One Down ...

... and one more day of class to go. My Tuesday night class ended quite well. I talked about my research on hate violence, how it manifests, it's power, and legislative responses. I was extremely pleased with the overall progress of this section. Afterwards, I handed out my final exam, and talked about how this section made teaching a very meaningful practice for me. And I thanked them for making the semester wonderfully productive. I turned the class over the student to conduct teacher evaluations of me, and stepped outside. Students began to trickle as they left the room and many of them thanked me for a great semester. One in particular said that my class meant everything to him, and he wished he had more opportunities to take classes from me. That certainly made me feel great about what I teach and how I approach the practice of teaching. It was simply an excellent experience.

As for the other section, I'm fairly ambivalent about them. The students are in a program to acclimate freshmen as they transition from high school to college. They have joint classes, share the same residence halls, and are exposed to a "rigorous" liberal arts curriculum. They are selected because they scored slightly higher on the SAT than the average student, but come up short on being in the Honors Program. And there are some great students who actively contribute to the class and the assigned work.

So why the ambivalence? A few of them still have the "high school" mentality. Quite a few it seems. If I was asked to assess their transition, I would say they're stuck in the high school mode. And to be fair, I have to think about what I've done and how I conducted myself in class. I could've created or contributed to an environment where they're still thinking as high school kids because of my friendly and comedic nature. But I look at my Tuesday night section, and I see a huge difference in the quality of the work. I am still the same person, doing what I've always done, and the disparity is quite noticeable.

I think it's the air of entitlement among these students that bugs me quite a bit. That because they're in this program, they seem to think they are smarter than everyone else. But when I read their work, and listen to their discussions, I find them to be fairly average. I had high expectations for this set of students because they were affiliated with this program for good reason. But it's clear that either I set them too high, or they're just not up to task.

Whatever. The semester is almost over and I'm planning to make a push to finish my last chapter. So the sooner this is over, the quicker I can get back to writing.