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09/07/2005 Archived Entry: "Pedagogical Gems"

Pedagogical Gems
Ah, Inside Higher Ed. You never disappoint. Here's a gem the educational site found worth linking to:
Dealing with rude students as the semester starts, in Pretty Hard Dammit. Only nine years as a graduate student, this teacher shows us a how a little love and a lot of yelling can make the first day be just swell! Yet another anonymous academic blogger wows us with her take on the pedagogy of the first day of class.

It was a little hectic in the morning because my printer stopped working at 10:00 a.m. and I had to print out three different handouts in time to photocopy them by 11:15. I called IT services and they got somebody over there toot-sweet with a new printer, that didn't have ink. Nice.

Ah yes. Nothing like waiting until an hour before class starts to start putting your act together. DAMN THOSE PRINTERS! WHY DON'T THEY ALWAYS WORK WHEN I WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE!

Then come the name tags!

As I was describing this name-tent thing, a kid in the first row snorted and asked loudly, "You're kidding, right?" I stared him down and said, "No, I'm not kidding. Unless you want me to call you 'hey you' for the rest of the semester, you'll put up your nametag. And, just because you asked me that, I'm going to start handing them out at the other end of the room."

Ah man. You mean we could have had our name tags first?. What a gyp. This class sucks.

I went over the syllabus and the course policies (including my favorite part where I tell them I will totally fail their cheating asses if they plagiarize)

Whoa. Stay in control, Manute Bol.

I'm not entirely sure what happened, but somehow after that, the mood shifted. I think they saw that I was serious about my policies -- that I would do what I said. They saw that there were boundaries and that I would enforce them. Somehow, this gave them some security. It freed them from their need to act like immature assholes and permitted them to start thinking about learning.

Huh?

I left that classroom totally high. I had taken this group of surly, contentious, testy teenagers who wanted to horse around and piss me off and turned them into a group of kids engaged with historical material and interested in sharing their ideas about that material. I had done this -- with my personality, with my planning, with my knowledge, and with my skills. I wanted to throw back my head and let out an evil "Mwa ha ha ha! You're mine, all mine!" It was glorious. And it completely made up for the snarking I had to do at the morning class.

Aw. Ain't that sweet? Only one day of class, and the teacher has liberated everyone! My Fair Student! I’ve freed you from being kids and made you damn fine scholars!
Or has she? All mine? Ah. So that's what teaching is about. Right. Making the students mine! I am so brilliant for threatening to fail their “cheating asses.” Whew. Great advice that.
Well, thanks again Inside Higher Ed for surfing the Web for all this great pedagogy. Kudos.

Posted by John @ 09/08/2005 12:51 PM EST

John
It comes off the around the web page:
http://insidehighered.com/around_the_web

Posted by jeff @ 09/08/2005 09:46 AM EST

Everybody knows that real Bad Asses use Bus Driver Pedagogy.

Posted by cbd @ 09/08/2005 08:50 AM EST

Name Tags?

Posted by joanna @ 09/08/2005 06:43 AM EST

Good god. That's awful.

I'm gonna visit that blog for hints when I feel like I'm teaching too well.

Posted by Mike @ 09/07/2005 09:34 PM EST

Wow. That is a horrifying blog and what a horrifying statement: "But, I gotta say, I'm liking the power of Professor Stewgad." Tyrant Stewgad, I think. Where's the InsideHigherEd article that points to this? I took a quick look but couldn't find it.

Posted by John Walter @ 09/07/2005 09:07 PM EST