Viva I’m surprised you are shocked by this behavior, if you’ve been teaching long you’ve lived a very lucky existence.
The kid is consistently whining, lying, deceiving et cetera to get out of doing work or to get out of attending class. This isn’t a new thing, it isn’t bullying, and it’s not like it’s so revolutionary or even out of the norm that it deserves a pitting.
What’s even more hilarious is seeing you denigrate an institution purely because it is a community college, without taking into account the needs that the institution was created to serve.
No-one ever claimed it was Princeton or Berkeley, dickhead. But, as a Community College, it has a particular set of educational aims and responsibilities, and if Yamirskoonir’s description is any indication, it is fulfilling them admirably.
You’re the sort of moron who would laugh at a $14,000 Honda because it doesn’t have the performance of a $120,000 Ferrari and the comfort of a $90,000 Mercedes, completely ignoring the fact that the three vehicles were created to serve very different markets at very different price levels.
I think many people here would not consider him a bully. I wouldn’t. But bullying is in the eye of the beholder, so it seems to be right from your perspective. It also sounds like he got over the bullying and is just obnoxious now.
I have a comment on the flex time debate. In the early days, flex time meant that instead of coming in at 9 every day and leaving at 5:30 you could come in at 10 and leave at 6:30 - so you could be late for flex time. Things have gotten a lot more relaxed now, and flex time kind of means stay at least as long as the minimum either at work or at home. So everyone is right.
I went to a community college for a semester.
And I had some of the best teachers I’ve ever had. They were professionals in their fields, not just academics. And they loved teaching; they gave attention to every student.
Meanwhile, students at Harvard complain that they have little contact at all with the professors and are mostly taught by graduate students.
Thanks mhendo and Nightime, you beat me to it.
And Martin Hyde, I would put forth that this particular school is a great institution of learning – not only for those who wish to further themselves in their jobs or careers and create growth, but more importantly, for those who actually want to fucking LEARN SOMETHING beyond the high school required curriculum, and can’t afford Harvard or Princeton. Community college is their best shot at doing something to better their lives, and they have the right to expect an excellent education there. You seem to wish them to adopt an attitude like: “Oh yeah, sure I want to have that degree in biophysics someday, or possibly make a six figure salary doing something I love, but NO – I can only afford community college, so I must be a fucking loser, and accept that I’ll receive mediocre instruction that will directly contribute to my position as burger-joint manager.”
Fuck you for your elitist attitude, and by extension, fuck anybody who believes education should be only for the rich.
And for those of you not aware: The Cal State University System has been facing a budget crisis of proportions not seen for decades. My own university froze admissions two years ago and kept them frozen for seven months, since we could not afford to provide more instruction for a higher enrollment, let alone our existing enrollment. For the first time since the seventies, High School applicants have been receiving letters saying: “Well, you’re perfectly qualified to attend our institution, but sorry! We don’t have room for you, so why not run off to a JC and check back with us in two years.” For tens of thousands of California graduating seniors this year, community college is the only option.
I gotta pile on too…most people that attend JCs are the ones who weren’t the brightest, the most ambitious, or even the most academic…they were however, the ones who decided to improve their own knowledge, their own job/life skills, their life situation as a whole…they are comprised of people who decided to make something of themselves when they didn’t take full advantage of AP classes in high school; some of them totally pissed away the whole high school learning process altogether. They are to be commended, not scoffed at.
Do you really have a problem with people who want to improve themselves and the methods that are available to them?
As for my guesses (RCC or Mt.SAC), was I right, or way off?
Bill H.: Do you have regular (or as-needed) staff meetings with your direct reports? Would you allow a person to be chronically late to them? (assuming the student the OP mentions chooses to be late because he chose a class he knew he would be late to.) If you confronted your employee about being chronically late, and his response was that his department was meeting their goals, would you then allow him to arrive late to the meetings without criticism? Would you not hold it against him in any way when determining raises, promotions, reviews, etc.?
What “deserves” a Pitting? There’s quite a bit of ranting in this forum, and not always over something that others would necessarily consider a big deal.
Sure, I’ve heard a few complaints over the past 14.5 years. But never before have I heard a student insist that he has a “right” to be chronically late due to religious activities and then act insulted when I tell him there is no such right. That he wants to escalate the argument and keep adding fuel to it every week is also a new one on me. Out of all the students I have this semester, he is the only one with this attitude. That’s why I noticed it.
Indeed. We’ve got so many students now that we can’t even provide enough core classes for everyone enrolled here. So the two-year plan often turns to three years or even more, and that’s before university transfer.
The campus where I now work is the same one I graduated from with an A.A. years ago. I transferred to a Cal State campus (with which Yamir is quite familiar) to obtain a B.A. and an M.A. Many of my colleagues took similar routes. Of course, that would make us all a bunch of losers since we went to b.s. schools.
Fair enough! I would venture a guess that he was attempting to either garner sympathy or was being a passive-aggressive sh!t. I hope you’re rid of him soon.
Er… so what were the “non-BS” schools that you were alluding to? The great institutions of learning that had no attendance policies whatsoever? I’m having trouble finding any universities that don’t have some sort of attendance policy.
Here’s part of the Student Handbook from Harvard
Check out that first paragraph. Students aren’t even allowed to be out of the immediate vicinity of Cambridge for extended periods without permission from the Dean.
Yale’s policy in the Instructor’s Handbook appears a little more lax, saying they don’t enforce a college-wide attendance policy at the administration level. But it does indicate that it’s perfectly reasonable for instructors to have class attendance requirements, as long as it’s detailed on the syllabus.
And here’s one from Princeton’s Undergraduate Announcement document. Scan down the page a bit and you’ll find this:
Wow – this one even specifically mentions that non-attendance might affect a student’s grade. And at Princeton. Must be one of those BS schools. What a dump.
I find that most universities (yes, the major ones, not just the community colleges) have attendance policies of some sort. They don’t usually mandate grade penalties, but many reserve the right to drop a student from courses for continued non-attendance. And they generally leave it up to the instructor’s discretion (or perhaps the departments themselves) to decide what affect attendance (or the lack thereof) will have on grades. And the wording of these policies usually sound like the university considers it reasonable for teachers to require attendance, and to have non-attendance affect grades in some way.
My own university included (which is a major state university).
Personally, I don’t take daily attendance in my courses, as I usually have pretty large enrollments – that level of monitoring is not worth my time and effort. I typically know who doesn’t attend on a regular basis, though – easy, based on who’s left in the stack of unclaimed test papers that I bring to class to hand back every week. Also, I have TAs that teach weekly recitation (lab) classes, smaller groups, and I will give them in-class graded exercises to complete from time to time. And while I occasionally get a student who attends seldom but still manages to learn the material, most of the time there’s an obvious correlation between the non-attends and the lower test scores. That works fine for me – so no, I do not give specific class “credit” for daily attendance, but according to my university policies, it would not be unreasonable for me to do so, as long as it was specified on my syllabus.
glilly wrote
Yes. No. No. It absolutely would affect his potential for raises and advancement.
I’m not saying noone should ever be required to be on time for anything. Far from it.
Bill H., I would like some clarification on your position.
You seem to suggest that attendance should not be a requirement of a college course, and that the only items subject to grading are overall knowledge of the subject material. However, I’d like to understand better what you mean, so I have this question for you as a businessman:
When you are about to hire an employee from any community college, state college or university, and you see the student has a degree in a particular major, what does that mean to you? What does it mean when the student has his degree but only has a B average?
Does the grade only have meaning to you as a mercury thermometer reading of the volume of the student’s knowledge, or do you also make some assumptions like the potential employee’s sense of responsibility and dedication, drive, thoroughness, ability to follow instructions, etc?
Fish wrote
Yes, but… I’m not saying that students shouldn’t be required to show up for relevant work, such as tests, quizzes, peer-reviews, active discussions, and other participatory activities. For times where a student’s active involvement is not required, I don’t see a reason to grade them on whether they are there.
Some classes will require more of this participatory time than others. A math class may require no time in the class except for tests. A spanish speaking class may require a lot of time where students are speaking to each other.
If a teacher can truthfully say “100% of my class time requires the student’s active participation”, then fine, they can grade based on attendance with my blessing. But I’m doubtful there are such classes, and I’m less doubtful that the class taught by our favorite OP is one of them.
Most of my hires are not fresh grads, and for those positions I skim the education and don’t even look at the grade. Once someone has been in the work force for a few years, the education is pretty much irrelevant to me.
For fresh grads, I look for relevant coursework. In my case, I look at the GPA if the candidate chooses to put it on the resume, but if they don’t I don’t ask about it. I probably should, actually, and I’m sure many empolyers do. But for me, the main question is, did they do course work and projects which are relevant, and more importantly deep. The deep part is pretty key. Anybody can sail through college just doing what’s required. I want to see somebody who made choices in the courses they took, or the work choices they made in those courses that lean towards interesting and hard. And I want to see that sort of activity outside of school reflected on the resume.
These qualities you mention are very important to me. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I’d much rather have an employee with dedication and drive than domain knowledge. Another key attribute is the ability to learn quickly, which again for me at least can be more important than knowing things that are relevant to performing the job.
I don’t believe that any of those qualities are (or can be) reflected in a grade. Those things you see in the resume as relevant extracurricular activities or details of choices the candidate made in school work. And these qualities are much better seen in an interview.
Your “100% of class time” expectation is ridiculous. Of course there are times in every class when only the teacher will be talking.
But there are many, many humanities courses where 100% of classes (i.e., every single class meeting during the course of the semester) requires students’ active participation.
I’m teaching a course in American Intellectual History this semester. The class meets once a week for two and a half hours. Each lesson involves some time in which i lecture formally to the class, or hold forth extemporaneously, and some time where the whole class is involved in a discussion in which every student is supposed to participate.
While the exact ratio of lecture to discussion might vary from week to week, every single class over the course of the semester follows this format. Discussion time usually takes up at least half of the time every week, and students are required to make contributions in class that demonstrate that they have done the reading and can understand the concepts with which we are dealing. If certain students don’t participate, i will call on them by name, even though i prefer not to do that if it can be avoided.
Of course i’m not anal enough or unrealistic enough to expect every student to show up to every class. I know students get sick or have personal crises or whatever, and one or two missed classes is fine. I’ll bet the OP follows a similar strategy. But if you miss more than a few classes, then you cannot maintain adequate involvement in class discussion, and you miss out on many key aspects of the course.
I would argue that your position and viva’s are not much different. You both require a certain quality of deliverable (project/paper) with a deadline, but give considerable flexibility in the execution. You both assess/grade the employee/student primarily on those results. You each have information that you feel is essential to give, so you have periodic staff meetings/classes. How well the information was consumed is difficult to evaluate in the project/paper, so you both account for systematic tardyness in evaluations/grades.
(By the way, I used to agree with you completely until a couple classes in grad school where the subject matter didn’t lend itself well to tests. The main learning was done in case study discussions, and much of our grade was based on class participation. Attendance was part of participation. So now I’m on the fence.)
I must get a better handle on previewing after using that reply button.
I do—because I believe a large part of a student’s value to any employer is based on how quickly he learns new material and how well he follows instructions.
A student who fails even to follow the most basic of attendance rules fails to show the latter, making it impossible to fairly judge him on the former.
There are indeed such classes: a choral ensemble comes to mind, or a theater arts class. I won’t go so far as to say the OP’s course is such a one, but clearly the rules were made by the state and not by her personally.
Then I entirely fail to see why you’re complaining about how a subject is graded.
I agree with you here. A five-step grading tier is a poor way to capture a student’s performance. Some schools are noted for handing out, in lieu of grades, a written paragraph (or page!) of the teacher’s opinion about the student’s progress.
That doesn’t mean employers even bother to read them: for some management and hiring types, if it can’t be quantified or summarized, it’s not important.
Since it seems that Bill H. is capable of responding to my questions, as long as other people post them, my conclusion is that I can only contribute abuse to this discussion.
Therefore: Asswipe. Hypocrite. Moron. Phony. Liar. You suck diseased moose cock, Bill H. I wouldn’t hire you to swab out my toilet with your tongue. Because of your obviously traumatic experience absorbing the information that your college teachers were in some sense rightfully exercising authority over you when you were a student, you have reached the ludicrous conclusion that they lack the authority you unthinkingly assume any business-person routinely has over those he or she manages. In short, you have slobbered incomprehensible drivel all over this thread, and I wish you would bang your forehead against some immovable yet jagged object for a couple of hours so we might get back to the OP.
Now back to our regularly scheduled Pitting.