Hoping all the verses rhyme, and the very best of choruses too

[austin_dern]

My class continues, and last week reached the first of its scheduled exams. The scores there turned out ... ah ... very bimodal. There's a cluster of students who've got it, and a cluster who just haven't, and there's about twenty points between them. It's going to be tricky balancing the class so the got-it students don't end up bored and the don't-got-it don't give up.

However, one of my students did give up: he came to me at the start of the class with an add/drop form and explained he just couldn't make it and was withdrawing. He needed my signature for it.

I asked if he was sure about it, as if he hadn't thought about this plenty already. I think I made the first assignment too hard --- in particular, I'd assigned some problems which were just too tediously long, because I'd not paid attention to just how long they are when done by hand. (I haven't explicitly prohibited using programs like Excel to do the calculations, but I haven't shown them how to do it, either, since it's not really a computer class.) I was trying to loosen that up, particularly on the exam, but, well, he was sure.

It struck me hard, too. I've had students drop me before, but usually it's either at the start of class when they've heard the syllabus and don't know me, or else they just stop attending and I later see the class roster doesn't list them anymore. This is the first time I remember having to sign a drop form. I hate telling people to give up on mathematics work, and it felt like I was the one doing the telling.

bunny_hugger, the department secretary, and a full-time professor there were approving of the news, by the way. It is after all less work for me, and it's far better students drop when they feel it's hopeless rather than carry on to bitter failure. And I do have a couple students who are struggling, mightily, who're finally coming to office hours to get straightened out.

Trivia: Roman Emperor Caligula was served 160-year-old Opimian Falernian wine in the year 39. A first-century poet, Martial, described this vintage as ``immortal'', although by that date it was probably undrinkable. Source: A History Of The World In Six Glasses, Tom Standage.

Currently Reading: Germany 1945: From War To Peace, Richard Bessel.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Class should be tough, and particularly the first assignment should be tough in order to set expectations for the rest of the course. I never feel anything but relief when someone drops: one less exam to grade.

The fact that you had to sign this one and in the past people "just disappeared" instead is nothing to do with you. It just means this institution has different rules for drops. My undergrad required signatures. MSU did not. My current school did up until this semester, when they stopped.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I now, signing things is just a different policy is all. But it is a change and makes the student's dropping more personal; there's a moment where I know it happens, instead of it being fit amorphously somewhere between one class and the next.

I do start the term with harsher declarations of policies on things like late homeworks and with a tougher assignment than is average, although the first is because it is so much more practical to loosen up than tighten up once the term's begun. The second is because I start out trying to find how much I can put on my students without it being too much.

But I still like the self-pleasing fantasy that I can get any student who'll try up to speed on any subject, and seeing a specific student stop trying hits at part of my little fantasy, that they all will.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I can understand that. it's not just "Hmm. Frank stopped showing up." It's Frank actively telling you he's got to drop it.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's the personalization of the moment that punched me.

Plus I didn't return his last homework to him, so now what do I do with it?

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Keep it for whatever is the length of time the institution mandates for keeping materials. It was a year at MSU, I think it's a semester at my current place.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Other people stopping trying is nothing to do with you. I'd rather the people who stopped trying drop out, rather than badgering me for better grades based on their half-efforts.