Damn, I wanted a snow day today. My Wednesdays are beastly and coming off of conference travel (which included 24 hour delays and lost luggage) has really put me behind. When you add in the fact that last night I had to make a 4 hour round trip errand (one that, if I was more on top of my life, would not have been necessary at all)--I was not willing to take it easy on my class this morning. It's an advanced senior level course with weekly readings and expected, regular, thoughtful discussion. Yet, out of my handful of students, half are great and half (my best guess) barely read for class. It is easy to tell, the suck half contribute less and in ways that are less risky (they come up with a requested personal example to illustrate a point I already explained). But today, I just didn’t have the energy for kick-the-ball-drag-half-the-class, so I assigned them one of the readings they were supposed to be prepared to discuss in class, gave them 25 minutes to review their notes on it, and told them to come back ready to share with the class the main points:
1. I summarized Review Article 1, I covered all the main points clearly and concisely, but of course I am Dr. Awesome and I expected it would be a bit more difficult for them.
2. Angel # 1, offered to do one article without a partner (odd number of students in class that day), it was an empirical article and she covered it quite well. She is quickly become my go-to-student. It is a bit surprising because there are two other students that I thought would exceed her, but she is doing excellent in the class. I had to highlight an important point or two that she glossed over, but in general it was a fine summary.
3. Angel 2 and 3, they presented another empirical article. Their summary was a bit more 'read' and they were a bit less clear, but generally it was a good summary and clear they had read before class. I am not surprised, these two are the other two stars in the class. They asked me today if we could kick out some members of the class, and I am pretty sure they mean Devil 1 and Devil 2.
4. Devil 1 and 2: First, Devil 1 told me he couldn’t do one of the articles (I was trying to give him the easier empirical article that Angel 1 and 2 did as opposed to the lengthy review article he wanted) and Devil 2 said that she hadn't read ahead in the class, I explained that this reading was one they were supposed to be discussion in class today, so she should have read it already. For their summary, they basically rehashed the abstract and made vague statements like X has an effect on Y without ever discussing the nature of that effect or the evidence for that effect. Devil 2 barely spoke at all.
5. Finally, I gave a quick final summary to a brief empirical article that remained.
Next week we are going to have sit down meetings and I am going to lay into these two devils about their crappy participation.
Why couldn't today have been a snow day.
I am...
