If you have ever heard the song Zombie by the Cranberries you would think that the song was written for my classes this week. One of the lines of the song goes like this, "What's in your head?" That's pretty much is the question going through my head this week as I consider my students.
So how can I explain this vegetative behavior? At first, I though that it might have something to do with how I was teaching. (I'll be frank, even though I'm learning a lot, I don't feel like I've had time to prepare my classes properly.) But as the week limped on it was the same story in all my classes, and I know for a fact that there is no realistic scenario in which I could possibly suck that bad.
So I'm staring to consider some other possibilities. Is it a general pessimism that students have coming up to the end of the semester? Are my students under time pressure to cough up assignments? (I feel them on that.) Or is it simply, the disappointing realization that university life is basically more of the same. That is the initial excitement over coming to a new place has faded into boredom stemming from the fact that the teaching culture in university is just as banal as in high school... minus "baton based motivation" techniques. (BBM, yes I just coined that. You got to site me every time you use that now.)
These students came into class with their affective filters well up. And I'm starting to realize that it is not enough to avoid interaction that raises a student's affective filters, (because I cannot count on anyone one the university to follow my philosophy) but I have to have a way to find a way to proactively lower that filter every time students come to class. I shouldn't have to do that, but that is the reality that I face so I'm thinking about how to tackle that problem.
Same here -- and then there's the fact that by now the ss, even the women, have discovered that lots of beer is much more interesting than classes the next day.
ReplyDeleteHow you get the affective down again in these conditions is, well, something to be published on...
I think I should do a semester where I walk into class and just pretend to be another student... (yeah I know. It's pretty far fetched!) But if I interact with students in a way that is outside of the student teacher relationship I think there are a lot more possibilities for interaction that is untainted by the affective filters students put up to protect themselves from the neo nazi they are used to in class.
ReplyDelete