Comp Tales Ch. 7

Story 89-

Tammy talks about avoiding sexist language in the classroom and relates a story about her dad to her students. Through her repetitive corrections of 'man' to 'man or woman', her dad finally changes what his phrase to 'one', rather than the sexist 'man', when he is talking to his grandchild.

A lot of students seem to think saying 'policeman' rather than 'police officer' isn't a big deal. They seem to think that no one is hurt by the sexist terminology, and perhaps some aren't, but some are hurt. If we, and our students, make an effort to change our misogynist terminology, eventually the future generations will naturally learn to speak in a non-sexist manner; so maybe, just maybe, some little girl that wants to be a 'police officer' when she grows up won't feel alienated from the profession due to how people refer to it. Also, older adults, such as the grandpa in the story, can change if they are made aware of the sexism that is present.

Miscommunication-Chapter 6

Misunderstandings are going to happen. We are not going to avoid it. Accept it, but don't just move on. Misunderstandings offer us the chance to change and avoid mistakes in the future. Shrugging them off can be tempting, but accepting our own faults and learning about our audience will be much more advantageous.

Miscommunication and  misunderstandings happen because of us and to us, if that makes sense. Sometimes my assignments are not clear enough, sometimes my students's questions weren't clear enough, sometimes I zone out and try to fill in the missing spots in a conversation or lecture, sometimes my students are still learning English, sometimes I just didn't take the time to do something right or listen completely. However, all of these instances are stepping stones to understanding, but only if we recognize them and ask ourselves what we could do differently and implement those changes.

Conferences

Oh dear God, why didn't someone warn me? I was 30 minutes into my first conference and the second one was waiting. What was I doing? I knew I had to speed up, but I didn't want to leave anything out. I persevered and my last conference of the day couldn't end soon enough; it took 45 minutes. I had naively thought that canceling class for conferences would free up some time for me to get some work done. Wrong. That was Thursday.

Today, I spent six hours doing conferences, with a break to attend my teaching practicum class. I filled up on Skittles and Pepsi on the way to my second shift of meetings. By the time my 6:00 PM conference finished, I had the sugar shakes.

I have realized that I have a love-hate relationship with conferences. I feel that the students benefited but I stressed myself out in the process.This semester was the first time I have ever scheduled conferences into the syllabus and had one with every student. I'm not sure why I waited so long, but normally I reserved meetings for students that were having issues. That being said, those meetings didn't take that long because I knew what had to be worked on, having suggested the conference for a reason.

Okay, so I began with 30 minute slots and had students bring their essays to the meeting. That was my first mistake. I have heard some great advice from other Graduate Assistants (Morgan and Tara), and I know that from now on, I will be having the students fill out a form about what they want to work on. Does anyone else have some tips about conferences?

Paying for A's

How do we determine who receives an A, B, C, D, or F? Grading right? Well, not at The Place (aforementioned college in previous blogs that shall remained unnamed). I'm still surprised that they didn't fire me before I quit, but a firing would have been unethical, legally, I think.

The first time I was called into the Assistant Dean's office, I was curious about the reasoning behind the summons. I calmly sat down and incorrectly wondered if I were going to get a raise. After a few minutes of small talk, Student X came was brought up by the Dean. Apparently I had submitted midterm grades a few weeks ago and she, the Dean, wanted an update. I proceeded to tell her that he still missed two classes for every one he showed up to, did even less homework than his attendance would suggest, and could barely write a coherent sentence, much less an essay. I was stunned when she proceeded to tell me that my class was his third attempt at English Composition 101. I would have expected a little more effort if it were his third time taking the course. The Dean went on to explain how his financial aid would be cut off and that The Place needed him to pass the course because he wasn't going to pay out of pocket. The two of us sat in silence for a few moments, what did she want from me? I knew, but I wasn't taking the bait.

The Dean continued with examples of ways Student X might be able to pass the class: extra credit assignments, acceptance of late work, ignoring the attendance rule, giving him an incomplete for the course and extending the term for him until he passed. I thought about the possibilities, and I thought about Student X's lack of respect and effort in and out of the classroom. I looked at the Dean and said, "No, he earned his F and that's what he'll get unless he can miraculously pull himself up by completing the rest of the assignments and the same extra credit assignments that are offered to the entire class." The Dean shook her head and smiled, and I left the office. This type of meeting happened two more times that term and once the next term, with the same result.

Further into the next term I was pulled into the Dean's office again, this time I knew what was coming, or at least I thought I did. I was wrong. She welcomed me and got right into the meeting. The Place was changing some of its pay policies. They would be giving teacher's bonuses for each A their students earned. My smile was forced and I left the meeting wondering what this would do to teachers and students. I hoped most teachers would still continue to grade the same, but I could see how a financial reward might be tempting to grade a B as an A. At The Place a few teachers might have needed to put some vigor and effort into their teaching, but for the most part the teachers were competent. More often than not, at least in my composition classes, students weren't getting A's because they weren't turning in their assignments or showing up to class. The new incentive didn't encourage student effort, but it did make the student's artificial success seem inflated to potential employers that thought they were hiring A students. I didn't agree with the concept, so I continued to grade as I had done in the past.

A few weeks later I had a violent student in the classroom (view previous blog), and I quit The Place.

Danger Zone

The first college I taught at should not exist, but it does. I will call it The Place, even-though it doesn't deserve the anonymity. The Place was rife with bad practices, many of which will probably fill future posts, but today's post deals with an occurrence that resulted with me handing in my resignation.

I didn't want to answer the phone as I could see it was The Place calling, and they could only be calling for one thing: they needed a substitute. Money had been short lately as a result of adjuncting as a career, and The Place paid by the hour in the classroom, so I reluctantly answered the phone. Within an hour I was standing in the computer lab of The Place's small, un-air-conditioned, seven-story, downtown building. It was 5:30 PM and class started in 30 minutes. I picked up the plans for the class and was horrified to see that the plans only said teach them about Microsoft Word. What about Word? Bibliographies? MLA? Resumes? How to type in Word? I swallowed the panic and realized that since the class was a beginners computer class, I probably just had to show them the basic uses alongside of some potential uses for the future. At 6:00 PM, the class started to enter the class, it wasn't until 6:30 PM that the majority of the class showed up. I guessed timeliness wasn't stressed in the class. I completed an icebreaker and started my interactive lecture. Suddenly I heard a bag rustling, the kind of rustling that a Sun Chips bag makes, and then I heard sfizzzz as someone unscrewed a soda lid. Looking back, I handled the situation all wrong.

I took a break and informed the entire class that no food or drinks were allowed in class, then I continued. I was interrupted by a loud female voice, "who the fuck do you think you are, we ain't children?" I looked to the back corner of the room and there was a woman eating chips while giving me the stink-eye. Stay calm I told myself.

"Those are the rules, sorry, they apply to everyone, even me." I smiled waiting for her response. She kept eating her chips and staring at me. What was I supposed to do? If I didn't stop her I would lose my authority I thought. "Please, dispose of the food, or put it away for later, We will be taking a break soon." She stood up; now, I consider myself a competent woman that can handle herself in just about any situation, including a physical one, but the speaker looked like one of the few women that could eat me for lunch. She was taller than me, larger than me, and had a do-rag on, which conjured up false stereotypes that seemed true in the moment.

"I'm a grown woman, and some white bitch ain't going to tell me what to do. What you gonna do if I don't listen? Nothin, that's what. Punk ass." She raised her arms in the air and mockingly lurched my direction. The class was silent, but my mind was panicking.

"This doesn't have to be a big deal; if you want to talk about it the hall we can, but this type of behavior is disrespectful and unacceptable. Please, let's talk about it."

"I ain't talkin about nothin, go on an teach yo stupid lesson, I'm staying here."

I didn't know what to do; no one had ever gone over a circumstance like this, so I told her to excuse herself from the room or I would have security do it. The truth was, I didn't even know if security was on duty yet as they usually got in around 8:00 PM or so, and I didn't know how to get a hold of them.

She charged my desk and swiped it with her arm, sending my laptop (in its case) flying. I froze; she was blocking the door. Then she grabbed my purse and threw it across the room. Suddenly, I snapped. "Get out! Now! I'm calling security!" I grabbed a student's phone off of the desk in front of me and started to turn the screen on. She ran out of the room. The class went crazy. I ran for my purse and got out my phone and started to call the operator at The Place in hopes they knew about security. As I was doing this I asked if everyone was okay. After that, I told them to go on break but to stay on that floor. I eventually reached the desk of a teacher on another floor. She told me that The Place no longer had a security officer, so that teacher gathered another teacher and they went looking for the girl. Ten minutes or so later, they reported that they thought she had left the building. Thought? What if she went to get a gun, or was waiting for me outside? I nervously went on with the class that night without anymore incidents. Before I left, I filled out an incident report. Another teacher walked me to my car.

The next week I was called into a meeting about the incident. Apparently, the girl had been recruited from a drop-in shelter in the city. She didn't have a place to live, so she was under a lot of stress. The Place then informed me that what I had done was all wrong, that I should have taken the girl away from the class and not been so firm on the rules. Finally, they said the girl was willing to apologize and we would have another meeting next week when she would say sorry to me. She was going to get absolutely no punishment except to say sorry. Well, I didn't agree but I needed the job, so I showed up the next week, but the girl didn't. The Place said she must be under some sort of stress and that I should understand that, and that she would remain enrolled. So many thoughts went through my head, but it became clear that The Place thought of her as a much needed paycheck, since the student population had dropped from 500 to 220 within that last year, and they thought of me as replaceable. I finished the term, but when they asked for my availability for the next term, I gave them my resignation letter and started at a real community college that restored some respect to my views of community colleges.

Yes, when I look back at this story there are things I did wrong, but I had never been trained to deal with a possibly violent student, and I would do things differently next time. However, I don't completely blame the student; recruiting homeless students seems so wrong to me; how is a student supposed to concentrate on schoolwork and class when they don't know where they will sleep that night? Also, what type of school doesn't have security, or chooses to side with an aggressive student? While I'm not glad the experience happened, it woke me up to potential dangers of being in a classroom and gave me the confidence to deal with potential ones in the future. Another incident did happen a year later, that student was dealing with PTSD. Because of the first incident, I was able to handle the second one well enough that most of class hadn't realized anything had happened, then the situation led to teacher training that dealt with PTSD, to which I was able to share my experience and growth.

Response: Comp Tales Ch. 5

In regards to story 50 by Mark Israel:

Mark's roommate was Swiss-German and incorrectly substituted 'sparingly' for the word 'funny' in a paper. Mark later realized this was most likely because his word checker said, "The word 'funny' is trite. Use sparingly."

This story is very relevant as colleges continue to diversify and include more foreign students. When I first read the story it was easy to laugh at, but then I started to think that the struggles non-native English speakers face daily are probably immense. English is so complex that I often wonder if all professors should be required to take a TESL course or two just to understand how and when misinterpretations occur.

In my last teaching position, there were many foreign students, and I struggled with teaching composition to them because of the language differences. I speak Spanish, so it was easier to catch errors in papers written by native Spanish speakers. However, I had one student from Sri Lanka that I just couldn't seem to grasp why he was making certain mistakes. I spent extra time with him, referred him to a TESL tutor, and signed him up for writing center visits, yet he still failed my class. I felt like I did all I could, but I also feel that the school did not do all they could have done. The entrance exams for college placement have some kinks in them, sure, but some students can pass multiple choice English-based-knowledge tests but not be able to apply those skills to composition. I'm not sure how to fix this problem, especially since I have noticed a push away from remedial courses.