How is your term going?

[Pancakedayisthebest]

I'm feeling a bit broken! I lost my mojo for teaching in COVID and now feel like I go through the motions. Students are quite challenging, some great participation, others just stare at phones. I'm planning on a device free week at some point to see if they start interacting a bit more.

I regularly do 'no devices' tasks with students - they work really well and get very good feedback from students.
I also find 'no device' tasks where students have to get up and move around work well too as they remove the temptation to reach for their phones (which I think is incredibly deeply embedded).

I can say more about those tasks if that'd be useful.

I'm the same with the no device tasks. If they need to make notes of any description for them I ask them to use pen and paper. There are usually enough students with pen and paper so that there is at least one per group.

Every time I've tried no device in the past they've complained either to me or about me, that it's not inclusive and they all seem to have various reasons why they need to cling to a screen rather than talk.

What complete bullshit. I hate the way EDI is used and abused like this because it really undermines the students who actually do have legitimate reasons for relying on a screen.

I find "no device" tasks work well when its an entirely new task format, rather than the usual tasks but with a "no device" rule attached to them. I usually do group work in seminars - setting students group work but saying "no devices for this group work" would fall flat. But doing something other than our usual group work which needs no devices works better.

Most of the students I teach have part time jobs or live at home so have long commutes. So I don't expect much prep from them. I have however learnt all their names and don't shy away from calling on them individually if I don't get many volunteers (after a bit of group/partner discussion). At first they found it jarring but now they're much more confident as a group and much less afraid of speaking up.

@thepresureofausername I have however learnt all their names
😱How? What witchcraft is this you speak of?

I have tried to do this, I really have. But I can't. They all dress and wear their hair so similar to each other. Plus they wear different outfits each class. And sit in different places. It's bloody impossible.

I know. I'm the same. And we also have a lot of international students with names that are not familiar, which makes it even harder given that I am linguistically challenged.

Haha I print off their photos which helps. But I am lucky that I tend to have 30-40 students at a time.
There's a large mass of girls with dyed blonde hair that I struggle with though!

I have 300 students or thereabouts. All I know is that a lot of the blonde girls are called Lucy. I try to learn actual names for international students rather than their 'english' names but it's so so hard to remember them all.

I do see what you mean about prep expectation - many of mine are in the same position, and I am sympathetic about it and have scaled back a lot on required reading (though I never had a high reading load to begin with, in comparison with other colleagues). But I'm not sure how I can continue to run seminars with a class full of students who, for whatever reasons - attention span, apathy, or the tyranny of neoliberalism - aren't able to read a single short story or watch 25 minutes of clips beforehand. I mean, I can do the mini-lecture and then group-work close reading structure, which is what I currently do. But it's still pretty draining!

All that being said, I had an extremely lively seminar today with students who, despite not having watched the film under discussion before class, still managed to have a lot to say about it - it was something they'd likely have seen when they were kids, so that helped, and hopefully the slides gave them some critical framing they can return to in revision (haha). So actually I feel slightly less drained today. Funny how that goes... :)

I often feel like I’m doing CPR for 3 hours as people often don’t prepare or want to talk 😵‍💫

Anyone also notice an increase in mumbling amongst the young men in their seminars when they do talk? They seem to get quieter and quieter/less clear each year - though maybe I'm just getting old 😂

On the other hand, there's still plenty of older men still booming over me at conferences and repeating everything I say but louder a minute later, so...🙄

I have a mumbling son. I wonder if it's the years of headphones...

When everyone one is sat down, I send around a blank sheet for everyone to sign up for the class. I use it as my own attendance, but it also means I know people’s names according to where they are on the list/which order they’re in around the table. A quick glance helps me to know if I have the right name. Might be obvious to the students (nobody has ever said anything) but at least I can vaguely look like I know their names.

Two weeks left for me. I'm practically counting the hours.

I've just started a book chapter that I stupidly agreed to write so hoping that'll keep my pecker up as we limp along towards term's end and the deluge of marking that comes afterwards.

How's everyone doing?

I'm absolutely burnt out this term. To the point where I'm genuinely considering quitting academia. It's not actually current workload, but I have very disengaged seminars this term, and it's just unenjoyable. I've actually decided to cut back on my teaching prep, because I was always overprepping so that there would be something to do in a seminar where students hadn't read the material, brought the texts or were prepared to speak, but for tomorrow I'm doing the minimum. These are final year students, but it's like talking to wallpaper!

I don't blame you at all. I do minimal teaching preparation these days, I just can't be arsed and I find that seminars where I've prepared to within an inch of my life aren't actually that different from those where I just rock up.

When I first joined the university I work at, a colleague of mine used to start each seminar by going around the room and asking students what they'd prepared for the session - the preparation was never huge and they always had a choice of preparation that they could do.

Then she'd randomly pick on students to ask "what did you think of that reading" so students couldn't just lie.

If a student said they hadn't done any (without letting her know in advance with a good excuse), she used to ask them to leave the class.

I loved her approach and she churned out fantastic students from that module (mine followed on) but she got into lots of trouble for it, and had to stop.

We can't ask people to leave. None of my students did the reading for today's classes. It's so annoying but they will tank the assignment as a result and they'll only have themselves to blame!

I kicked out a few students who hadn't done their prep in advance of a workshop last week. In fairness, I did warn them that would happen but for some reason, they never believe me until I do it. No complaints yet although they do put it on the module feedback usually in the hope someone will reprimand me😀Hasn't happened yet but we have a new head of department who I suspect may bring it up with me if he spots it. It will be an interesting discussion as I'm close enough to retirement to really not give a shiny shit.

However, I do give those who don't attend the workshop an alternative, really boring, assignment so they won't miss out on marks. I'm not totally heartless.

It's insane that you can't kick them out if they haven't done the readings. What did you do? I would be very tempted to put them in small groups to discuss questions relating to the readings and then ask each group what they discussed and take up the entire class that way.

Ha! That's what I do, make everyone lead the class in a discussion for 10-15 minutes over the semester and they soon see, both that it's not easy, and what a pain it is if no one says anything.
In another class 3/10 have addiction issues, which is not something I've dealt with before...

1/3 of my teaching team off sick - undoubtedly stress related.
rest of us covering at the cost of our health.
roll on. Easter

Sad to hear so many having the same experiences and I feel you @NotestoSelf - I too feel the same. It's not the amount of work but the emotional labour involved in teaching/going through the motions at seminars that I dread. I genuinely feel like I'm walking on eggshells around students - I wouldn't dare send them out!! Some have complained about seminars finishing 5/10 mins earlier - it's all just so grim and really feels like some of them are little kids pushing our buttons to see how far they can go before we snap.

ECR here so this is all I've ever known - was there ever a time that things were better/more rewarding generally seminar/teaching-wise?

Yikes, it seems everyone is posting from the trenches. Same here, tbh. My first year group are extremely immature and exude a really supercillious attitude, which is making it quite difficult to like them tbh and thus really throwing me off my stride in the seminar. It's annoying because this is often a kind of fun class, and their final project for it is a creative one which they are usually enthusiastic about and enjoy preparing for. I'm getting nothing but a "mean girls" vibe instead, as though they are cringing at the whole experience, and me, trying to engage them - I know it's not the whole bunch, but there are a few cliques that are really dominating the atmosphere. It's not just me either - I have had a colleague teach three seminars on the module, and they've had exactly the same impression.

@Plating I've been teaching for 14 years, and I don't know that I remember it being more rewarding exactly - there were always unprepared, apathetic, or hostile students. But definitely, there wasn't the general push towards making engaging them primarily our responsibility and not ultimately their own. I don't just mean admin, this pressure often comes from colleagues who are very invested in various T&L/pedagogy discourses and are keen to have us change our teaching styles to "meet students where they are". Which is all very well-intentioned, but obviously changes teaching dynamics significantly. This, along with and intensified by, the whole neoliberal university/student as customer mentality, of course.

Also, I'll be honest - I do feel more worried by things like student evaluations and/or complaints than I would have a decade ago. They are taken increasingly seriously - which for many reasons is fine and right, but not for others. It has affected the way I "perform" myself as a teacher, I can't deny it.

I object to our student evaluations regularly. I keep asking how they plan on mitigating against the well researched fact that students tend to be more critical of female lecturers and rank similar performance in males and females more negatively in females.

Tumbleweed.

@OchonAgusOchonOh

They are getting more entrenched here - our uni has just 'overhauled' them, and now there's two sections, one where they can evaluate the module as a whole, and another where they can comment on individual instructors, which - gallingly - asks students to "report on aspects of the teaching performance of your lecturer".