BoDog
September 10, 2007 at 9:08 pm
I make many decisions just so that I can say I didn’t bar any chance to succeed. Based on your posts, I’m starting to think TCC is the type of community college most of my students attend at least for a bit.
I had a student today not participate in class because her mother was up sick and kept her from sleeping, and she wasn’t feeling well herself, supposedly (key word for teachers). I say supposedly cause when she was amongst friends, she seemed ok. Anyway, it’s difficult because at this poinst she’s the only student in her class, so I’m trying my best to not just lecture with only one student, and she did NOTHING today. I bent over backwards to get her to find some quotes in the book I’m having her read, and nada. I told her she got a one day pass, but from now on we have to find a way to cooperate in the learning process. Wifey said she wouldn’t have done that much, but I want to be able to say that I didn’t give her a chance. If I can spend the rest of my time as her educator being able to use that one day as an example of my willingness to work with a student, then it was well wasted.
Sad, but true.
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17 Comments.
mrschili
September 7, 2007 at 6:47 am
Mama, every term, I’m met with a challenging student. If not for Henry, we would be sharing that student, I think. I almost wish that were the case, though I’m grateful to the Universe (no, really) for the lessons my experiences with Henry are teaching me.
Falcon, I’M certainly not going to tell you you’re wrong (nor am I going to tell you I’m offended by your assessment, either – you’re dead-nuts on in that, I think). Henry is EXACTLY that kind of person. What’s sad (and more than a little scary) is that, up to now, it’s worked for him. He’s freaking out right now because it’s NOT working for him with me and, rather than change and adapt (and, you know, LEARN and GROW), he’s trying to duck out.
Michael, while I respect your hesitation to engage Falcon, I have to tell you this: I KNOW Falcon, and I know exactly what he means by this comment. I am a tolerant, open-minded person, and I don’t abide friends who aren’t the same. Falcon is making a valid point in a shocking way – his terminology, though, is appropriate to his point. Henry (as a Polynesian, by the way) was my most outspoken participant when we were discussing Imus and the N-word; his claim was that HE gets to use that word, as a person of color, but that I, as a white woman, can’t. The one African-American in the class was ROLLING her eyes – her contention was that the kind of people – black OR white – who use that word are, really, exactly the kinds of people that Falcon describes – those who use race as an excuse for bad behavior.
Henry’s not so much treating college as summer camp (I’ve got a few of those – Organic Mama’s and my shared student qualifies as one, I think); he really believes – truly, I don’t think it’s an act – that he’s doing quality work and that I’m being discriminatory and disrespectful of him because of who he is. Regardless of his attitude – whether he blows the whole thing off or is under the delusion that he’s demonstrating evidence of complex thinking – he’s still not interested in engaging with me when I try to offer up suggestions to make the work that he IS doing better (read: coherent).
Kizz, I don’t doubt he was talking to his father, but I can’t BEGIN to dream that he’s doing as well as he claims at Local U. *I* graduated from Local U and, while there WERE some classes that your average tree toad could pass with a C, there were more that I, as a relatively intelligent woman with a Yankee work ethic, had to bust ass to complete well. I know for a goddamned FACT he’s not nailing his ENGLISH classes – there’s not a professor in that building who would put up with the incoherent babble I’m getting from him. “He uses history a as crutch,” indeed!
And it was SO hard to not confront him yesterday. It was really all I could do to maintain some semblance of professionalism….
Kate, I don’t mind at all that you’ve brought this up; I think it’s important to be clear about this stuff. I’m perfectly willing to allow for the possibility that Henry was being profiled (far more willing than he is to allow for the possibility that he wasn’t). His comportment is such that he almost invites that kind of attention, however, and I’m trying to get him to understand that taking his education seriously – which means being able to employ some metacognition and self-analysis to recognize when behaviors, habits and patterns no longer serve him and being willing and able to change – might take some of that negative attention away from him. Yes, people of color – even well dressed, educated, eloquent people of color – are profiled. What I’m saying is that if he doesn’t want to be the center of that kind of negative attention, he should stop blatantly asking for it.
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