It used to be that the political nature of my courses is made some students have a distaste for me. But this year, it's just us. We don't like one another very much. I am probably harder on them than I should be but, please - in university one should know the difference between their, they're, and there and that a lot is two words. One should be able to structure a coherent sentence and engage in more than basic regurgitation.
Yet, I can't help but wonder if I am punishing people who are forced to engage in a failed system. The more I teach, and the longer I teach, I'm noticing the decline of students' ability to translate the ideas in their heads to the page. I'm noticing their inability or unwillingness to move beyond description into analysis. I think this is a function of a failing school system and their performance has been determined well before I get ahold of them.
But I also think (and here's where I become the asshole who sounds old) that the internet is ruining the classroom experience. Nothing irritates me more than 25% of the class checking their email, texting, chatting, looking at pictures on facebook, and watching fucking TV while in the classroom. It's a new-ish phenomenon and it sucks. It sucks that I have to be the disciplinarian jerk telling other adults to knock it the fuck off. It sucks that their attention is so scattered that the most basic things that I said a gagillion times in class show up on their papers and tests in the form of omission or flagrant rule-breaking. I feel like a failure when I see it.
I co-TAed this term - splitting a set of tutorials with another TA. They love her and didn't really like me. My course director said, "***** has all the same complaints that you have. But you put it out there." I can't help it. I see this thing that was so important to me flushed further and down the toilet. I think I need to take a break, regroup, and think through if and how to be committed to teaching in this increasingly irritating context.
