A Third of Each Class Is on Track to Fail

“I teach adult intermediate ESL too. It’s always the complainers who don’t participate in the activities that you designed especially for them. 🤣 I make a point of telling them that I included that activity just for them if I don’t see them participating. Last week one student asked me to do more vocabulary review of old words, rather than giving new words every week. Meanwhile, another student wanted to do more speaking activities and someone else wanted more listening tests. I already include”

Yeah sure man

“I'm taking (elementary ed) grad classes right now and every single course is telling me I have to put a ton of thought and preparation into every class in every subject. I feel like I can't possibly teach every subject that perfectly. Every science class based in meaningful inquiry with carefully arranged materials and subtly directing questions. Every math class built on student thinking and focusing students on big ideas instead of content and skills but also still teaching them all th”

“Most of the time when people are assholes it has more to do with what is going on in their lives than anything you’re doing wrong. It’s not personal.”

“Can only imagine if I had gone whining to my college professors saying their lectures were boring and they needed more games (and yes I’ve taught ESL before, to all ages, people can still learn even if the material is given to them straight forward ie given a grammar structure and then you practice it)”

“Last week I posted that my async class was a ghost town, with no one viewing the lecture videos or reading the lecture notes. No one came to office hours or sent me an email asking for help. The first midterm was on Friday. Most students read the lecture notes for the first time on Thursday night. They still didn't watch any videos. The results were sadly predictable. Half the students failed the test (compared to a typical failure rate of about 15%) and the average grade was 30% lower than”

“I am writing a pedagogy article about a learning experiment in one of my classes. In my discussion, I want to ground my reflections in the overall situation in higher ed; the issues we all experience: lack of motivation, difficulties reading/following directions, transactional relationships, etc. I've had difficulty identifying research articles for context. Can anyone offer any suggestions? Surely someone is researching this in a formal capacity? submitted by /u/Unlikely_Action5”

FTK

“…acceptable or not acceptable? submitted by /u/Some-Indication-9330 [link] [comments]”

“That is awesome, thank you for sharing! I could only imaging the difficulties you experienced when you were at school because when I was delivering an induction course, I just assumed that this person was just being rude (yes, I know assumptions is the mother of all screw ups) because I kept on firing questions at him but he kept on answering correctly, which really perplexed me but it struck me at about 2:00am the following morning that they were audial. I had a quick chat prior to the continua”

Community college mathematics professor at a large college. Our school has recently relaxed its attendance policy. It used to be that if a student missed a combined total of two weeks of…

“Am I the only one who, while although also annoyed by students' shitty behavior, roll my eyes when I hear faculty complain about it, considering that every faculty meeting is filled with professors scrolling TikTok, looking at their phones every time they ding like Pavlov's dogs, and leaving the room to take every phone call they receive, even SPAM calls, for Christ's sake. And do I need to mention faculty conferences? The leaving early, arriving late, side conversations, click, clic”

“I’m an instructor at a college and there are there is this one student that sat there for every lecture, fail the corse then complain that I failed him. Well you didn’t submit any assignments and didn’t mention if you had a problem accessing them, and every end of the class I left 10 minutes open for students. Thing I don’t understand is you paid for this program. This is not a cheap program, it’s 10 grand. I probably could have pm him in teams, but I should not have to chase down students”

“I’m an overwhelmed grad student nearing the end of my 3rd year and another grad student nearing the end of their first year depends on me sooo much. At this point is getting to be too much for me and almost anything they ask me I feel instantly tired. Over the course of almost 8 months, they have asked me questions daily regarding their experimental design, experimental troubleshooting problems, advice/opinion on experiments/data that I have absolutely no expertise one, and I even got quite a fe”

“I've reached out to many professors over the past few months. Some were kind enough to reply, even if it was just a "No," and I really appreciated that. But quite a few saw my message, and even after a polite follow-up a week later, they saw that too and never responded. I'm genuinely curious, especially from professors' perspective. Is there a reason for not sending a brief reply? Even a simple "No opportunities at the moment" gives closure and lets students move”

“My classes are almost entirely experiential (I'm in the Arts), so attendance is really important. Two absences (for any reason) are part of my syllabus, and I ask students to communicate with me if there are emergent reasons for more. I buffer this policy in a few ways, because life happens: -The impact of extra absences is based on overall work ethic - full participation during classes, assignments thoughtfully completed and on time, supporting the cohort. If you're diligent, and puttin”

“More than just deficiences in app/ECs. Like, yes I am extremely introverted but also very privileged and I did stay in my comfort zone (academics, research) over using my extra resources to help the underserved (volunteering, advocacy). Yes, sorry, I'll be better. I'm only half-joking actually. Also up for consideration is the extent to which schools want a well-rounded, "complete" applicant. Of course, the ideal applicant should be excellent in academics, research, volunteerin”

“If we credit a student's failings to some vague 'inborn characteristics', it only serves to make them feel worse about themselves. This leads to them engaging less with education, and especially with the teachers who make them feel bad about themselves. This is my argument for how teachers and school admin can be the cause of the laziness they seem to hate. If we credit a student's failings to a poor upbringing, then that means that socioeconomic factors can cause them, because s”

Lower your expectations. Practice caring less.

“I tell them my social media policy is - I never add a current student - I never request a former student, I don’t presume you care anything about me and that’s okay - I always say “yes” to a former student requesting to add me, I am honestly very flattered but - I reserve the right to delete or block them at any time just as I do with any other contact”

“My spring course was crazy. I think I know who the poor evaluations were from - students who didn't do the work. But having 10+ students says " incredibly supportive, great professor, great at answering questions," and then 1 or 2 saying "doesn't answer questions, condescending, horrible prof, etc." I will admit, I was not on my A game in the spring semester. I lost my MIL, had to travel for my father's celebration of life, lost our almost 19-year-old cat, etc. I”

“I had an interesting one this week. I teach an online course this summer, one I created and proposed from scratch. It’s my baby, very theory heavy - heck I even got it approved as a gen ed. In short, it’s a class I’m fairly proud of and developed with a lot of effort and love. I spend maybe 20 hours a week on grading and communications with the students, and accommodations for an online asynch class are common and usually reasonable. At my institution we have the right to tell the accommodations”

“I've read more posts on here over the past year or so about students threatening to sue and all that, and I wish professors understood the law a little better. It would save many of you a lot of anxiety. People dramatically overestimate how easy it is to win a lawsuit. Anyone can threaten to sue. In most jurisdictions, anyone can file a lawsuit if they're willing to pay the filing fee. But filing a lawsuit is the easy part. Successfully pursuing one is an entirely different story. For st”

“this is the honest version our side avoids, and refusing to say it costs us credibility. the by-osmosis learning is the real thing juniors lose, you cant schedule a meeting for what you absorbed sitting near better engineers. the fix probably isnt back-to-office, its rebuilding that osmosis on purpose, pairing, over-communicating. hard to fake though”

“Oh I get it. If it was brick and mortar I would be super against it. Virtual is just such a different environment. I’m just going to be setting up our digital classrooms and portfolios.”

“Hahaha It reminds me when my student protested at the correction I made on his paper. He insisted that the word “so” was spelled “soooo. “ I explained that just because people do that in text messages for dramatic effect, doesn’t mean it’s the correct spelling of the word, not it’s appropriate for an essay. He insisted that I was wrong and I didn’t know what I was talking about”

Could i maybe check out yours?

“just use a simple table with columns for class name, prof, schedule, materials, notes. don't overthink it i made one with gallery view and each card is a class, click in and you got pages for syllabus, readings, whatever. pretty clean”

“Unfortunately, this situation has arose due to a combination of hiring decisions and visa issues. I didn't realize this before and kind of stuck in this situation. This will be like students will be in the classroom but I will be another. Will I be able to hear the students? Advice: How best can I navigate and resolve this? submitted by /u/Secure-Nobody-2103 [link] [comments]”

“My contract has been terminated. I am no longer part of the lab. There's no way to appeal. Apparently this is academic misconduct. I am still 100% certain that I didn't cause the issue. I am sorry I deleted my previous post because I thought they will see it. Context: My code overflowed the RAM (allegedly) and eventually lead to server crash. I was banned and now my contract has been terminated. The sysadmin doesn't want to talk about it and said his decision is final. submitte”

“As a former student, it just trained me to not see the point in behaving if I get punished anyways lol”

“I just found out that I am being forced to loop up with the group of students that I had last year. I won't have entirely the same group due to having 2 of each content per grade but I will likely have roughly 50% of the same group. Any advice on having to teach the same students over multiple years would be appreciated. I was 6th grade and will be 7th for the coming year. submitted by /u/CDFriedrich [link] [comments]”

“I blame it partly on the influx of course sellers online tbh, their whole job is to be tone deaf in order to sell their courses and unfortunately too many young people buy into it”

“Hi, I had a pretty rough closed door session during my thesis proposal from an unnecessarily combative committee member (who is no longer on my committee) but remembering how that session made me feel is making me pretty nervous about my upcoming defense (specifically the closed session). I’ve struggled a lot during this PhD so it probably also doesn’t help that I don’t feel like my work ended up being very meaningful or interesting. Anyone who’s had any similar experiences have any stories from”

“Part vent/part advice seeking: I had the joy of ending my busy work week by having a meeting with the dean to "plan some things for the upcoming semester." During the meeting I was given some gentle suggestions to change X or implement Y over the next year in my curriculum. I was never given an explanation or critical feedback to explain why these would be good things to do. At least one of the ideas struck me as so genuinely bad that I felt I had to respectfully push back and did so w”

They don’t know/realize why. And because they don’t know, they don’t care.

“I can't tell if I am valid or being arrogant, but I am an early instructor and my university recently started requiring simple syllabi. I have completed two of them so far, and I absolutely hate them. I spend all this time making my syllabus pretty and condensed for the few who will read it. That is, until this "streamlined" policy blows it up into more words, headers, tables, and by using more rules than I think it needs. The most annoying part is now Canvas keeps auto-deleting th”

“I prefer teaching in person, but have found myself choosing online the last few semesters because I can’t make it through a lecture without going into coughing fits. Those horrible eye-watering ones where your voice just goes out. Has anyone else struggled with this? Have you found anything that helps? Water and cough drops help a little but not enough to get me through the lecture without issue. submitted by /u/Scared-Grab-1363 [link] [comments]”

“No one ever mentions the lack of diversity in stem professors (this a shoutout/cry to all my hispanic/black/indigenous premeds) and how that affects connections to professors/letters of recommendation. Just finished my Patho exam and teacher smiled at me and told me good job, otw out I noticed there was a white girl who submitted as well. Teacher collected her score, asked how she did (didnt ask me) and then gave her a hug. We both go to office hours and the extra case study classes she does, gu”

“You're being way too hard on yourself. My pass rate for AP Gov went down by more than 10% this year and it was not great last year. We had a number of road blocks cropped up this year and I also had a group who weren't terribly invested in doing work outside of class. Are there ways for me to improve? Yes, but when test day comes, students have to care as much as you do and put in work to pass. My other AP group performed significantly better (and closer to the state / global average), b”

“Am I the only one on here who spends no time analyzing or trying to figure out why students are lazy, rude, ignorant, can't do simple tasks, don't read, don't do homework, cheat, etc., etc., etc.? Why do so many of us spend so much time thinking about their motivations, reasons, causes, etc.? Do we think discovering why they are lazy or ignorant will help or fix the problem? Why not just enforce consequences and move on? submitted by /u/Neat_Big_3401 [link] [comment”

“I am teaching a college level course for the first time this Fall. It is about a subject I am deeply passionate about, the history of Sports! I would love tips on how to structure lectures. I have teaching experience (former K-12 educator and currently direct an education department at a mid-size museum), but I want to dedicate half of the class time to discussion on reading or lecture. Any history profs want to share what works best for them? submitted by /u/Scooter_McLefty [link] &”

“Season 2 of The Rehearsal actually talks about this issue.”

“I've been teaching A&P 1 & 2 for 10 years now at the community college level with success. But we all know that the student's abilities are decreasing. I just finished a summer session and made a decision for fall. The first day will be 10 minutes of syllabus b.s. (where they will be shown how to find a video version of the syllabus day stuff). Instead, I want to spend a solid hour on how to do well in the course, and hopefully in all courses. I'm looking for what you would t”

“That’s so funny. We have a class meeting every day where each student must share and even though we are in a small circle they speak like they are on stage with no microphone. “I’m right here no need to shout.” I have to say this constantly.”

“That’s what strikes me as weird. If OP is a professor, it’s not in his lane to address it. Even as a department head, I’m not sure it would be in his lane. There must be someone higher in the chain. I’m guessing the school has a lawyer on retainer.”

“I wouldn't anymore, when I started more kids could dish it and take it. Now they can dish it, but will make up a worse story when they can't take it”

“Hey everybody, I am a geography teacher and I just started last semester. Which means that the upcoming semester is the first time I have taught first semester classes. While I have planned my introductory week of getting to know students and helping them get to know each other, and doing a syllabus review, I am honestly completely stuck on how to actually start content. I teach both regular geography and AP geography. I am just completely stuck on how to even introduced the concept at the begin”

“I've been teaching for many, many years. As a student, being respectful was the norm (at least for me) and I always followed the syllabus and took ownership of my errors. Lately, students seem to be ruder and more entitled than usual. I blame a lot of stupidity (questions they can easily get the answer to like, what assignment is due next class or when are office hours?) on COVID and the amount of hand holding students received by most/ all teachers (including by me). But lately, they seem t”

“Hi everyone, I am reading for an M.A. in psych and I took a course from the Electives list and then realised that my background is just not enough to pass the course. I learnt that I could not withdraw from the course, nor could I repeat the course with another from the same list of Electives. The only option for me to preclude my GPA from decreasing is to take the course. I am just baffled by how strict the regulations are. Is this a conventional way to adjust course policy? Is it the same in y”

“I was in university, thought my mic was muted. Audibly groaned and said oh great when prof assigned something that I thought he would but hoped he wouldn't lmao. Tried to play it off and failed miserably.. still haunts me”

“I’ll still have a degree after third year, it just won’t be honours. Is it that important?”

“No, because you can’t teach where I live without a BEd. And most MEds won’t accept people without classroom experience.”

“College is a pathway to a career now, In my view many of the required courses are just fluff. Maybe they fit in with the old era of college but its been a few decades since then. Most ridiculous are the electives where you have to fill a random slot and have to pay to take something like wines of the world or learning to play pool. If it were optional that would be fine.”

“I had a prof who the first day of class went on a rant about how his class was challenging and he rarely gave As, and if we thought it would be easy, well, we were sorely mistaken. He said all of this with an angry face (he looked scary). By the second class, half of the students had dropped. The prof looked around the room, gave a big smile, and said, “Now these are the numbers I like to see.” He ended up being one of my favorite professors.”

“i've been thinking about this a lot while teaching because i keep noticing a difference between students who can follow a method and students who seem to instinctively know when something about their answer doesn't make sense i teach undergraduate physics at a research university, mostly second and third year students. some can work through every step of a problem but never question an obviously unrealistic result. others will stop halfway through because something feels off, try a diffe”

“I'm a second-year PhD student in STEM at an R1. My advisor is generally a very kind person, but she does not give compliments (really ever). She can be a little micromanage-y and keeps things from me for long periods of time* We also probably have a cultural/language barrier between us, so I may be misinterpreting her. She's complimented me twice in my whole PhD, once about a presentation unrelated to my research, once about my teaching (despite the fact that she only cares about researc”

“Two main reasons: Patriarchy and racism. Teaching has historically been tasked by women and POC. Our culture is to discount work by these groups.”

“I love teaching, but by the end of a full-course load semester, I am exhausted mentally and socially. There is this weird couple week period where I rest and feel ready to enjoy a bit of summer. But then I get into a sort of depression, where it's like all that energy I put into the final week and grading just drops into the abyss. I am apathetic. It's not even some conscious 'i miss teaching' thing, just feel a bit empty. I think it does happen every summer, but I am teaching an”