My One-Hundred-and-Oneth Post

Huh. Who'd have thunk it? I hadn't realized I'd been approaching this number until Marilyn pointed out her 101st entry over at Well-Driven Nails. It's a nice number, but a bit humbling to think that all this frenzy of posting the last few months has only just brought me in line with everyone else; I thought I'd be leading the pack by now. Had I been posting every day, I would be.

There's a slap upside the head.

Wouldn't be the first one today, either. A student's brazen dumbness caused me actual injury today.

It's a scene oft-repeated in my classroom. I was discussing the schedule for the last few weeks of the semester, including all the due dates of major assignments. I do this to reinforce just how soon some of those are coming due. I also repeated, as I have for the past couple of weeks, that our final in the course takes place on December 12. I make a point of repeating this because the final is at a different time than the normal class meeting. This is printed in the schedule, but we can't expect something as wild as a student actually reading the schedule; it's not an assigned exercise, and it's not tested.

At any rate, knowing that they may need to arrange transportation, babysitting, getting time off from work, etc. to come in earlier than usual, I reiterate pretty regularly the time and date of the final. It was written on the board in large letters, and I talked about it for a good seven minutes. I used hand puppets to pantomime a student coming in early. Okay, that's not true, but I did everything short of this.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

About ten minutes after I had discussed this and had moved on to our latest essay, a student at the back raised her hand. When called upon, she asked, "So, is, like, our final on that day in the morning?"

To make the point that she had caused me great misery and despair, I turned around and rammed my head against the whiteboard. Normally this is a great trick. I have a very hard head to start with (I used to scare my mother by banging my forehead against metal railings. This explains a lot, doesn't it?), and it makes a terrific noise, especially when the whiteboard is not securely fastened to the wall, as most of them are not. It has tremendous shock value and makes everyone laugh.

I had forgotten, however, that these rooms had recently been renovated and refitted to make them earthquake-proof. This whiteboard, backed by a solid cement wall, did not budge.

Thunk. Ouch.

It still worked--my exasperation was sufficiently conveyed and the class laughed (rightly) at the very absurdity of asking the question. But it was a bit of a shock for me.

Lest you think this is an isolated incident, I assure you it is not (the lack of basic comprehension and retention, not my injuring myself--though this is common enough). When I mentioned that the students' response journals to Animal Farm were due next week, I could see a look of blank confusion pass across several faces, and when given the opportunity to get a copy of the prompt for the assignment, several students came up to take one. Mind you, this is an assignment we've been working on for at least two weeks, which I have mentioned at every class meeting during those two weeks. I still have students who, when I mention the Assessment Standards (the set of criteria by which I grade their essays, for which I have a handout and about which I speak several times for every single essay) have no idea what I'm talking about.

It's a strange world students live in, one in which their mere presence in the classroom and consumption of oxygen that could be more productively used elsewhere is somehow sufficient to get them a passing grade. What are they doing for those four hours a week when they're not listening to me? Most of them are looking at me for the duration, not scribbling away on their magnum opi; I foolishly tend to assume they're engaged in listening during that time. Maybe they're creating worlds within worlds inside their minds, or playing out the important political discussions of the day in intricate detail--though I tend to lean toward the explanation that they are part of a growing cult of Active Non-Listeners, a mental discipline devoted to protesting the status quo by refusing to engage the brain and purposefully barring any new information from penetrating the gray matter, probably spawned by one of my former students after I forced him to confront the idea of crimestop from 1984 in my 101 course. Now he's training legions to enter my classes and put up psychic barriers to being educated.

I like that explanation because it keeps things centered on me, right where they should be.