Today was the "First Day of School" for me. I went to Farm to teach my two compositon classes. The students seem pretty good. They all showed up 5 minutes early. The two issues I had there were:
1. during the first class a knock came at the door 20 minutes into the lecture. I opened the door & a young guy (18) walks through & says "English?" I said "Yes, can I help you?" "Yeah--I'm in here." He has no book, no notebook, not even a pen, nor does he have a print-out of his schedule. I said "You have the wrong room." He says "How would you know?" I said "Because I am the profesor. That's why." He says "Yeah--but how do you know?" I reply "I have 22 on the roster & 22 in here. You figure it out." With that he left & my class was in stitches.
2. I have two woemn in their fifties in my second class. They came up to me & said they "have problems". Great. What is the problem? One works in Queens at 3:00 and the other has children getting off the bus at 3:30 in Queens. They would like to leave at 2:30 every day. Ummm.......no. But I did offer them the option of sitting in the first class & not doing a drop or switch or anything. I will record attendance & grades with class #2 but they will sit in class #1. If they drop they will not be enrolled in my first class as it is maxed out. And if they do plead a case & to the switch the right way I'll get two more students that I will have two more sets of papers for. So we're doing this my way.
The kicker that makes this day stupid is I come home to a message from the chair saying my hybrids are cancelled & that they are beyond maxed in numbers anyway so I now have to re-vamp my syllabus & go in everyday. I am not happy. I picked my hybrids in March. I had to remind them to deal with this from April up to last week. Today--two working days before the semester begins there they change it. yeah--right. I'm doing hybrid days anyway. I just have to figure out how to get around these looneys. Stupid STUPID STUPID!
