Teaching Issue

One thing I find difficult as a teacher is explaining to students that even though they might have legitimate reasons for missing class at times, they are still responsible for finishing the work, and that missing class almost always affects their grade negatively. This is not because I take off points for absences, but because by missing they lose out on stuff they just can't get from merely reading the textbook or borrowing their friends' notes.

Yet, year after year, I have students come see me who have missed a substantial amount of class because of a health issue, or because of family problems, who believe they should be given the grade they "would" have earned if they had not had the problems.

Leave aside for the moment that I have no way of predicting what they "would" have earned if they hadn't had personal issues. They always know, and it's often at least a letter grade above what I think likely. When students do have legitimate reasons for missing, I allow them to make up assignments, but I cannot go back and insert all the information in their brain that they would have gotten if they had been in class.

A student came in recently who had missed a lot of class because of family issues. She'd made a "C" on test 1, but because of all the missed classes she got an "F" on test 2. I worked out what she needed to get on test 3, the final, to get a "C" for the class. Her first question was, "What about a 'B'?" A "B" was statistically impossible. She then asked me, "What if I make like a 95 on the final exam?"

I told her that I'd be happy if she did so but that it still wouldn't get her to a "B." I could see she was hoping I'd tell her that I'd curve her grade to a "B" if she made an "A" on the final, but that's not the way it works. There is a certain amount of information a student masters in a class to earn an "A." There are other amounts for "B" and "C" and lower. Even if she mastered the last section at the "A" level, she would not have mastered the earlier material at that level.

She was nearly in tears when she left, and I felt badly for her. I know she has been through a lot this semester, but I can't morally sign off on work as having been completed at a certain level when it has not. And I don't know how to explain this to students.

I've tried telling them that we are not judged in the world on what we do 'one' time. Most people can get up for one test, one game, maybe even one story. Instead, we are judged on what we do across a semester, across undergraduate or graduate school, across a season, and across a career. We don't have to be great every time, but we need to be consistently good if we are going to get consistently good results.

Most of the students I talk to about this seem to think I'm just being mean. I don't feel very good about that myself.

Writing Class on Style: APA Style That Is:

Today in Writing class we focused on APA Style, which is the set of rules developed by the American Psychological Association for presenting a paper to psychology journals. We require all our classroom papers to be turned in using this style, to prepare the students if they go on to a graduate program in psychology.

APA style is pretty boring to discuss, but it’s one of those apprenticeship things that psychology majors need to learn. When I was in undergraduate school at Arkansas Tech University, back in the early 1980s, we weren’t required to use APA style. I didn’t learn it and, as a result, the first paper I turned in for a graduate school class came back with a “D” on it. The teacher told me the content was worth an “A” but that APA style was part of the requirement and it was on the syllabus, in the fine print. Indeed it was, and that was the last time I made that mistake. I got hold of a manual, the 3rd edition, I think, and learned the style on my own.

We’re on the 6th edition of the style manual these days, and it’s four times as thick as it used to be, partly because of the need to talk about electronic and online sources. I tell the students that they don’t have to memorize APA style but they need to memorize where and how to look up the answers to questions they have about the style. And, I tell them they need to take it seriously.

About five years back in a Physiological Psych class, I had the students do an APA style paper and I got one paper turned in at the end of the year that had completely ignored the requirement. I’d been much more directive about it than that first graduate professor had been for me. I not only put in the syllabus in bold, underlined print, and called attention to it all of the first week, but I covered the basic style information in class and stated, very clearly and loudly, at least five times during the semester, that their paper had to be APA style. The paper in question was a “B” paper but ended up with a “D” because of the style issue. The student came in to complain. I asked him if he’d paid attention to the syllabus and he said, “Yes, “but….” I asked him if he’d heard me say time and time again that APA style was required, and he gave me a, “Yes, but….” I asked him if he hadn’t heard me say numerous times that I was going to take off points if the paper wasn’t in APA style, and he said, “Yes, but I didn’t think you meant it.”

I meant it!
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Good Recent Reads

Despite my last post about learning from bad books, I’ve been reading good books lately. I just finished two worth mentioning. The first is Texas Wind by James Reasoner. This book was originally published by Manor Books in 1980 but that tiny publisher faded rapidly into obscurity. It was reissued in 2004 by PointBlank, an imprint of Wildside. I picked this up because I know the author personally, but when I started it I could hardly put it down. It’s short, 142 pages, and a wonderful read with a very modern series of twists and turns. It’s definitely from the hard-boiled genre, but the hero detective, Cody, is no stereotype. He doesn’t booze it up and he collects books and western art of the likes of Frederic Remington. He’s a bit softer edged than the average hard-boiled detective but he’s one tough fellow and I’d love to see him in more adventures. Only the fact that it was published by such a small press originally must have kept this from becoming a series.

A while back I read Dust Devils, also by James Reasoner. It’s a similar noir thriller with even more twists that was written in 2007 and also published by PointBlank. It’s also very good and I highly recommend it, but I think I liked Texas Wind a bit better. And in an odd bit of synchronicity, Travis Erwin posted about the real Texas “wind” on the same day as I finished the book.


The second good book I read recently, finishing it on Wednesday, was The Last Guardian by David Gemmell. This is fourth in a series called “The Stones of Power,” and so you might want to start with the first one, which is called Ghost King. This is actually a pretty far ranging series, though, so you could easily start with book 3, Wolf in Shadow, which is the first to feature the character of Jon Shannow, a kind of futuristic gunfighter who reminds me a fair amount of Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane. Shannow is a tormented character, a man of God and of violence who fights to rid evil from the land after the “Fall,” an event that destroyed Earth’s current civilization. I like the Shannow character quite a bit and am currently reading the fifth book in the series, Bloodstone, which also features Shannow.

One point of interest, in these books the “Stones of Power” are stones called Sipstrassi and they are in some ways similar to the Milkstones from my Taleran series. They are also capable of opening gates between worlds, for example, and of working magic. They are generally much more powerful than my milkstones, however. Although the Taleran series was published in book form well after the first “Stones of Power” book came out, Swords of Talera was written quite a bit earlier and the milkstones are a completely independent construction, not related at all to or influenced by the Sipstrassi stones. I didn’t discover or read the first “Stones of Power” book until the late 1990s while “Swords” was written in 1986. It’s weird, though, that two independent constructions could show such interesting similarities.

In wild, student-request news, I received an email from a student who missed the first week and a half of class, then missed two of three in-class chances to get extra credit, and missed close to half the total classes in a course where class participation is counted, telling me how surprised she was that she got a “B” when she was expecting an “A.” Since she blew off the first week and a half she missed a test and I had to literally force her to write me an explanation as to why she missed before I’d give her a make-up. She finally admitted in writing that she had no reason. She just hadn’t come. But she’s surprised she didn’t get an “A.” Sadly enough, I’m not surprised by her surprise.

Trapped in a Zombie Nightmare

It’s getting close to semester’s end here. And close to graduation. Some seniors are starting to panic; everyone is a little tense, including faculty members who hate this time of year when some students try to make up in a week for a semester of laziness. I had a sudden vision today of being trapped in a zombie movie, but instead of zombies stumbling around after “brains, brains,” it was students scrambling after “grades, grades.” Such students are a lot faster than the typical zombie, too. And they know how to use telephones and email.

I always have to remind myself that most students do what they need to do. Most haven’t waited until the last minute, or they got their shit together anyway. I’ve got many good students. For my Comparative Psych class this year I had students keep journals of observations on the animals they saw. Almost everyone did a good job, and I think some even had fun. Unfortunately, it’s often the problem students who make the biggest impression. And their crazy expectations!

One student handed in their journal this morning, two days late, and by 1:00 had already come to see if I had graded it. Seems you wouldn't want to harass the teacher over a grade for something that you missed the deadline on and are hoping they’ll be kind enough to look at anyway. Another of our 280 or so majors emailed me to see if I had a copy of their “FEP.” That was it, the whole email. It took a couple of exchanges before I learned that they'd sent an FEP page with their resume for a recommendation letter.

Of course, students don’t realize how many other students a teacher will work with. I’ve done at least 30 letters of recommendation in the past two months. I’m not likely to remember every sheet of paper sent to me, especially since I’d done this recommendation in early March. Honestly, though, I see faculty members do the same thing on occasion. I get emails assuming that I'll remember off the top of my head something about a faculty study submitted to my Review Committee months before, as if I’ve only had the one instead of the thirty I average a month.

Well, this post has rambled nowhere, but that’s partly because I’ve been grading, and meeting with committees, and writing letters, and grading, and responding to tearful phone calls, and grading like a banshee, and sleep is only a misty, half remembered dream. Makes me pretty close to a zombie myself. And, yeah, tomorrow I get a truckload of new papers to grade. I likely won’t post again until the weekend, and then won’t post at all the first three days of next week when the grading actually intensifies. I’ll try to get around to some blogs each day—-as a needed break—-but won’t be regular for a bit.

See you on the other side. Unless I get dragged down and eaten. Of course, I might see you anyway in that case. I might show up on your doorstep moaning for "grades, grades." Just shoot me in the head if I do. Don't make me suffer.

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