Damn Passing Airplane!

I’m picturing Boice in his office working peacefully (moderately, beginning before ready) when an airplane flies overhead. He closes his eyes, rubs his temples lightly, breathes deeply and calmly resumes actively waiting.

I’m a big fan of early evaluations. I do an anonymous evaluation the third week of classes and two more before the semester’s end, a practice that helps me know what works and what doesn’t for each section so I can adapt my lesson plans. I’ve found that there’s no rhyme or reason to what tactics work between sections. A lesson that’s wildly successful in one class can be a miserable flop in a section two hours later. I think it’s important to recognize when something simply isn’t working in class and improvise a change. I know it’s not my job to spoon feed my students their comp, but I don’t assume student boredom or confusion is their fault. Sometimes they’re being lazy or not paying attention, but more often than not if they’re missing the point it’s a failure in my delivery, and I try to adjust.

I think my classes could benefit from Boice excerpts on overreaction, high emotion and self-criticism. I had a student come to me in tears a few weeks ago because he’d overslept and missed class. I couldn’t convince him that this one absence would have little effect on his semester and none on the rest of his life. This (uncomfortable) interaction renewed my belief that most students want to do well and that freshmen year is hard. If I can make their lives easier by not getting overly attached to what I think should work in class, instead adjusting to what does, I can only hope they'll all calm down just a little bit, ignore the passing airplanes, and make it out of this semester (relatively) unscathed.