Skip to main content

Did we do anything in class?

I often get questions phrased like this:

“I have to be absent Friday. Are we going to do anything?”
“I was sick yesterday. Did anything happen in class?”

Teachers do not react well to questions like these. We’re tempted to say, “Nothing happened at all. We sat there counting our fingers as usual.” But that wouldn’t be helpful.

Where the question comes from

I have to assume that the student asking the question is genuinely interested in keeping up with the work. That’s good.

I suspect that some high school teachers don’t have enough material planned, so they simply tell you to do your homework in class (so nothing really did happen—it was just an empty hour). I also suspect that some high school teachers do not publish lesson plans or assignment schedules, so every day is a surprise to the students (and possibly to the teacher as well). If a high school kid misses a day of class, the reading assignments, homework assignments, and major paper assignments also get missed.

Neither of those is true in college. We only have three hours per week to work with, and we’re very conscious that we can’t get everything done in that time, so you’ll never have a “homework day” in class. We also must give our supervisors a planned-out syllabus at the start of the semester, so you will probably never arrive in a college classroom where the teacher hasn’t a clue how to fill the hour.

The bottom line is that yes, we are going to do something in class. Every single time we meet.

I suspect that the students who ask the question that way aren’t trying to be insulting. They are simply used to an education environment in which many classes are time-fillers, not places to actually learn anything.

Figuring out what we did in class

A surprising number of my students don’t realize that our Blackboard site (including the links to the daily schedule included in each week’s folder) lists all the readings we do. Start there.

Let’s not forget friends

One of your best resources is a smart pal who can tell you what happened in class. You want the attentive person, not the goof-off who is sending Tweets, looking at porn, or sleeping. You don’t even want the person who spends the hour studying for the Principles of Marketing test that’s coming in the next hour. You want someone who is actually paying attention to English. If someone asks a good question in class or the teacher gives a memorable illustration, your smart pal is your best hope for getting the information. If you’re really lucky, you can find someone who takes notes!

Why I won’t type out my notes for you

After only a couple of classes, you should have realized that I am not reading from a typed manuscript. I don’t even use a detailed outline very often. Much of the time, I’m using the material on the screen as my outline, and the extra comments and illustrations are impromptu. That means that to give you my entire lecture, I would struggle to remember, type the whole thing out, and hope that I had included everything. That sounds like a couple of hours of work.

Did your high school teachers REALLY type out their notes for you if you missed a class??

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Getting Your Computer Ready for School

Back when I was a student, everyone packed up their portable typewriter for the move to campus. Lots of people got a new typewriter as a graduation gift, but I didn’t. I ended up using one we bought when I was in high school. The story is probably the same for you, except that it’s a computer, not a mechanical typewriter. Whether you just bought a new one or kept your old faithful companion with all of its stickers, you need to do a few things to get the machine ready for college. Getting Old Faithful ready for college Is Old Faithful sick? If the machine crashes a lot, has trouble (and takes a long time) doing things, or pops up weird ads to play poker or look at porn, you probably have a virus. (You just had to download that fancy screensaver, didn’t you?) Take a deep breath—bite the bullet—pay the computer repair shop to clean it up for you. Now that Old Faithful is feeling better … Back up the really important stuff. (Your only
1 comment
Read more

Lunchroom Legends about College

A lot of fake news circulates concerning college life. I’m not sure where all of this comes from, but kids seem to tell each other these lies—and you need to ignore them. Spoiler Alert: Pretty much all of the legends below are quick routes to failing a course or flunking out entirely. Don’t believe them. College attendance doesn’t count Yes it does, in two ways. In our course (and in many courses) attendance is part of the grade, and unexcused absences count against you. And obviously, if you weren’t here and the teacher said something you need, that hurts too. Some teachers don’t appear to take attendance, but they really can—they just know who is supposed to be in their small classroom. (I’m not that good. I will usually call roll.) You only think that absences don’t count against you because we don’t have an assistant principal phoning your mother. You are an adult now, and you should know how much absences hurt your grade. Strolling i
Post a Comment
Read more

Where is our Zoom link?

I will get this question several times during the semester. “I have to be absent on Friday. What’s the Zoom link for that class session?” There isn’t any. During the pandemic quarantines, we got used to the idea that “going to class” meant turning on the computer and logging in (and often it meant turning off the camera and microphone and leaving the room). It was pretty rare for those sessions to be very productive or educational, and every teacher I know agrees that those Zoom students really didn’t do too well. Setting up a Zoom session so I can do a “talking head” presentation from home is pretty simple, but doing a classroom session is much more complicated. (When I taught at the University of Akron, I did two semesters of similar teaching, and the university supplied a technical assistant to simply manage the equipment and software for the whole class session.) So the answer to the question is that we don’t have a Zoom session for every class
Post a Comment
Read more