Ahh...sometimes you just have to laugh when it comes to teaching; otherwise, you'd (meaning me) go crazy.
Yesterday, I had to work all day at my crappy library job. When I got home, I had a mailbox full of papers to grade for one of the on-line classes I'm teaching. I tried to get through the essays that were drafts or outlines first because I was just too tired to do any real grading. When I opened up one email from a student who has been late on every single assignment this semester (his email was marked urgent!), I read something to the affect of, "Dr. P. Please read my attached outline and draft as soon as possible so that I'm not late with the final essay."
Ah, okay, so if I don't read this right now, then this poor guy is going to be late, and it is going to be all my fault!
I stopped, took a sip of my wine, and realized it was 8:30 (I was at work from 9-6) and time for me to stop working.
So, this morning I feel more pity for this student and decide to look at his paper right away. A quick glance at the outline shows that his thesis sentence is a fragment. I close the document. Why even look? He's already gone to the draft.
I open up the draft and start to read: comma splice...mark it....missing comma after intro clause...mark it... and then I get to a sentence (again, I'm paraphrasing here), "Threw the internet I have learned a lot, even more than when I watch television or go to school."
Hey, he did spell "a lot" correctly!
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2 comments:
hi!
I had a good laugh with this post, Im´sure that even if yours is a very tiresome job, you get to discover many curious and funny things with these kids.
Some years ago i studied to become a teacher. When I did my practices (with a teenage group) I realized it wasn´t for me. I didn´t have enough patience nor talent to transmit my knowledge. But I realized how hard it is to work as a teacher.
Adults are much easier for me to deal with, but even then, adults who are just starting out are really like children in a way, at least academically. I tried teaching younger students too, just could hack it!
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