A few friends and family members asked me how my first week of school went, and I am not quite sure what to say. If I had the choice to continue the summer and not go back to school this week, that is what I would have chosen. I’m guessing many people would choose vacation over work most weeks. This school year will count towards my 30th year of service, and I will receive a ton of benefits (including a pension) for working, though, so I went to work.
My classes went smoothly. Students are pretty bright-eyed and bushy tailed at the beginning of the semester, so that’s nice. Even my 8 am class was energetic, which is amazing. Either my students are morning people or this past week was an anomaly.
I’ve had 2 main challenges this week. First, I was very busy. I assign work the first and second days of class, so I had some grading. I also concentrate on trying to remember names and set up my attendance book. Given that it’s hard to push myself to work more than 6 or 7 hours a day, I feel behind already.
The second challenge just took place on Friday. My college allows students to register for classes a full week after classes have started. The college bills this as an add/drop period for students who go to class and decide it’s not for them, want to take another instructor or register for another time. At my college, though, it’s a free-for-all. Registration is just “open.” A student could register for all of their classes after the classes have met that week.
We always used to have a few students add classes late, but they used to have to go through administration to do it. If my former chair was going to add a student late, he’d call to ask the teacher about it. Now that students can just register for class late, administrators don’t have to do anything to vet the student. They don’t have to sign off on anything or even find out what caused the student to register late. Students don’t even have to interface with a human to register, so they may not even be advised to email their professor.
Four of my 5 classes were already maxed out in terms of number of students, but my Children’s Lit had just 15 students out of a max of 24. I was pretty excited about having a smaller class. More importantly, though, students and I do a good amount of work to create the classroom culture that week. We also set up the main concepts for class.
Friday morning, when I was doing some grading, I saw that 3 students had been added to Children’s Lit. I got no notification from the college. The students had not reached out to me. If I hadn’t checked the learning management system and roster, I wouldn’t have known the students had registered and they would just have shown up during the second week of class.
Now, my current students who have already bonded have to meet new students. The new students are coming into a group of others who have already connected. The new students have no idea that we’ve been working for a week and they don’t know we have a reading that is due the day they show up. They don’t have the background knowledge we’ve been working on all week.
Could I “catch them up”? There are some things I could do and others I can’t. What I have chosen to do is send an email to the 3 students to tell them what they can and cannot make up in terms of assignments. I’ll have them introduce themselves to class. What I can’t do is re-create the experience of setting up the concepts for class with the class. I can’t re-create the activities we did to get to know each other.
If these students continue to come to class, I will treat them like any other student. I’m going to let go of my resentment towards the students for registering late—really I don’t have much resentment towards them anyway. They likely had some type of issue or struggle that prevented them from being more on the ball in terms of registering for class.
The hardest part will be letting go of my resentment towards the college. It’s hard for me to accept, but I need to acknowledge the reality that the college is a business and some of its goals are to make money and keep their customers happy. In this case, professors and learning are sacrificed.
I can say that I am doing my best to own my power. I have the power to treat the students kindly and to try to support them to help them have the best experience they can, given my college’s rules.
I also have the power to leave full-time work next year and no longer deal with this particular frustration.
Peace Out (And In),
Julie
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