stan wrote:HH3 wrote:Pseudo wrote:Pag wrote:This note from a parent this morning, and the plenty of others like it:
'Can you please excuse ....... from any oral presentations today as she ate a packet of chips last night and has an extremely sore throat today".
Wow.
I trust this student will be graded 'D' or less, and a comment about non-participation in class activity will be made on the report card?
I've been told by my mother in law, who has been teaching for a very long time, that they are not allowed to write anything negative on report cards anymore. She's not happy about it.
She's also being pressured to give a kid an A, that she doesn't think deserves one.
One of the big issues is that during school years we seem to reward mediocrity. The system it seems would have us all tell someone good job for trying hard even if your not even close rather than addressing the issue at hand.
Jeez!!! I missed an oral presentation in Year 5 because of my uncle's wedding the night before, and my teacher said that wasn't a good enough excuse and failed me.
Teaching at uni level, you see the end result of rewarding mediocrity. You'd be amazed (or not) at how many people seem to be there just for the status/bragging rights - they don't seem to know what they want careerwise, or what they expect to get out of their degree. Which is fair enough; my own plans were fairly vague when I began uni, but I was at least motivated and interested in my classes. With these students, their work isn't up to standard and they don't appear to enjoy it, but it takes time for this to sink in. In English, many of them can't spell and have no concept of how to structure an essay, and nine times out of ten when you try and TEACH them how, they don't pay attention. They prefer to whinge about how much they hate the assignments and how this topic doesn't suit them. They usually end up changing subjects but I doubt it makes them any happier.
That being said, there are some who get to uni and really want to do well, but they just aren't up to it. That's the hardest part for us. There was one bloke who flooded my inbox with questions about the assignments, took copious notes in class, and when it became clear that his literacy skills were far below average, he visited the student learning centre and started working one-on-one with a tutor there. He tried his heart out but it made no difference; I had to fail him. In a way it was a relief, because as hard as it was, he wasn't up to scratch and someone had to tell him that. You don't want to discourage people from learning, but you've also got to draw the line somewhere.
Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2015 10:38 pm
And people reckon only women behave like this.