She makes me want to shove a shiv in my ear and drain the blood from my skull. I’m not the only one who is irritated by her constant shrieks of nonsense during our three-hour night class.
I shan’t name her. Not because I am fearful of hurting her feelings, as if they get internet down under that rock of hers. Mostly it’s because I haven’t bothered to learn her name – her real name, that is. I have plenty of nicknames for her. Fret not; I have no plans of sharing the majority of them. Most are for me, only.
I will tell you that she came to class last week smelling particularly odoriferous. She breezed a delicate bouquet of cigarettes and eau d’ pesticide. Besides being a teacher, God save the children with disabilities she “instructs” (read that as controls), she must also be the school janitor because the smell of roach poison was ever so strong. Her friend had to get up and move to the front, making up some nice reason why she couldn’t sit by Lady Raid. Everyone else knew better.
Class had barely begun when she shot that hand up, thrashing it about as it if were simply attached to her wrist with twine and duct tape. She couldn’t wait to thrill us with the daily happenings of her classroom, complete with student names.
We were ever so lucky last week. Not only did we have a guest speaker but this person had not been privy to the Lady Raid’s screeches. So we had an exceptionally interrupted class of off-topic outbursts. It was lovely. The good part is that she slowed the speaker down so I could write notes. Seeing I was down to one hand on account of holding my sock up to my nose to keep from ingesting the fumes of her poisonous aroma.
The best part, oh yes the very best part, was the fact that the guest speaker’s topic had nothing to do with the class. Oh no. This person’s lecture, the second one mind you, was about Latino culture and how to teach English to non-native speakers: an important and vital topic for classroom teachers, no doubt about it. It was actually interesting as well, but that’s not the point. With the instructor’s admission, we are very behind in our class and we are already cutting out material that is pertinent to our class because of time. So why, oh why, would we insert two class periods of non-relevant information? Because college professors have what is called “academic freedom.” They can pretty much do anything they want, including wasting our time and money by not actually teaching us the subject. Forget about learning about such an important topic as how to instruct students with disabilities in the regular classroom. It is upsetting and aggravating. I want to learn so much about instructing student with disabilities and my professor is padding our curriculum with other things. For most of the teachers and future teachers in this graduate, this is the only special education class they will ever take.
Professors talk all the time about student accountability and responsibility. There is always discussion about the laziness of students and how they simply want to get the grade and forget about learning. There is little talk, and no action, when it comes to faculty accountability. When it is the professor’s idea to skip class, write poor tests, care little about the actually course and learning, and refuse to acknowledge their own mistakes, then we students are supposed to just sit back and take it. Get your grade and move on.
Yes, yes. The university has instructor evaluations, but they aren’t taken seriously despite what faculty maintain. If it were true, then these poor teachers would be phased out. They are not. They are allowed to keep on teaching, until they get tenure. Once that happens, then forget about the evaluations at all. Those forms mean nothing to the tenured teacher. I’ve even had one tenured teacher, who made us take our evaluations at the beginning of class and give them to that instructor unsealed. Who knows what happened beyond that. Everyone talks about how that is not supposed to happen. If that was true, then the department head would have thrown a fit when the instructor turned them in himself. Maybe they were never turned in.
I shan’t name her. Not because I am fearful of hurting her feelings, as if they get internet down under that rock of hers. Mostly it’s because I haven’t bothered to learn her name – her real name, that is. I have plenty of nicknames for her. Fret not; I have no plans of sharing the majority of them. Most are for me, only.
I will tell you that she came to class last week smelling particularly odoriferous. She breezed a delicate bouquet of cigarettes and eau d’ pesticide. Besides being a teacher, God save the children with disabilities she “instructs” (read that as controls), she must also be the school janitor because the smell of roach poison was ever so strong. Her friend had to get up and move to the front, making up some nice reason why she couldn’t sit by Lady Raid. Everyone else knew better.
Class had barely begun when she shot that hand up, thrashing it about as it if were simply attached to her wrist with twine and duct tape. She couldn’t wait to thrill us with the daily happenings of her classroom, complete with student names.
We were ever so lucky last week. Not only did we have a guest speaker but this person had not been privy to the Lady Raid’s screeches. So we had an exceptionally interrupted class of off-topic outbursts. It was lovely. The good part is that she slowed the speaker down so I could write notes. Seeing I was down to one hand on account of holding my sock up to my nose to keep from ingesting the fumes of her poisonous aroma.
The best part, oh yes the very best part, was the fact that the guest speaker’s topic had nothing to do with the class. Oh no. This person’s lecture, the second one mind you, was about Latino culture and how to teach English to non-native speakers: an important and vital topic for classroom teachers, no doubt about it. It was actually interesting as well, but that’s not the point. With the instructor’s admission, we are very behind in our class and we are already cutting out material that is pertinent to our class because of time. So why, oh why, would we insert two class periods of non-relevant information? Because college professors have what is called “academic freedom.” They can pretty much do anything they want, including wasting our time and money by not actually teaching us the subject. Forget about learning about such an important topic as how to instruct students with disabilities in the regular classroom. It is upsetting and aggravating. I want to learn so much about instructing student with disabilities and my professor is padding our curriculum with other things. For most of the teachers and future teachers in this graduate, this is the only special education class they will ever take.
Professors talk all the time about student accountability and responsibility. There is always discussion about the laziness of students and how they simply want to get the grade and forget about learning. There is little talk, and no action, when it comes to faculty accountability. When it is the professor’s idea to skip class, write poor tests, care little about the actually course and learning, and refuse to acknowledge their own mistakes, then we students are supposed to just sit back and take it. Get your grade and move on.
Yes, yes. The university has instructor evaluations, but they aren’t taken seriously despite what faculty maintain. If it were true, then these poor teachers would be phased out. They are not. They are allowed to keep on teaching, until they get tenure. Once that happens, then forget about the evaluations at all. Those forms mean nothing to the tenured teacher. I’ve even had one tenured teacher, who made us take our evaluations at the beginning of class and give them to that instructor unsealed. Who knows what happened beyond that. Everyone talks about how that is not supposed to happen. If that was true, then the department head would have thrown a fit when the instructor turned them in himself. Maybe they were never turned in.
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