"This Is Not Real": The Sad Truth About English and the Community College
Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 11:42AM | by Otter I’m still crunching numbers to get my grades in, and this came in over the wire from the first section I finished off:
Is there anything I can do to get this grade higher. I thought if I passed the exam I passed the class. How is it I got an D. Please explain. I was told if I passed the exam I passed the class. I asked before I sold my book back to bookstore today. This is not real
The syllabus states quite clearly that the exit exam simply clears me to give the student the grade she earned this term.
But never mind that: they don’t read the syllabus.
The heart-breaking thing is that the American dream came down, for this student, to a matter of a few points on her final average and to a few failures to proofread, or perhaps to an inability to proofread that I couldn’t quite help her overcome.
This email’s grammatical failures are typical of the student’s work. I’m quite confident that I did convey the course information to the class. I’m confident that I did impress on this student and her colleagues the importance of checking work, proofreading, and following the MLA format when it comes to citation.
But she didn’t do it, for whatever reason.
A longer email came in a few minutes later explaining that this is the student’s last crack at a bright future: it seems I have ruined her scholarship opportunities. (I get this a lot.)
A similar exchange came up a few hours later:
My grade! How ? Wow ! I worked really hard in this class ! I felt i could have gotten a C!
followed soon after by this:
We need to talk!asap 555-5555 please call!
My reply:
Please go over your grades from the semester and tell me which of them you feel should have been higher and why. I will be happy to consider your case.
After a breathless pause, the same student wrote (and I swear I am not making this up):
Hey can u please change my final grade? Im begging u please i need to pass
My reply isn’t important. It amounts to, “No, and you should be ashamed to ask me for that.”
On the first day of the course, I tell them, “If you want to make a difference in this world, read really good books to your kids.” My students, undisappointed by bad grades and harsh demands that they show up on time, can still hear what I have to say at that time and can still resolve to do this good thing, to prepare their children to hear and respond to correct Standard English. They can make that climb seem a little less impossible for the next generation.
But I’ll be damned if I can see how some of these students of mine will do it for themselves.
They tell me I’m their last hope.
Sometimes the last hope is the one that tells you it’s hopeless. I don’t mean to. I definitely don’t want to.
Sometimes I just can’t make the numbers lie on their behalf.
Reader Comments (11)
It sounds like you need a hug. I often felt as if I'd failed when my students weren't up to a task (even though it was due to a lack of preparation) .... Being a teacher is a lot harder than people imagine.
Jennifer! You make me blush. ;)
Otter, you dwell in the midst of a rebellious classroom, which has eyes to see but does not see, and ears to hear but does not hear; for they are a rebellious classroom. Therefore, Otter, prepare your belongings for captivity, and go into captivity by day in their sight. You shall go from your place into captivity to another place in their sight. It may be that they will consider, though they are a rebellious classroom.
They will be in Freshman Comp for seventy years, among a strange people who speak a different tongue....
Going through the same issues with the one chemistry course I taught this semester. A little over half the class want to be nurses and need a C in my course to continue. About a dozen women, some older than my tender 30-something, are coming to the realization that their dream of a better life via a career in nursing is ending, or at very least hitting a major snag. And I am the one dropping the axe. :(
But people who can't tell milligrams from micrograms, that milliliters and cubic centimeters are the same, or compute a lethal dose correctly can't be nurses until they get that sorted out.
Right, Gallows. (Apt name, that...) it's not doing society or their future any good to pretend they're ready for prime time.
Read really good books to your kids. Check.
Sorry that you have to be the heavy in their lives.
After reading this post, I just know I'm going to have that dream where I receive a letter from the university telling me that I didn't really graduate and that I'm going to have to sit for that one exam...
Yeah, they've been meaning to talk to you about that....
Would Captain Underpants be considered a "really good book"?
Tresa, only if they color the pictures themselves.