rwp-banner


Sheltons Organic Turkey

if I empty out all the unimportant stuff here, maybe there'll be more room in my head for important things


name: shelton brett
location: western u.s.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

And just when I think I'm making progress...

...I experience a horrible teaching moment. The story goes like this.

I'm reviewing the assignments in my undergrad class (only one I teach each year) when I notice one particular student's website is lacking many of the requirements of the assignment. Of particular notice is that none of her pages have the images linked properly and none are linked together. Well, I specifically remember going over this with her 2 weeks ago one-on-one and even did one of her links for her as an example. So I figure this is not her most recent version and email her asking her to come in and review it with me. (So, I'm feeling pretty good about what a great guy I am, how many instructors would take the time that I am with this poor girl? not many, I tell myself, giving her the opportunity to review and resubmit, etc.)

So when she comes in, I show her the website she turned in and asked about the images and links that are missing.
"Yeah, I don't know how to do that," she says.

"Well, do you remember us going over it in class, referring to the handout I gave to you, then our one-on-one session afterwards?"

"Yeah but I didn't learn it."

"Oh," I say, somewhat disappointed. "Well, why don't you take another crack at it and then I'll accept your revision."

"But we already have worked on other assignments since then, and I don't remember anything. And I can't learn from the handout," she replied.

"Well, this is a class that's designed to teach you skills to build a website, to add to your resume and hopefully use after the class is over. Are you saying that you didn't learn anything?"

"Yes, I didn't learn anything."

I thought about this for a minute and said, "Well, then the class let you down and I let you down."

She looked at me and said somewhat defensively, "Sorry," paused, then added, "So, what grade did I get?"

Sigh.