Another end to the semester...

Last night marked the end of my semester. For those of you who don’t know, I teach a course every semester at the University of the Incarnate Word here in San Antonio. This semester’s topic was Linux/UNIX.

This was a tough semester for me. I’m getting married in September, trying to buy a house and was traveling a lot for work. I definitely understand that I wasn’t able to put the amount of prep time into this class that I wanted to, but again I was fairly disappointed with the effort extended by the students.

I think that I just have to be a jerk in the future. I mean, these are all suppose to be highly motivated students, private college, students looking to go the extra mile. Instead they’re just students!!!! Ok, maybe I have high expectations, and I know that I could be a bit lazy, but I still don’t remember pulling half the stuff that these students pull. I knew better than to try and turn something in 3 weeks late and expect full credit.

I’ve noticed that the students are quite bold. More than willing to tell me when I’m wrong and mocking me if I made a mistake – that was the part that really hacked me off. So I gave a review, and I had a mistake in it. On the test, they (All the students) parroted back the mistake on a multiple choice question that was from the review. On the test, they had to write some code. They got the code sections right! They parroted the multiple choice answer that was wrong and yet could answer the questions.

I'm obviously not the only having issues with students feeling entitled - I like the entry below from a law professor

http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2006/10/disciplining_th.html

Maybe its just a case of students will be students, but I again had another frustrating semester. Maybe teaching is too much for me right now in my life.

I teach management of technology next semester. I want it to be a really good course. I’m thinking of really using group work and articles. I want them to prove that they are ready to graduate. We’ll see.