« typewriterspinnerface: part I »

ingredients of a classic teaching nightmare; or, classroom management? don’t make me laugh.

Wednesday 18 March 2009 | 5 cookies in the jar

1. Fluctuating class size. You start the dream-class with the usual number of students, but every time you look up, there are more…and more…until there are hundreds, maybe even thousands…kind of like zombies.

zombies

2. Ever-increasing class size means relocating to one or more improvised classrooms/hallways/bathrooms/football stadiums/etc. Sometimes the class is split into two or more sections and you, the instructor, must run desperately back and forth.

3. Latecomers. Students keep trickling in so that every time you finally begin lecturing, with the usual firm announcement, “Okay, let’s go ahead and get started,” you’re interrupted by door-slamming stragglers.

4. Hoarseness/inaudibility. For some reason (probably because you’re asleep), you can’t make a sound louder than a piteous squeak even though you feel like you’re screaming, which doesn’t actually matter, because:

5. Roaring ambient noise makes it impossible to hear human speech anyway (which actually is often the case at the State School, because of the air-conditioning). Besides, even if they could hear you:

6. Inattentive, indifferent students. They ignore you, turn away from you and face the back of the room, murmur amongst themselves, read, talk on their cellphones, dance, play basketball in class—while you gesticulate futilely and beg them to listen to/look at you. Cf. zombie nightmares, above.

7. One or more hostile/angry/violent students. Extra points if they have weapons. Also for some reason my own teaching nightmares often feature a vomiting/injured student, just to add to the general chaos.

8. General pedagogical unpreparedness. You have no lecture notes, or you can’t find your lecture notes, or you can’t read your lecture notes. You’re lecturing on a book you haven’t read or a course you’ve never heard of, much less prepared to teach. Students want paper grades but you haven’t read/graded/can’t find/don’t even remember assigning their papers.

9. Total eventual defeat. You give up on the idea of holding any kind of class and pretend to be disgusted with the students and throw them all out. When really you know it’s all your fault.

10. Lather, rinse, repeat. Wake in a cold sweat and realize you’re teaching in an hour, haven’t read the Blackboard assignment threads, and fell asleep with eight ungraded papers in the bed next to you.

5 cookies in the jar

  1. Lise said on Wednesday 18 Mar 2009 at 3.10 pm:

    They ignore you, turn away from you and face the back of the room, murmur amongst themselves, read, talk on their cellphones, dance, play basketball in class…

    I had to read until the end of this entry to realise you meant an actual nightmare, like the kind you have in your sleep, and not a metaphorical “nightmare” of a class—or, as I like to call it, my typical working day.

  2. unnarrator said on Wednesday 18 Mar 2009 at 6.34 pm:

    Isn’t it uncanny? I almost noted something to that effect but was trying valiantly to stay on point. Besides, others of these show up in my waking-nightmare classroom, too, including but not limited to latecomers, general pedagogical unpreparedness, and total eventual defeat.

    So far no vomiting students, though I did have a guy hawk and spit on the (carpeted) floor once, when I taught in New Mexico.

  3. Lise said on Thursday 19 Mar 2009 at 11.08 am:

    I haven’t had vomit, but one of the very little ones didn’t quite make it to the toilet in time. Yay.

  4. BêteGrise said on Friday 20 Mar 2009 at 6.27 am:

    Maybe you could just show them a DVD of To Sir, With Love every day until the term is over? If nothing else, it will re-direct the blame to Sidney Poitier (they’ll mistake him for Michael Jackson, anyway). I once got halfway through showing an old B&W film of Billy Budd to a community college class before I realized the large majority of the students were Muslims, Hindus & Buddhists—no Christ allegories were going to help me sell Melville to them.

  5. unnarrator said on Monday 23 Mar 2009 at 7.54 am:

    Oh God, if I had to watch To Sir, With Love every day (featuring the vocal stylings of Lulu!), I doubt *I* could make it to the toilet in time….


post your glowing encomium (or bitter philippic) »


Follow this heated, lively discussion through its very own feed; also, you can pingback or trackback from your own doubtlessly much more interesting site.