Thursday, May 17, 2007
not bitter!
Following on to Bev's post [I sure do post a lot in response to Bev. Bev is pretty darn cool!], I would just like to note that I am not bitter.
I actually just typed "I am not butter" before I backspaced and corrected myself. I'm not butter, either.
Sure, the end of the semester is crappy what with the students who just drop off the face of the earth or choose to do a piss-poor job on their final paper because something else is "more important" ...or 10 times more important...or they mistake a city for a reporter...or they miss the point of summarizing...or, well, you get the picture.
But hey...I did what I could. Could I have done more? Probably. Could they have done more? Certainly. But we did what we did. I know that everyone who tried to be student-like ended up in a better place compared to the starting point. Some only moved a few inches, but some moved a few miles. Can't help everyone, can't please everyone, can only do your best.
So, I'm not bitter (which is a good thing since I'm only starting this long academic journey). Not by a long shot. Not even during the holistic grading norming session when the example of the "1" (out of 6) essay came from this student of mine.
I prefer to look at the positives. I don't know all of the positives because I haven't seen the grades for the final exams besides the aforementioned 1/1 (2 == F) and some single scores on exams I had to give to another grader because they belonged to my students. One kid, who had been riding the C bench all semester (it's an A/B/C/NC course), wrote a 4 essay...a pleasant surprise.
Really, at the end of the day, I can only hope for some positive comment such as this one from a student who emailed me today:
I actually just typed "I am not butter" before I backspaced and corrected myself. I'm not butter, either.
Sure, the end of the semester is crappy what with the students who just drop off the face of the earth or choose to do a piss-poor job on their final paper because something else is "more important" ...or 10 times more important...or they mistake a city for a reporter...or they miss the point of summarizing...or, well, you get the picture.
But hey...I did what I could. Could I have done more? Probably. Could they have done more? Certainly. But we did what we did. I know that everyone who tried to be student-like ended up in a better place compared to the starting point. Some only moved a few inches, but some moved a few miles. Can't help everyone, can't please everyone, can only do your best.
So, I'm not bitter (which is a good thing since I'm only starting this long academic journey). Not by a long shot. Not even during the holistic grading norming session when the example of the "1" (out of 6) essay came from this student of mine.
I prefer to look at the positives. I don't know all of the positives because I haven't seen the grades for the final exams besides the aforementioned 1/1 (2 == F) and some single scores on exams I had to give to another grader because they belonged to my students. One kid, who had been riding the C bench all semester (it's an A/B/C/NC course), wrote a 4 essay...a pleasant surprise.
Really, at the end of the day, I can only hope for some positive comment such as this one from a student who emailed me today:
Honestly, you made it well worth having to come to class @ 730 in the morning! I had a blast and I thought I would let you know that! It was really fun, even the times when I was the only one who got your jokes!Note to self: work on jokes and possibly an exercise in the use of the exclamation point, although in this instance I'm totally fine with it.
Labels: teacher-like