English 1010--Shock and Awe

Students can be frustrating, I'll give you that. Amen to both Tamar and Emily. I have three students who have never handed anything in, yet still attend class regularly. Two of the three are very involved in class discussion; another does his best to hide behind the girl in front of him. I've talked to these students, given them opportunities to make up work, offered examples, and still nothing. It blows my mind. They smile at me and offer great excuses, such as: "I lost my syllabus and just don't know what to read." (Blink. Hello.) Or: "I'm practicing disobedience." Oh, please. Points for cleverness.

I find the level of "grade apathy" amazing. I agonized over the grades I handed out last week (you all know--you got to hear me whine), but they took them without a blink. Two of the girls seemed perfectly happy with their Cs. The girl with the lowest score in the class was fine with it. Giddy, even. She told me after class that she has never read a book in her life and gets by on her "thinking power." Hmmmm. Here's one for you, sister: You're not passing the class. I'm pretty expensive entertainment.

Don't get me wrong--students do amaze and astonish me in positive ways, too. I made it through the reading responses in 30 minutes tonight--they did a wonderful job at summary, evaluation, and comparison. Students that were struggling to make the two pages are now writing well beyond. I wanted to jump up and cheer. I got essay #1 rewrites from 2/3 of the Collective Brain, and they worked their tails off. I couldn't believe the difference. They did everything I asked them to do. (They told me after class that they'd had three hours of sleep because they were working on papers until 4 a.m. This from the girls who had never stayed up past midnight until signing up for my class. Now THAT'S astonishing.)

Like Emily I am amazed at where the discussion sometimes leads us--they find arguments and parallels that I overlooked. Also, they are not as shy about disagreeing with each other as they were when we first started. Today, one of my discussion groups presented a majority opinion and a minority opinion because they just couldn't agree. It was great. Sometimes I'm shocked to find that they are the teachers and I'm doing most of the learning.