Community Colleges Tag Archive
The community college system was invented to make college affordable and available locally to ordinary people. You don’t need a 3.8 average to get into most community colleges. You generally need either a high school diploma or a G.E.D. For those who come from families of modest means paying for two years of education at a community college at a rate of $72 a credit hour (where I teach) is a bargain.
Perhaps it is because the tuition is so inexpensive that it is so easy to throw in the towel. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Yesterday I finished yet another semester teaching a course at Northern Virginia Community College. As usual as I recorded the final grades I felt dispirited. But I shouldn’t feel this way. It’s been the same way since I started teaching back in 2000.
I started the semester with 24 students. It had been a long time since I had a nearly full class. So I had some hopes that maybe this semester would be different. As I do at the start of every semester I went through the syllabus with the class to make sure my students knew my expectations. I told them that to succeed in the class it would take an average of four to eight hours of study per week, plus time for the projects. I emphasized how important it was not to rely on my slides alone but to read the assigned chapters in advance. I advised students to underline areas that were unclear and be prepared to participate in class. I said they needed to turn in their homework promptly so that I could give them feedback promptly. I told them I had office hours after every class. If they didn’t understand anything or had any issues they needed to see me during office hours or email me so we could work through their problems. I told them this was a medium level course. It was not English 101, but neither was it Calculus. It would move at a fairly brisk pace. Still, it was a college course. This was not high school.
Since I lecture from Powerpoint slides, I provided them with handouts of my slides. For most lectures I had several examples that I created that we could go through together as a class. Particularly in the first half of the semester we had regular labs. And if this was not enough to cement learning I started out every class with a review of the previous class. Since the class meets once a week, sometimes just reviewing the last class consumed an hour of class time.
So you would think that a student would have all the tools necessary to excel. But the most important tool is motivation. And that is the one tool I cannot supply. The sad fact of the matter is that many community college students simply lack motivation. When push comes to shove I strongly suspect that their coursework comes last. I’m not sure what they are doing with their time. Perhaps they are working three jobs in addition to going to class and are simply exhausted. Perhaps they are downloading smut or doing roll-playing games on line instead of reading and homework. Perhaps they are high on drugs or intoxicated by beer.
So what happened to my twenty-four students this semester? Here is the final tally. Five students simply withdrew from the course. Three decided to audit the class. That left 16 students who were going to try for a grade. In other words a third of the class dropped out or decided getting credit for the course was too much hassle.
Of the sixteen one guy showed up for the first class then stopped coming. He got an F, of course. But we appreciated the money he gave the college. Perhaps he can write his tuition off as a charitable donation. Of the remaining 15 three got F’s. There was 1 D, 3 C’s, 3 B’s and 4 A’s. One grade is incomplete but the woman will likely pass with a B. So out of 24 students, only 50% will have a passing grade.
Looking at the grading sheet of those who got C’s, D’s and F’s it’s pretty easy to understand what happened. For one thing, these students kept skipping class. They were there one week and the next week they couldn’t be bothered. The class starts at 9 AM on Saturday mornings. Perhaps they were out late partying Friday night. But I suspect the real reason is that they just didn’t care. They had nothing vested in the class. Perhaps their parents were prodding them to go to school but they really didn’t want to go. Perhaps lectures and labs was just not their thing. Perhaps they managed to catch colds every other week shortly before class.
But also these students were very scattershot about turning in homework. Like attendance, homework was 10% of the grade so it did count for something. In previous semesters homework was often turned in weeks late, when it was turned in at all. Some of the more brazen students had simply copy and pasted my posted solutions and turned those in. This semester I changed the policy: students had two weeks and no more to turn in homework and receive credit for it. But many students apparently didn’t care enough to do the work. And in the process they didn’t get the practice they needed so they could do well on the projects. So they set themselves up for failure.
And some couldn’t be bothered to turn in projects. I went the extra mile and sent out email notifications to those who did not turn in their projects on time. Mostly I heard nothing. One student said he was having problems. I said turn it in. Even partial credit is better than no credit when the final project is 20% of our grade! But he didn’t. I figure he never even started the project.
I’ve taught enough courses now to have a pretty good idea who is going to succeed and who isn’t. If their eyes are glazed over or closed they are not paying attention. Almost without exception students who come from India or China will do well. Two of the four students who received A’s were from India. The only other Indian in the class received a B. Usually if the students are fresh out of high school or twenty something they lack motivation. I wonder why that is. Do they suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder? Did they skate through high school pulling C’s and expect that they could skate through college with the same strategy?
Do students today even learn how to study? A lot of my students can’t be bothered to take notes. It seems they expect it all to be handed to them. It appears they think a course is something that can be worked on when it suits them. They don’t seem to understand there are consequences for falling behind.
And every semester I see some new twists from students trying to make the course easier for them. This semester I found one couple who were apparently living with each other and taking the course together. The woman tended to miss every other class but no matter. Her boyfriend was there taking the notes. Naturally they wanted to do their final project as a team, something I allowed in the past. But I strongly suspect the boyfriend did the entire project. In another case two guys were partners in a small business. In yet another case a guy who did his homework let the other guy sitting next to him copy and paste it and turn it in. Apparently some students have no ethical grounding. I guess they figure if the can download illegal music with impunity why not do the same with their homework. Why would this be a problem?
As I noted back in 2002, I am a karmic facilitator. It’s a shame though that even though I provide karmic lessons for so many of my students that the lessons seem to bounce right off them.
I am scheduled to teach another course in a couple weeks during the summer semester. I have seven enrolled students so I doubt it will go forward. It is just as well. I try not to take these failures by my students personally. My boss assures me this happens in all the classes. But after this dispiriting semester I need to recharge to go through this whole cycle again in the fall.
May 8th, 2005 at 11:37am
Posted by
Mark |
Sociology |
one comment
After more than a year off from teaching it’s back to the classroom tomorrow morning. It appears that (ever so slowly) information technology (IT) is becoming hip again. The collapse of the dot com world followed by the outsourcing of IT jobs made students leery about investing time and money in IT. So lots of proposed classes ended up canceled and I took up other interests, like blogging. But the economy must be slowly improving. And apparently not every IT job can be outsourced. So community college students are trickling back into web technology courses again.
The course I am teaching is a basic HTML course, with a dash of cascading style sheets and Javascript thrown in. I’ve taught it at least three times before. At this point it has become a low maintenance course. The slides are tweaked from semester to semester to keep them current. But the lesson plans, projects and even the exams are pretty static. This is good because I already have a lot on my plate already. I agreed to teach the class with some misgivings.
Those misgivings include my parents, now 30 miles away instead of 600 miles away, and my 84-year-old mother who spent two late nights at the emergency room over the last week alone. I opted for the Saturday class since it fits my schedule and allowed me to travel as business needs dictate. I just didn’t hear from my boss at the college that I had actually been assigned the course I requested. By that time we had tickets to see shows in Canada. So I missed my first class. Fortunately the college found a substitute. I offered to let someone else teach the course, but my boss declined. I guess she knows I teach a quality course.
One of the saddest things about teaching at a community college is to see how many students are student wannabees. As an introductory course my course is often their first real college experience. And while you can get a fine education at a community college at a bargain rate it is still incumbent on the student to actually perform at the college level. So many of them arrive with the high school mentality and figure they can skate by in a community college too.
The community college offers guidance, counseling and numerous other programs to help students. Yet it appears that many of my students don’t know about them or won’t take the time to attend. In a typical semester about half the class drops out or mysteriously fade away.
Of course I warn my students orally and I put it in the syllabus: the average student needs 4-8 hours a week plus time for projects. They need to read the material in advance, not hear me restate it. If they find themselves lost or confused by the material then they need to call me or see me after class. Yet so many of my students find that when the rubber meets the road they have other priorities. Often it is a job: the boss wants them to work late. Often they are working two or more jobs. Sometimes a child gets sick and they have no backup, or figure it doesn’t matter if they skip a class or two or four.
Still I feel something of a failure when this happens. It will probably happen again this semester. But this time I am determined to try harder to stem the attrition rate. I truly want every student to succeed. I have to get better at coaching my students. They need more encouragement from me. I certainly have tried to be encouraging in the past but I need to try harder.
So today I was at the Northern Virginia Community College campus in Sterling acting as much like a student as a professor. I waited in line at the campus police office for my parking sticker just like everyone else. It was good to be there on a Friday because teaching a Saturday class gives you a false perspective. I get lots of working adults when I teach on Saturdays. On a Friday the campus is full of young adults. There were times when I felt youthful being among them. In my own 47-year-old way I still feel youthful. Seeing so many fair faced young ladies in shorts or short skirts, many with ample bosoms on display almost made me feel like I could start flirting with them. I had to forcefully remind myself I was not 18 anymore. As an instructor and a married man I was allowed to look, but not to flirt and certainly not to touch. And anyhow, ick! If I were 18 I’d want nothing to do with some 47 year old!
I find that despite the heartaches of teaching at a community college it is still rewarding. When I see a student succeed I feel like I have accomplished something important. I particularly like the students who pick up my enthusiasm about information technology. The best students will see me as not someone they need to accommodate in order to get a good grade, but as a man with a lot of valuable knowledge and perspective that can lead them into an exciting career.
I learned recently that I am less than eight years from retirement. That still boggles my mind but as a civil servant I am allowed to retire at age 55. But I don’t think I will stop working. Teaching is often hard work but I seem to have the bug. It would make an excellent next career. Perhaps after I retire I will be looking for full time openings at NVCC. I know I’ll never get rich on their salaries but my pension will pay the bills. It may be that my current job is yet another springboard for my last and most important career: teaching.
September 3rd, 2004 at 09:27pm
Posted by
Mark |
Life 2004 |
no comments
As you may know I teach courses in web page design at Northern Virginia Community College. It’s a part time job I’ve been doing for a few years as a way to keep myself busier and current on my industry. Sad to say as a federal employee I am not supposed to touch much computer code. We are paid to be project managers, or “Contracting Officers Technical Representatives” to use the government term. By this slim thread I seem to be able to hang on to my federal job. This means, for the moment at least, I can’t be contracted out because my work is inherently governmental. Given the Bush Administration’s push to contract out everything, I am not hopeful that this will always be the case.
Anyhow although I am supposed to direct work all day I am still expected to be “up” on all things in the IT (information technology) world. That one can’t be up on IT without actually doing the work doesn’t seem to faze our management. The way things work in government you can easily hold two or more totally conflicting ideas at the same time. It doesn’t work in Dilbert’s world but it’s SOP for the government. So I decided to teach. Partly I do it because it’s enjoyable, partly because I want to keep up on my industry in a meaningful way, and partly because even with 20 years of federal service I don’t believe for a moment that my talents and my job are not expendable. I’ve seen too much evidence to the contrary. I’m hopeful that if I’m downsized this strategy will keep me on my feet, or at least provide sufficient income so I’m not living in a mobile home.
I usually teach on Saturday mornings and teach two classes a year for sums that would amount to less than the minimum wage if I measured how much time I actually spent on the class. I am currently on the cusp of completing the current class on Advanced Web Page Design, and give a final exam tomorrow. The final project was due last Saturday. Naturally a couple students missed the deadline entirely and naturally they want to submit the project late. I could be hard nosed and yes I do penalize late project submissions but it’s the same pattern every semesters. Students have to push the envelope. If I haven’t put the grade in the campus computer they figure there is still wiggle room.
How does all this tie into karma? Karma, as regular readers here know is a force I have come to believe in. It occurred to me yesterday that as a teacher I cause a lot of karmic incidents. Whether it turns out to be good karma or bad karma depends on the student and me. I think I generated some bad karma for my students in the past, and perhaps I am generating more with my last minute students. But a class is literally and metaphorically a test. Can you make a certain benchmark? Do you have the skills and perseverance it takes to pass a class and to get a certain grade? There is not much ambiguity to it. You either master the skills you need to master, like reading, studying and doing the projects, or you don’t. A teacher is certainly a facilitator for mastering these skills but inevitably it comes back to the student. They have to summon up the right stuff inside themselves to get through the course.
Oh and it’s a roller coaster ride for a lot of them. And when it’s a roller coaster ride for them it’s also a roller coaster ride for the teacher. I’ve been accused by my own students of various faults, some likely deserved, some not. I don’t claim to be a perfect teacher. I try to improve my teaching with every class I teach. But inevitably I must make the judgment about what constitutes passing and what doesn’t. It’s never an easy call. My standards are fairly high and I don’t compromise them lightly to spare some students some bad feelings.
Last semester I had a lady who ended up failing the class. She came to every class dutifully. She hung out to the end. She turned in homework that was always wrong and never even came close to being right. I asked to talk with her. I tried to get her on the right course. But she was totally lost. She had barely mastered the keyboard, let alone the complexities of HTML. I had to flunk her. I didn’t like to do it but I had to do it. Maybe she’ll learn a lesson as a result. Maybe she’s not cut out for college or maybe she will summon the will from within to perhaps start at a more elementary course and work her way up.
So I cause a lot of karmic stress in my students’ lives. It’s part of the system but that’s part of what teachers are there for, I guess. The knowledge I impart is certainly an important thing for any student to get when they take a class. But the enduring lesson is whether they have the right stuff to keep focused and move forward despite tendencies toward laziness in many students, despite perhaps having to work a lot of overtime, despite having to juggle a spouse and/or a family. If nothing else my class provides a vehicle for them to figure out where their priorities really lie. Since I end up at the end of the semester with about half the students I started out with (many drop the class, or elect to audit the course and don’t bother to return) it appears that education is pretty far down their list of priorities.
Live and learn. Lesson taught regardless of grade.
May 2nd, 2003 at 11:57am
Posted by
Mark |
Metaphysics |
no comments
Schools out! I teach a class in Web Page Design at Northern Virginia Community College and I gave the final exam today. Just as well because we are off to Hawaii on the 20th.
This is the fifth time I’ve taught a course and the fourth time I’ve teached this particular course. My students are a mixture of folk from all walks of life and all ages. I’ve taught people pushing 60, and one 16 year old kid. There are a fair number of immigrant types, housewives, working people and a number of people who have all the degrees they need and just audit the course.
But the pattern is about the same every semester. Things always start off well but invariably over the course of a semester about a third of the class will withdraw or drop out. There are students who show up for maybe one class and then stop coming and don’t care if they get an F in the class. There are a lot of students who it would seem don’t understand that this is a college course. Some seem to think it is still high school, or even grade school, because they consider reading and homework optional. If they can’t gleem the information from the slides I present and labs in class then too bad … even if they pay a grade penalty.
When I first started teaching I thought community colleges had a reputation of being a place where you get an easy grade. My mentor assured me that was not the case and I had to stick to my standards. I do. But it is discouraging to see how many students just done seem to care, or don’t understand that a course requires time and commitment. Has it always been this way and I never noticed? I am discouraged about the future of our work force.
Not that teaching doesn’t have its good times, but there are a lot of discouraging times. Nonetheless I keep at it because, frankly, it’s fun and it’s much more interesting than the sort of stuff I do for my primary paycheck. And it forces me to keep up with technology I would probably not apply in practice at work where I do project management.
I don’t think my course is all that hard. It’s by no means easy but compared to the courses I took in college it’s about average. Nonetheless I have a reputation of being a “hard” instructor. A’s are not a given. I feel grades should mean something and usually an A in my class does mean something … students have a real good grasp of the content I was teaching.
I mean my class is not half as hard as the least difficult course I took in grad school. And I realize I know the material and it’s largely new to my class.
Many are called to try college, but fewer seemed to be willing to invest the time it takes to earn a grade that demonstrates you understand the topic. That’s discouraging.
December 14th, 2002 at 09:01pm
Posted by
Mark |
Life 2003 |
one comment
