc... That is, when students are trying to put 100% into all of their courses and there simply is not enough time for them to complete all their work on time. In this case, the only thing getting in the way of school work is other school work. However, I am under the impression that very few students try this hard. And thus, similar to you, I am inclined to be strict. To answer your question about where to draw the line... I think that I will always believe a student if they say they have an a family emergency (and I might even be frank with them about this). First of all, I think it is good to convey your trust and use the honor system (if a student wants to fake a family members illness or death, it’s their own dignity they’re losing [if I’m using the honor system, I should probably be frank with them about this too]). Second, I don’t want to argue with students about whether or not their grandma died. Third, I do not want to accuse someone of lying about such serious issues and be wrong. This doesn’t mean that I am or will be naïve. I will look for patterns. If a student has multiple and unrelated family emergencies that happen every time an assignment it due, I may speak up.
ReplyDelete