My Favorite Spelling Errors

Of course, I see a lot of spelling errors in my job. Most of them do not involve what any reasonable person would consider hard words. Things like using the wrong "there" or putting "quiet" for "quite," make up something like ninety percent of spelling errors at both of my institutions.

Still, I have two favorites:

1. "Defiantly" for "Definitely": This one is an artifact of spell-check. I do find "definitely" sort of hard to spell, so I have some sympathy for getting the red wavy line on it. BUt if your best guess has the letter A in it, then the computer's first suggestion is going to be "defiantly." If you remember your hooked on phonics and sound it out, you'll realize you want choice two--but most people don't bother, which leads to sentences like, "I defiantly recommend this book/movie/thingy to anyone," or "I defiantly didn't want to be working for minumum wage the rest of my life." It amuses me to imagine someone defiantly making these declarations.

2. "Pregnate" for "pregnant." I admit, I see this one on my rodent lists a lot more often than in class-- things like, "I brought her home from the pet store, and a week later I found out she was pregnate," or "Litter available--my mouse is pregnate!"

Anyone else have faves typos or spelling errors?

Bad ProfessorDog!

First off, let me say that I know it is wrong to cuss out a student in front of the class. Or in any other setting, really, but in front of the class is especially bad because it gives you 20 people who can potentially complain to the Dean and get you fired, rather than just one.

But here's what happened. We were doing a grammar lesson on subject-verb agreement (this is the remedial class at BCCC). My stnadard grammar lesson plan involves me going over a rule or trouble spot, with a few examples, then doing a few questions out of the book out loud (which means I read the question and wait for someone to whisper the answer in the tiniest of tiny voices. Only when I say, "You were right, can you just repeat that so everyone can hear?" will anyone give an answer in an audible voice), then the students do a couple more questions in writing (because it's always the same two or three people who whisper the answers, and I need to know if everyone else knows), and then they write an original sentence or two that demonstrates what we just learned. It's not the most exciting thing in the world, but it's also not listening to me drone on and on for hours on end--it's five minutes of lecture, five minutes of participation, five minutes of individual work, lather, rinse, repeat.

Anyway, on this particular occasion there were two young women in the back row who were having a private conversation so interesting that it was not possible for them to stop talking. Besides being rude, this prevents me from hearing the whispered answers during the participation portion of the program. Also, I have a number of students with disability letters saying they should have a distraction-free enviornment during testing, and I figure have people talking during individual work qualifies as a distraction (although not as testing).

My first step in dealing with these matters is glaring. That usually doesn't work, and didn't this time. Next, I say very sweetly, "Do you have a question back there?" Both young ladies gave me dirty looks, and one managed to say, "No," (in a very snotty tone, of course) before turning back to her friend and resuming their chat. Next, I said, "If you'd rather talk than be in class, go outside." Another dirty look; conversation resumes. Then I said, "I'm serious, shut the fuck up or get out."

They did shut up, for about ten minutes.

On Edit: I teach at a community college in Amish country. Our students are not used to hearing the F-word from teachers.

Excuses, Excuses

I've finally succeeded in getting through to my students the message that if they wish for an absence to be excused, they must have had an emergency. Great, huh? Only now they simply describe every reason for which they intend to be absent as an emergency. I'm going to Puerto Rico to see my family for two weeks. It's an emergency. My mom had to borrow my car, because of an emergency. I have a court date, because I ran a stop sign on my way to an emergency. I don't have my paper done, and I can't bring it to the next class because I have to go home for a family meeting. Anemergency family meeting.

I'm especially annoyed with two-weeks-in-Puerto-Rico guy. I understand wanting to see your family, really I do. When I was in Illinois, which might as well have been a foreign territory, I came back home every chance I got. But, you know, I scheduled my visits for school breaks. I know, he says there's a family emergency--but what kind of family emergency do you know about two weeks in advance (when he first informed me of his intended absence)? And you know in advance it's going to take exactly two weeks? I'm thinking "emergency airfare special." Plus, he gave me this note saying that he was "willing to sign an agreement" that he intended to make up the work. WTF? If you want to pass a class, you have to do the work. It's not something extra that you do to placate the teacher. Even if you had a genuine emergency, doing the work is not optional. Fortunately, I have two weeks to decide what I want to do about this situation.

BCMU Students Surprise Me

On Tuesday, one of my remedial writing classes at BCMU classes sucked. They universally failed to do the 27 pages of reading that they'd had a week to do (one of our classes last week was cancelled, so they had two whole classes worth of reading to do, poor lambs). When I asked them questions about what they were supposed to have read, they sat there and stared at me. When I put them in small groups to discuss another part of what they were supposed to have read, they sat there and stared at their textbooks for thirty minutes. It was one of the worst classes I've ever suffered through.

Today, I opened my class with a little sermon about how they won't learn anything in this class if they sit there like lumps on a log, how I get paid the same either way, so it's no skin off my butt if they don't learn anything, but they should think hard about if they want to waste their time and money taking a class and not getting anything from it because they were too lazy to do their part.

And with one or two exceptions, they responded well to it. Participation was the best its been all semester. They worked during the group work--and stayed on-task, except for a little bit at the end when all of the groups except one were done--and I checked the groups that said they were done, and they actually had done a reasonably thorough job of what I asked them to do.

So now I know, next time they stop working, they respond well to ranting.