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Re: Good lectures



"We are teachers, not gods. If I can't get my act together and finish when I
am supposed to, that is my problem, not my students. I will not hold my
students long in the same way I hope that my colleagues will behave the
same."

This is, once again, the case of someone personalizing an e-mail, and then
girding their loins for a quixotic battle. I am sorry that Marc took it that
way. In psychobabble terms we call it "projection."

I usually introduce the policy by asking them if anyone in class has heard of
Pavlov. I then briefly describe his work with bells and dogs. I then tell them
that I've discovered that high school students are similarly conditioned. I tell
them that I have observed that when the bell rings, high school student's eyes
get glazed and glassy and they, zombie like, arise from their desks and wander
out the door, regardless of what is occuring in the room, never really being
sure where they are headed. The class laughs and gets the point. Godlike? I
think not.

Nothing in any of my comments said nor implied that I kept students past the
bell longer than it took for them to sit down in their correct seats and wait
for me to dismiss them. To paraphrase Marc, "I will demand of my students the
same behavior that they demand of me...politeness."

I have used, with individual students whom I take aside, an analogy. I ask them
how they feel when they are trying to explain something to their parent when
their parent turned on the TV or picks up a newspaper in the middle of the
student's explanation.

This is not playing "G_d." This is simply teaching them manners and appropriate
behavior. BTW, deeply buried in many school districts curricula and
"mission/vision statements" (see edubabble) is the requirement to, however
worded, teach the students proper behavior.

Sorry Marc, I don't walk across water, I barely float.

Ray