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Are your students needlessly stupid?

Yahweh

Philosopher
Y
Joined
Apr 7, 2003
Messages
9,006
Inspired by the "Just Follow Directions" thread and the posts made by PygmyPlaidGiraffe.

As a teacher, my students dont appear to be at the sharpest marbles. Every year I am bombarded with the stupidest most god-awful things I've ever heard in my life. The things my TA's and I put up with can only be described as "punitively damaging". My students are titans of ignorance. Sure, they can handle their "trees fall and no one can hear them" but when it comes to "how do you know your are not dreaming right now" they become mindless.

I'm known for butchering the English language in my classroom. Oops, my bad. I forgot the serious sin of "double negatives".
"Mr. Christian, you just said 'It dont got nothing to do with chance'. Then apparently it does have something to do with chance."
Use some common sense you idiots. You know what I meant.

"Mr. Christian, I know I did my homework but I cant find it."
That has legitimately happened to me a few times but what do you expect me to do, give you full credit. Sorry loser, you get a ZERO.

"Mr. Christian, you just used the word 'ain't'. 'Ain't' isn't actually a word".
So, I dont care. Did my use of the "aint" prevent you from understanding me.

I know each and every one of my students. Sometimes they turn in assignments that just dont match their style of writing. If I suspect one of my students of plagiarism, I just type in some of the text into this nifty software we have at the school and see what we come up with. The software works by scouring Google for keywords and trying to match up text to website... its really cool. When I find what I'm looking for I print out the plagiarized text followed by a URL and staple it to the students paper. And when a student recieves a 0, I dont draw number, I write the word "ZERO" in big red bold letters.

Every year, I have a series of students who like to pay another student to write do all their homework. Its funny because I've had as many as 6 or so homeworks at time written in the same style, changed ever so slightly (it might be italicized, or written in pen so as not to draw similarities to the other papers). Sometimes the student will intentionally write false answers... sometimes they are humorous.

Last year I got one of those weird people who are overly proud of their grades. One of the ones who will try and argue every wrong answer he got. Once he missed 11 out of 30. He tried to claim that the instructions were too vague and therefore the test should not count. Needless to say, I dont make exceptions for individual students... especially based on the "I dont understand" principle. Also needless to say, I had to fight with this kid for half the class period because he refused to accept his grade because it was unfair. Idiot.

Every year I get the badass student who makes it his primary duty to piss me off. Just a smart ass kid who yells out ignorant things in the middle of my teaching like "Oops I farted, can I go the bathroom and change". "Teacher your boring, ha ha ha". "If youre so smart, whats the meaning of life". I dont know why I deal with those imbeciles. Its against school policy to just pop those kids in the mouth for being a nuisance... damn.

One of the few things I enjoy is every 2 months, the school pays for all the teachers to go to Applebees and just talk... usually about the students and upcoming events. I just go for the Presidente Margaritas.

Have any funny stories to share?
 
well, I adore my kids and have to say that many of them are smarter than I am. I did long term subbing with the 3 year olds one year. Part of a Montessori education is to work on letter sounds rather than the name of the letter. Most 3 year olds come in knowing the names of the letters, but not the sounds.

This is a game I played with a little girl named Kylie.

"Kylie, find me something in the classroom that starts with the letter R"

She returns moments later with an orange.

Is she wrong, no!

so I try, "FInd me something that starts with the letter L"

She brings an Elephant!

I love teaching, but I have to say that the public schools had burned me out. I regained my love for it by switching to a private school. I sometimes feel like I sold out, but then again these kids are getting the great education all kids deserve. Plus, a lot of the parents give up the big SUV and the fancy vacations to afford this school for their kids.

This year the middle school went to Alabama to study civil rights. Now that was funny! A bunch of white kids from Vermont walking around inner city Birmingham singing civil rights songs. BUt, they got back alive, anc certainly less ignorant than when they left.
 
I'm not a teacher but do have a 13 yo that is highly intelligent.

I suppose I should appologize to one of my teachers, I did get into an argument with him about why I should do my homework. See, I was told I would get A's if I did my homework. Being the person I was, I asked what was the point of homework. The answer, to help me study for tests. I was already scoring 97% on my tests, so I didn't really see how homework could help me study.

Many of your students, especially the smart asses might be bored. Not your teaching style or anything, just the same damned material they've had before, or they pick it up quick and fail to see why others can't.
 
It's not that they're stupid, it's just that they're...

Well, OK, they are stupid. Not all of them. Probably not even most of them. But the stupid ones are just so memorable!

Like the girl who claimed she couldn't write her midterm because of Ramadan. Given the sizeable Muslim population at my university, it was rather surprising that no one had ever informed us that test-taking is forbidden during an entire MONTH out of the year. You'd think that would be a big deal, if it was the truth! But, of course, it wasn't. Eventually, she switched tactics to claiming that the fasting required during Ramadan made her too light-headed to write the test. *sigh*

Then there are the people who don't ask for help when they clearly need it. They're more frustrating than anything else, especially last term when I TAed a statistics course. One girl, after writing a quiz in my tutorial section, burst into tears and announced she was going to fail out of psychology because of statistics. I managed to calm her down, and told her that I would be more than willing to spend extra time with her, whatever she needed. But she never took me up on that offer, and wound up failing the course.

I mean, if you know you are struggling with the subject, and there's a friendly TA who is willing to help you out, why not take advantage of that? Not to mention that getting to know your TAs is pretty much a sure-fire way to get more lenient marking. If we know that you are struggling, but also are making a serious effort to do better, we'll probably be inclined to toss out a few bonus marks here and there.

And why doesn't anyone proofread anything? I'm so SICK of reading essays with glaring misspellings in them. Especially when they are misspellings that should be caught by a spellchecker. And no one seems to have the foggiest idea of the difference between it's and its. Or appropriate use of apostrophes in general. I mean, we all make mistakes. No doubt I've made some in this post. But a half dozen mistakes in every paragraph? AUGH.
 
In high school, we received some patonizing lectures at the start of class on basic grammer. It was well worth it. Retaining 7th grade material at that point made it stick for life.

Usually when I violate rules of grammer now, I do it knowingly, and I cringe. But sometimes it's easier to "talk" this way... (example, don't begin a sentence with "but".)
 
I taught 8 years in a private high school. I have no stories to share. (At least none of which I can think at this moment.)

I now teach in a major American university.

One paper I received from this one group of students had approximately 50 grammar and spelling errors on it. The paper was 4 pages long. I had to set it down and come back to it three times before I could finish it.

The sad thing is that it was not unique.

A lecture on the first day about spelling and grammar will definitely be in order next semester!
 
Trish said:
...snip...
Many of your students, especially the smart asses might be bored. Not your teaching style or anything, just the same damned material they've had before, or they pick it up quick and fail to see why others can't.
Click to expand...
No, my kid arent bored. I teach nearly 100 or so kids so I'm bound to get a few smart asses. I dont see how my kids can get the same material before my class, I teach them all sorts of philosophy and psychology... they seem to take it all in. Its not like physics where everything can be repetitive... not even when I go through the same routine 4 times a day. The thing I hate most is a roomfull of kids sleeping, and a teacher droning on and on... so boring you'd want to kill yourself. In a big group of teachers, I would stand out because I tend to be "the oddball" (then again so would half the science teachers). I engage humor and intelligent conversation in my classroom. One of the bad things about my class is obviously the flaw of philosophy, it is entirely logic based. If one event could have happened, then we shouldnt disregard it until we can use logic to prove it couldnt have happened, if one event is unknown then logically it has no final singular answer, given infinite time and infinite space everything on this planet will be reproduced somewhere else in the universe (almost like an identical dimension)... weird things like that. The kids love it... just sometimes I get stuck with a few idiots and I'm fine with that.
 
Yahweh said:

No, my kid arent bored. I teach nearly 100 or so kids so I'm bound to get a few smart asses. I dont see how my kids can get the same material before my class, I teach them all sorts of philosophy and psychology... they seem to take it all in. Its not like physics where everything can be repetitive... not even when I go through the same routine 4 times a day. The thing I hate most is a roomfull of kids sleeping, and a teacher droning on and on... so boring you'd want to kill yourself. In a big group of teachers, I would stand out because I tend to be "the oddball" (then again so would half the science teachers). I engage humor and intelligent conversation in my classroom. One of the bad things about my class is obviously the flaw of philosophy, it is entirely logic based. If one event could have happened, then we shouldnt disregard it until we can use logic to prove it couldnt have happened, if one event is unknown then logically it has no final singular answer, given infinite time and infinite space everything on this planet will be reproduced somewhere else in the universe (almost like an identical dimension)... weird things like that. The kids love it... just sometimes I get stuck with a few idiots and I'm fine with that.
Click to expand...

Good to know there's some new materials being taught somewhere. I just tended t opick things up quickly enough that I read (other books than the assigned) through most of my classes. I also tended to be a bit of a smart ass because I was bored silly.

Sounds like your classes might have been one of the few I would have enjoyed.
 
There are teachers . . .

According to a news report, a certain private school in Victoria recently was faced with a unique problem.

A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror, leaving dozens of little lip prints.

Every night, the maintenance man would remove them and the next day, the girlswould put them back.
Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man.

She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the
custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night. To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the

maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.

Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

There are teachers, and then there are educators....
Click to expand...

:)
 
... thats a lot smarter solution than I could think of... I would have tried to use the "You are defacing public property, thats a crime" solution... but then the kids would get smart and say "We arent defacing it, see look it wipes right off"... Toilet Water... good idea, I would have never thought of it...
 
My brother is a teacher, so I get stories from him. In one of his classes, a girl who was absent the day before asked to copy the notes she missed. No problem, and my brother hands her the notes. She asks for his code for the photocopier - no chance. She has to go to the library and use the coin-operated machine. She then whines that she has no money. My brother suggests that she borrows from a friend. So, the girl turns to the class and asks "Does anyone have a dollar?" to which some kid responds - "I'll give you a dollar, if you s*** my c***!" These kids today...

They're not all bad, however. He once got an essay in his History class on the Luddites entitled "Rage Against The Machine" :)
 
About 3 years ago, the school hired a new English teacher. She was a 24 year old asian woman... on the first day of school she was walking to her classroom. On the way there a student stops her in the halls. Here is the conversation they had:
Student: I got some pot.
Teacher: Excuse me.
Student: I got it on me right now. We go and smoke it in the bathroom.
Teacher: Sir, we're going to the office.
Student: No, I think we'll get caught.

When asked why he asked a teacher to smoke pot with him he said "I thought she was a student".
 
Well, part of the "Problem" is that every kid thinks they should go to college. It's a must now. So, many colleges are stuck with kids that shouldn't and don't want to be there.

When my daughter first went to High school first year English was all based on learning grammar and just HOW to write. The teacher used to be an editor at the NYTImes (maybe not so great now). He said his goal was to have each girl writing well enough for the paper by the end of the first year, or they took the class again and again until they could.

It has paid off over and over for my daughter.
 
I've been in the 'trenches' of education for the last 12 years.(I mean as a student). I've seen some pretty dumb (and I mean dumb) peers, people that should be sent back to kindergarted to do the whole thing from scratch again.
Where I am (and I assume most everwhere else in North America) it is almost a taboo for a teacher to fail a student up to grade 8. The a student could get I's(feel-good versions of F's) in every class, and still pass every elementary school grade.
My class has been extremely horrible to sub's. At the current count, we've made 7 sub's, 2 music teachers, and 2 full-time teachers break down and cry, or resign from their job. I see how extremely cruel kids can be to anyone in power(kicking, biting, having temper-tantrems, and spitting)

In grade 10 science, 4 people in my class of 28 debated the teacher for nearly 20 minutes, their position; there were only 4 elements in the world!

I have many more, but sadly my memory is fairly poor, so if I think of them, I'll post them
 
4 elements... Air, fire, water, and wood... Thats when you ask the kids what the chemical equation of Sucrose is. That usually keeps them busy for a while.
 
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