fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2667 ]

[ SECRET POST #2667 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2667 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

__________________________________________________

09.

__________________________________________________

10.

__________________________________________________

11.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 041 secrets from Secret Submission Post #381.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yeah, well, instructors really hate the fact that 3/4 of the class is sitting in silence not participating.

when there are clearly people that know.

I assure you sempai has noticed you. I also assure you that know-it-alls who think they're experts on the subject when really they've just managed to finish the day's reading are somehow even more annoying than the silent stonefaces.

Edited 2014-04-22 23:22 (UTC)

Like I said, I don't mind cold calling if its just a single question per person. Its when they clearly don't know the answer and yet the professor keeps at them that it bugs me. That isn't helpful for anyone else in the class and I don't think its really useful for that person either.

You don't have to think you're an expert to like to answer questions if you think you have an answer.

It's really not. I had a prof do that and it would last several long, embarrassing moments. The student gives one answer after another until the prof says in an annoyed voice, "Now you're just guessing." Well, no shit. If they had the answer, they would have given it about five minutes ago.

Question: what do you think education is for? Is it for the people who already knows the answer or for people who don't?

That isn't helpful for anyone else in the class

No. It isn't helpful for you, for whom this is easy.

If people don't know the answer and you insist on singling them out for that purpose, you are a bad teacher. Not even just bad - a horrible teacher. Your job as a teacher is to teach, not to shame people who may not have done the reading on an assignment everyone in the room is guaranteed to forget within the month.

Teaching requires more than a standard, blanket approach to everybody in the classroom. If you don't know your students' situations then you aren't being effective in your duties. When you call on students in the classroom knowing they don't know the answer to your question, you aren't looking for them to learn. If you were teaching properly, which should be your goal, then every capable student in the room would be able to answer your question to begin with, and your questions thus would only serve as refreshers or a small "pop" quiz of sorts.

People are different and have different methods of learning that work best for them. If you understand and utilize these properly, spend appropriate time with your pupils and focus on ensuring they are absorbing & fully understanding information rather than memorizing it until after the test or the semester, you might see more participation in the classroom. The education system has failed a lot of students and that follows them from grade to grade. It's not apathy from the students that silences most of them, in my own experience as a teacher. It's apathy from the teacher that does this. After all, who would want to engage a teacher they knew was seeking to shame and harass them?

Learn to teach or leave the classroom.

Haahaahah you've never taught anything, I can tell. Teaching is the opposite of a "blanket" approach. People don't even all have the same learning style; you need to know and incorporate various methods in order to be successful at teaching an entire room full of students. At some point or another almost every student is going to need individual attention to understand a concept.

You also need to keep control of your classroom and set limits. I put my time in to prepare a lesson (usually 3-4 hours of my time, outside the classroom, for a single class- I'd usually have 2-3 of those per day)... you can take the hour to prepare for that lesson, or I'm going to be hard on you. You don't get to show up and expect me to sit there and talk at you, and you don't get to take advantage of me. That's not what I'm being paid for.

I teach international relations, terrorism and national defense courses at a local university.

You're absolutely right about the blanket approach, which is my point. If you call out students who seem to not understand or know the answer to your questions, and if you think this is an effective way of encouraging learning in your students, then what you're doing is applying a blanket tactic to your students with the presumption that it's going to be effective. I've seen several of my colleagues do this during inter-department evaluations, but I've never once seen it work. The students they call out are the students they tend to fail regardless. You want your students to succeed, right? You should be doing your best to help them, not giving up at the slightest resistance and resorting to bullying to set some kind of example for other students who are already doing relatively well.

You can't always help every student. We have our limits too. But I think you should consider being kinder to students who seem unwilling or unable to learn, because that's not a permanent condition for many, and shaming them is not an effective deterrent.

Setting limits is integral to ensuring the classroom remains a good learning environment for all of your students, but if your idea of setting limits is publicly shaming them for not knowing the answers to your questions then I think you need to reevaluate how you teach. You aren't getting paid to assign a reading segment and expect your students to teach themselves. You're there to be that guiding element, not some classroom warden that only exists to punish people who - for some reason or another, be that because they didn't read, couldn't understand the material, etc. - aren't absorbing the lessons.

Teaching requires love and care. It certainly isn't a well-paid job where I'm from so I doubt that's why you're teaching either. If you want to make an impact on your students, don't be satisfied by the few who made it out of your classes with decent marks. Make an impact by being different, being innovative and understanding and earnest in your desire to help these people grow. If you do that, I can guarantee more and more students will walk out of your courses feeling more enlightened, and along the way you can kick some of the stragglers into gear. That's infinitely better than being satisfied with lesser success on your end and on your students' ends also. Agree?

Oh, you teach.

I hate to say it, but the behavior of the international relations students I've had at my own university kind of indicates that they're used to being spoonfed and not having to read in detail.

This is... kind of disconcerting. You know we're teaching adults, right? Of course you should be kind about it, I see no point to lingering so the rest of the class can point and laugh. But people in a classroom should expect to be called on. That's part of the point.

Edited 2014-04-23 00:59 (UTC)

Hahaha I wasn't teaching adults. I was teaching teens. I think you can imagine the differences.

And... I used to teach. I liked it fine, but I decided to move on.

Re: Non-fandom secrets!

chardmonster - 2014-04-23 01:34 (UTC) - Expand

that...is the entire point of the post, though. OP specifically said they didn't mind cold-calling, it was the lingering thing for the embarrassment of the student that bothers them.

Re: Non-fandom secrets!

chardmonster - 2014-04-23 01:34 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Non-fandom secrets!

(Anonymous) - 2014-04-23 01:50 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Non-fandom secrets!

chardmonster - 2014-04-23 02:02 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Non-fandom secrets!

(Anonymous) - 2014-04-23 02:16 (UTC) - Expand

I already wrote up the situation in which I used to use the tactic of forcing answers in another comment, but to summarize: problem students.

You're absolutely right, it's bullying, but most of the students I used that approach with were bullies themselves (occasionally I'd do it to wake up someone who was about to fall asleep lol). Trying to maintain order in a class full of teenagers is pretty delicate, and in some cases there's no hope for it unless the students are a little scared of you... particularly in cases where you both know you're not allowed to restrain them. For me it was absolutely successful: it kept them from harming the rest of the students in my care and it kept them from forming the idea that they might be able to gang up on me. I taught in a private school, and there was option of sending them away for discipline.

In any case, I'm not a teacher anymore because I have other interests that I felt were more important uses of my time, career-wise. I can happily report that in all my terms my students passed their exams (the ones that were failing dropped out when I made it clear that my terms weren't going to be the bird course that they were used to) and did leave my classroom more enlightened than when they arrived.

Re: Non-fandom secrets!

(Anonymous) - 2014-04-23 01:54 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Non-fandom secrets!

herpymcderp - 2014-04-23 02:03 (UTC) - Expand

Your job as a teacher is to teach, not to shame people who may not have done the reading on an assignment everyone in the room is guaranteed to forget within the month.

HAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHA oh wow you don't think you should be shamed for not doing your fucking homework? What do you think the teacher's job is? Fucking customer service?

If you don't know your students' situations then you aren't being effective in your duties.

What, their condition of not doing their fucking homework?

you aren't looking for them to learn.

We are trying to get them to do the fucking reading

you were teaching properly, which should be your goal, then every capable student in the room would be able to answer your question to begin with,

I see. You want to be spoonfed. You are an idiot.

People are different and have different methods of learning that work best for them.

Most effective methods involve doing the reading

The education system has failed a lot of students

Oh honey. It never failed you. You weren't participating.

Learn to teach or leave the classroom.

Learn to do your fucking homework or flunk out. I hope you don't waste too much of your parents' money doing so.

Edited 2014-04-23 00:52 (UTC)

Dude, the punishment for not doing your homework is a bad grade, not public humiliation.

If not being able to answer a question actually humiliates you (it happens to everyone, including A students) you should probably stick to online courses.

Here's the thing: a lot of people don't raise their hands but do know the answer. They are lazy.

Edited 2014-04-23 01:36 (UTC)

Re: Non-fandom secrets!

diet_poison - 2014-04-23 14:14 (UTC) - Expand

I know we've settled my teaching status already but I want to reiterate that there are indeed problems in the education system that leave a lot of students (mostly those with less conventional learning styles) with less support than they need. This is the fault of their teachers in my opinion. A student can only do so much to teach themselves; some are better off than others in this way, but as a teacher I do my personal best to ensure that all my students are genuinely learning because it's important to me.

I've had a number of students with learning disabilities or other particular needs who did not easily absorb reading material, for a variety of reasons. I've had a few students who were dyslexic, one of which did not inform me of this at the start of class out of embarrassment and hope that they could get by in my class without reading the material. Perhaps that was a fault on their end for not informing me earlier but I was able to work it through with them. I've had other students - this is common with freshmen - who simply took on too much without realising far too late and didn't have the time to dedicate to my class. This is a problem that I can only do so much about, but it's clear to me that sometimes students who haven't done assignments are not merely lazy or careless, which is why I'm not in favour of shaming them in class.

Call on students all you like, I'm only saying I don't think the goal there should be to make your students feel bad. If anything the goal should be to test their knowledge. As I said above, if someone is struggling with an answer - no matter what you think the reason is - in my opinion it's better to move on than to grill them in front of the class.

As I said above, if someone is struggling with an answer - no matter what you think the reason is - in my opinion it's better to move on than to grill them in front of the class.

...or, you help guide them to that answer, which isn't grilling. It's important to find that good middle spot where you're challenging without insulting, and that takes experience.

As for the disability stuff--it stinks, but there's only so much we can do in a hardcore humanities field. If someone literally can't read the material--say, something from the 1860s--I can't really fix that. We're dealing with material that's challenging. Luckily my institution has a good office of disability services; it's very easy to arrange increased time or other accommodations for exams and get notetakers. I'd do my best to do that adhoc if I end up getting a job at a college that doesn't offer this.

Okay, so what do you recommend when you happen to be the one person who did the readings, and the professor asks a question and there's nothing but stony silence, and you know the answer, but you've already answered...an inordinate amount. How long do you let the silence stretch before you take pity on everyone and raise your hand?

Oh, god, that was me in so many math classes. "I already answered... I don't want to answer again, no one likes a know-it-all... but no one else is answering... maybe if I wait long enough there'll be a hint, and someone else will answer... they're still waiting... will someone just answer, dammit, we're going to waste the whole period... fine, I'll raise my hand."

At no point was this a question about people not being allowed to raise their hands. It's about the prof not calling on someone she knows knows the answer.

Honestly, if the prof is good, she'll acknowledge the people with their hands up but ask someone who hasn't spoken to say something.

not everybody is capable of speaking in that kind of environment, the classroom was made very unsafe for me at an early age and keeping quiet helped me stay comfortable and minimised the abuse

I feel bad for you, really, but university isn't the place to work through this.

If you have a condition where you can't answer questions, inform the prof at the beginning of the semester. Otherwise you really should expect to be called on.

I completely agree with you.

I have had students express to me at the beginning of a semester their issues with speaking out loud in class and I have respected that. Otherwise, I call on students and ask them to participate because being able to verbally argue a point and orally communicate ideas are generally part of the student learning outcomes for many courses. In fact, in several courses I teach orally participating in class is specifically articulated as part of the catalog description of the course.

College students should expect to be required to speak in class. They should also realize that they can discuss legitimate concerns or issues with doing with their professors.

No, no, I know that wasn't what it was about, I wasn't trying to be argumentative, just curious. I was just asking what, from the other side of the class room, the ideal protocol is for that situation.

Yep, pretty sure professors don't ask questions to the class because they want to see the star student that has the right answer. They do it because they want to encourage class participation.
(Still think calling on students that don't want to participate is stupid though)

I had a professor in one class who just stopped calling on me and my friend because otherwise we would be the only ones who raised our hands to answer.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only