I've not been in a good mood lately. I've been avoiding answering emails as well as checking in on the blogging scene here, because I have so much negativity built up. I'm just frustrated with the apparent inability of my students to think straight, to understand that it's not appropriate to waltz into class twenty minutes late and then start texting on the cell phone, to recognize basic facts of reality. I'm a little worn down by the realization that the closest place where people aren't exactly like the residents of Ghosttown is a full hour and a half away by car, on poorly maintained roads that throw gravel at your windshield and make you wonder why we stopped investing in the railway system. This whole place makes me feel lonely and isolated.
Rather than dwell upon this any further, I am going to try to cheer myself up with a music video that involves synthesizers, Morris dancers, and what I can only assume was a huge amount of cocaine and pills.
Rather than dwell upon this any further, I am going to try to cheer myself up with a music video that involves synthesizers, Morris dancers, and what I can only assume was a huge amount of cocaine and pills.
Have you seen the movie BioDome? Mostly forgettable, but Pauly Shore did a wonderful send-up of this video somewhere in the middle of it. In fact, I now think more of the parody than the strange original when I hear this song.
ReplyDelete*patpatpat*
ReplyDeleteMy DH has been getting a lot of mileage from the teaching tactics in Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov. For years he's been complaining about students like yours, and this year he's implemented many of the tactics and their behavior has improved and they're less demoralizing. http://nicoleandmaggie.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/teaching-tactics-part-ii/
You Do Not Need Cocaine to Do the Safety Dance!!!!!
ReplyDeleteReally. I'm offended. See if I share my Devo hats with you.
@RG: I haven't seen that movie, but I looked up the clip when you mentioned it. I vastly prefer the original video, in all its oddity.
ReplyDelete@N&M: I'll look into this stuff, honest. But I'm already getting the sense, having read through your blog post and compared notes with my own experiences, that this is, as it were, throwing good effort after bad. I already feel a degree of self-loathing at how dumbed-down my lessons have become. Since my current position is due to expire naturally at the end of this academic year, and then it's off to the next (?) job, I just can't put forth the effort to be the Mr. Rogers of the classroom. I am made or broken by my publication record and research profile, not by how many of these slack-jawed students considered my course a pleasant semester-long encounter.
Sigh. I'm hardening into a cynic already.
@Sis: Yes, I know you don't need coke to do the dance! But, for Pete's sake, look at the expression on Ivan Doroschuk's face! LOOK AT THE "FRANCAIS" DANCER! Those are not the faces of sober, clean-living people. Not anyone involved in the music scene in 1982, anyway.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if this is to your absurdity taste, but, here. That one made me feel a lot better on a bad day last spring.
ReplyDeleteYou know, the first class I taught, I had a student fail my class because of psychological fallout from being photographed being restrained by the NYPD while participating in a building occupation. Now, I have students skipping class to interview for marketing jobs. I have decided it's beyond my pay grade to think about any of this shit.
@Ajnabieh: It is very much to my taste! See:
ReplyDeletehttp://loveanddisdain.blogspot.com/2011/02/star-trek-music-video-ftw.html
Dr. K-- If you think using those teaching tactics is dumbing down or being Mr. Rogers, then we haven't done a good job of explaining them. Read the book. It is quite the opposite of either. And it takes LESS effort, rather than more. They're just simple little nudges and re-framing, many of which I did (and do) automatically and I suspect Dr. Crazy also does automatically.
ReplyDelete@N&M: Apologies for coming across as dismissive. I'll read the book before I make any more pronouncements about its merits.
ReplyDeleteOh, yes, the original is MUCH weirder--the BioDome version really only exists because the original is unforgettably bizarre. And have you seen this?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZaiB9jYCxI
Hi! I teach at a place similar to yours, though the culture war issues are somewhat less overt. One thing I did was read Rebekah Nathan's My Freshman Year, an ethnographic study of freshman at the University of Northern Arizona that illustrated how students there processed academic requirements. I've found it clued me in to lots of ways to engage them, especially in highlighting practical soft skills from the course as well as subject matter.
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