June 2009 Weddings
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Why do stats students have to break my heart?
I really want my students to do well, I really do. Why do they not study or not ask questions when they are confused? Why do they get 50s on their tests? They all pretend like they understand, and look at me like I'm teaching them to read *** and Jane books (bored with this "can you please move on" look on their face). I'm only 7 tests in, and the average score right now is probably a 60 (and the only reason it is that high is I have one student who got a 92). I'm depressed, and don't know how I'm going to grade the remaining 25.
Re: Why do stats students have to break my heart?
It's okay, my speech and writing students want to break my heart too...
They get their papers back and then come to office hours and whine "But I didn't really understand the assignment!!" Um, okay, you've had the assignment for two weeks. You know how I start every class asking if there are any questions? And you know how I sit, all alone, in my office during office hours? And you know how I check my e-mail 8 BILLION times a day? How come, despite all of that, you don't tell me you didn't understand the assignment until you get a "D" on it?
Not to bring you down, but (I could be wrong) stats is probably one of those classes you have to take in college, but barely matters for your major GPA. It's boring stuff. (No offense). I pretty much sat in every single one of my college classes with that look on my face, like can we get the hell out of here already?!?
I did however, do incredibly well in college, even though I was an *** in most of my classes and would skip them on the regular.
If I were you, I would call them out in class and tell them they're pretty pathetic. Tell them you understand it's boring stuff, but unfortunately it's something that they need to do. The last thing they want to do is to have to take the class again. When going over lessons in class I would straight out say, "this is going to be on a quiz/test, so if you don't speak up now, it's your fault when you get a 52 on the test. Have fun taking the class again next semester."
Then again, I have no idea what your teaching style is, or what the caliber of the university is that you teach at. Unfortunately for you, when an entire class fails a class, it makes the professor look like they're the ones doing something wrong.
Cruella, most of my professors had the attitude that if you don't care neither do they. It seemed to work pretty well.
I had a professor once (when the entire class was talking) say,"efff it,clearly you guys don't care" and just walked out of class. We all sat there for like 10 minutes thinking he would come back. He never did. After that, things changed.
Yeah, I know they hate it, and no offense taken. It is required for psych and nursing, maybe sociology too. These are all "people" people, and not math people. I doubt that many will actually fail (Right now out of the 8 I have graded 4 have scores above 70 - there are just some really bad scores as well), and they probably know this because everything is curved in the class. I do hope its not me being a horrible teacher (I don't think I am - but thanks for the complex shag!). I give lots of examples, explain things a couple of different way, and give them ample opportunity to ask questions. Their homeworks have looked good so far. I'm just frustrated. Its like they don't listen - I tell them what they have to do to do well (practice basically), and they just don't believe me.
Cruella...hahaa I so didn't mean it like that. I am just saying that even if you are doing a great job (which I am sure you are) if a bunch of students fail it makes you look bad, as opposed to the actual students (even if they're a bunch of idiots). Stats is a tough class to teach, because other than stats teachers and actuaries, pretty much no one is interested in stats.
It's good that your school curves stuff. We had a policy in college that no professors could curve the grade more than a few % points. I think I had 1 class in my 4 years that a teacher actually did curve. IT sucked. If you did bad, it was your problem.
My stats professor scared us all straight. I had the guy for a couple of other classes and he was a really cool guy, really laidback. But in stats....
He gave us a quiz on the 2nd day. Nearly everyone failed (except me, yay.) After he handed them back, he let us look at them for 2 seconds, and then passed out the same test again to see if we had looked up what we had missed after the quiz. Surpise quizzes were given on a regular basis.
Then, almost every day for the first part of the semester, he would lecture us on how terrible we were doing, how we weren't studying, that we were lazy and not putting in time outside of class, we were going to fail, etc etc. Basically terrifying us and giving us a major guilt trip at the same time.
But it worked. Everyone started busting their @sses studying.
BTW, it's funny that thenest blocked out "d!ck and jane books"
lol
I think I had that attitude the first 2 times I took stats (LOL!) I finally got a decent teacher who spoke English correctly (the first 2 were Iranian, that was interesting), aced it and became a tutor! It really is so easy once you just 'get' it.
I am sure you are a great teacher, but they don't realize they need to actually pay attention to you in order to get it. It's not like other classes. Here's hoping they see the light soon!?