Inspired by a discussion on the Hunter-Listserv several weeks ago about students plunking away on laptops in classes, the following was to be posted on the Hunter-L listserv the first week of classes but I changed my mind. I see no point. I think I’ve pretty much exhausted whatever value that listserv held for me. Nevertheless, what I’ve would have posted if I hadn’t changed my mind …

Colleagues:

1) TEXT MESSAGING — Based on past experience with serially texting offenders in class, this semester I’m flunking ‘em all. “I can’t help it,” one student yelped two semesters ago after repeated warnings, her grade sequentially sliced and diced over a period of a few weeks. As I was doing final grades, hers went from B+ to C+ to C. C because this instructor lacked, then, the fortitude to deliver the penalty spelled out in the class syllabus.

There will be an announcement at the beginning of class this semester and after that, it’s F if I see the device in a student’s possession when class is in session. Last semester, I reduced the final grade of two serial offenders by one grade. Even though the language of the syllabus was clear, and the multiple warnings clear, one says she is appealing the decision, the other says she is thinking about appealing. [The latter had her cell phone on her lap as she was working on her final exam of the semester several days after she was told in an email that she was losing one grade off her final grade for jumping up in class, cell phone at the ready, shouting an exclamation into the phone. Later, as an explanation, QMfE: "Duh, I thought the class was over."].

2) COMPUTERS IN THE CLASSROOM —  Had been experimenting with allowing ADD/ADHD students in class to pluck away on computers, laptop and otherwise, depending on the class, the writing classes at the time, because the melody of the tap-tap-tapping seemed to soothe the savage beast, so to speak. Then they showed up in a lecture-discusion class. Uh oh. I don’t know if they were on medication or not. I thought inquiring was intrusive as well as an invasion of privacy. And the query probably would have sounded insulting. But after a run-in a while back with a serial tap-tap-tapper who may or may have not been ADD/ADHD/ETCETERA, but was Definitely Despicably Contemptible (DDC), this semester it’s F after the initial warning.

3) SERIAL FLASHING (AS AN EXPERSSION OF CONTEMPT: PG, R, X, XXX) — This one is difficult to address because of the sensitivity of the subject – sex as weapon – and, thus, is a Work-in-Progress. And will probably never be discussed in this forum (but has great potential for a blog  [maybe]).

4) EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED, SEVERELY EMOTIONAL DISTURB — These require a case by case approach and as subjects are too sensitive for this forum. But I’ve got great anecdotes, that is, regarding students not Colleagues.

5) PROFANITY — As an exclamation, probably not; as invective/expletive, possibly yes. Directed at another student, affirmative, absolutely, yes.

6) RACIALLY INFLAMMATORY EXPLETIVES/INVECTIVE — Rare. No need to give it much thought. But I have THIS really, really great anecdote of an in-class experience when several students of color rose to the moment created by a paranoid schizophrenic with Tourette Syndrome (I won’t reveal how I knew the symptoms though I did know the symptoms) and from their sagacity and savvy,  this instructor learned a few things about classroom etiquette when it comes to dealing with those experiencing an altered state of mind/consciousness.

The following was written on the WORD’s facebook page several days ago:

So, what do WORD friends think about the following? One of my students was directly warned about text messaging during my ethics class last semester. There were warnings to other students. And the warnings are spelled in the class syllabus. But she text nevertheless, and instead of flunking her, I told her in class she would lose one grade off her final grade for the violation. Her final grade was C.

I’ve been exploring the relevance of Social Media Networking after several students clued me in a few years ago. Read a few academic papers, read a lot of mainstream stuff and decided one way to explore was to engage. The post about texting in class was part of that. There were a few comments and then a student who was in the same class as the unidentified student, and who had signed on as a WORD facebook friend, and who had also had been penalized for text messaging, joined the discussion.

Her story provided a self-serving version. She didn’t write about what actually occurred in class. Her version made her look better than the actual scene of the disruption she caused when she jumped up in class, cell phone in hand and next to her cheek, and exclaimed aloud, an expletive, capturing the attention of, without exaggerating, everyone in class. Her classroom demeanor up until that moment had been ragged but the cellphone pushed the raggedness way over the line.

But let the facebook posts do the talking.

So, posted on the WORD facebook was this link of a YouTube anecdote: “Woman falls into fountain at mall while texting on her cell phone … [approaching 1.9 million-plus hits]: Link.

Also:

… and added was this message:

Two students whose final grades were reduced one grade because of text messaging in my class despite several warnings should view this as a metaphorical message about the inappropriateness of bovine messaging at the wrong time.

And Tricia Orlando posted this final post:

The plot thickens.

RB: This was to be a comparatively long narrative about a 30-40P student, a CUNY Macaulay Honors College student, who fails MEDP 299.47 for being serially disruptive for most of the semester despite repeated warnings from the instructor.

But it was decided to keep it short: An oxymoron ever there was one, that is, an honors student serially disruptive of class and openly contemptuous of students and the instructor.

RB starts the semester off by saying in Room 470N that she wouldn’t be able to do the Commute assignment because the L-Train, her main transportation for coming into Manhattan, was too crowded in the morning. So many passengers are jammed into the car, that she is so squished by straphangars, that it would be impossible for her to write in her steno, she says in class, causing this instructor to be suspicious about her being a legitimate Macaulay Honors Student.

Was she nuts? Purely Puerile? The Commute assignment requires students to take descriptive notes of their roundtrips to campus. Information from conversations overheard to what the student journalists observe should be recorded in a steno  usually beginning the second month of the semester. Students must become virtual recording operations. Their final efforts are to be given to the instructor in narrative form to be published. A few students embrace the assignment as if they’re telling the greatest story ever told.

I play along, trying to be soothingly inspirational, acknowledging the onerous tasks of  her onerous dilemma of dealing with the squished bodies of a Manhattan commute, concealing reproach and suppressing admonition forming in my brain, that she should take the F and do better on the other assignments or don’t take the F and just drop the class. It was sooooo early in the semester that the instructor decided to be patient with the student who claimed to be worried about being squished on the L.

We crossed paths in byways of the Hunter North and Hunter North buildings in subsequent weeks and engaged in simple talk, and I subsequently avoided her or pretended not to see here because she was always lamenting that she wasn’t appreciated at the PR firm where she worked. Her colleagues and supervisors thought she was snooty. However, it soon became clear in the course of class discussion that she WAS recording her commute observations in her steno. And, I eventually thought  that the issue of the L-Train squish was over and that she was only eccentric.

And as the semester progressed more and the vapors of Pushback of the other MEDP 299.47 miscreants thickened, RB’s irritating tap-tap-tapping on the keyboard increased. So, let’s cut to the chase. She was told repeatedly to stop typing while I was talking. She was then warned repeatedly to stop typing while I was talking to the class. She was subsequently told twice that she could flunk the class for being disruptive. She eventually snarled at a student who saw me staring at her one day as she typed and tried to advise her to stop.

So, she flunked.

She complained to a Macaulay administrator that I had flunked and had refused to accept any of her assignments. The administrator complained to a Hunter administrator who contacted me for a clarification because there seemed to be issues of Academic Freedom at stake. Short version: RB, once she was flunked,  had been told in class and in writing that she should continue to do the assignments in the event she wanted to appeal the F. But she was told the instructor wouldn’t accept the assignments, that, if she appealed, a grade appeals committee might want to see what she had done. So, she should do them and hold them for judgement day, it was suggested to her, but don’t give them to me.

After a discussion with the administrator, I told her that she could turn in the assignments which wouldn’t be graded, thus allowing indulgence in a formality, that being if she did appeal, she could say that she continued to participate as much as possible in class and did assignments even though the instructor refused to grade them, that she was following class guidelines even though she had failed the course.

Without going in too much more here and now, she was given a F, which was converted to a W, which is on her transcript.

And so it goes.

JS: Had advantages: Took Advanced Reporting as taught by this instructor in the previous semester. Was prepared for out-of-class interviewing, reporting. Understood that the deadlines were for real. Excellent writer. There to work not to play, though absences were several. Did well.

VG: Excellent writer. Very good student (though excoriated once for text messaging). Did well.

AMJ: A non-contentious 30-40P. Deceiving facade (spoke solemnly about a passion for writing, recalled English classes with instructors leading enthused discussions about writing. Early tip-off: QMfE: “I want an A in this class” – said comment always by a student wanting an A for C work (or sometimes F) but willing to settle for a B.

Subsequent tip-off: After faulting peers for not being serious (in a private conversation, of course), flubbed first Commute assignment, her giggles accentuating the mediocrity of her effort, as in, QMfE, “Duh, I sort of goofed, hee, haw.”

Early on, assessed some peers as laggards who would slow the class down. Good writer but not as good as she imagined herself. Not pleased at being at Hunter, considering her station in life. Unctuous mannerisms insinuating that she, unlike the rest, shouldn’t be burdened with syllabus guidelines. QMfE, “How silly of the instructor to flunk me on an assignment that I didn’t want to turn in on time.” Final grade, CR.

End of Part II

• the assignments interfere with his/her internship.
• the assignments interfere with his/her job.
• h/s doesn’t want to do them.

Last semester, I had two reprobates. Pure passive-aggressive. The one in my basic reporting class didn’t offer lame excuses, she just wouldn’t turn in assignments nor follow guidelines. The one in my feature writing indulged in lame excuses, such as, Quote Marks for Affect, ”I was out drinking with a friend all night, so …” or “Kid puked, so I’m not coming to class” or “I had to go to Albany with this friend.”

However, this semester in all my classes there was an early “surge” of guideline violations and expectations that I would ignore the transgressions. Or they no-showed the day a class assignment was due and then tried to turn in the late assignment at a subsequent class. Nope, I told them. Read the rules, I reminded them.

By now, of course, after teaching several years at Hunter, I’m accustomed to this kind of infantile behavior and know that the early weeks I will be engaging in the Dance of Sticks and Carrots, applying enough of a stick to get them their attention and make them realize that there will consequences to any breaching of the rules yet enough of a carrot to not stanch their willingness to learn.

Now, anyone reading this should know this: Students are responsible for their actions but are pretty much influenced by colleagues to engage in this kind of insipid behavior. As I tell anyone who will listen or even if they don’t want to listen, that, regarding students here at this campus, I get gems and diamonds in the rough but I also have to deal with the 30-40P and hope I can make a dent in it. Thus, there almost always has to be a wrestling match early on, and I blame colleagues for nurturing academic mediocrity. Which brings me to this: It appears that two of the 4 Barnacles of the Apocalypse are no longer on the Department’s Grade Appeals Committee.

Very interesting at this point in the semester.

And I’m beginning to believe the English department should scrap the creative writing classes.

These classes weren’t as organized as they should have been (too many departmental distractions for the instructor) and too many students in the poorly under-enrolled classes weren’t prepared, that is, their introductory news classes hadn’t prepped them for advanced courses. That’s been happening a lot.

M293, which started with seven, ended the semester with three. Students dropped as they couldn’t or wouldn’t come to class – and couldn’t do or wouldn’t do the assignments – citing such excuses as their job or internship obligations, etcetera. I had wanted to do something new with the class –  I was operating in a multimedia classroom and wanted to explore multimedia journalism more – but this class wasn’t ready for any experimentation. Plus, again, my class organization was poor but then. of course. students who had dropped over several weeks might have just dropped in one fell swoop if I had been properly organized.

Undisciplined students usually try to test an instructor’s resolve about how much he or she will hew to the syllabus guidelines. 

Feature writing was a little better. Started with five, ended with three. One dropped because, he said, the assignments were too demanding* and another was allowed to drop after I filed a disciplinary complaint against her for disrupting class. She had fallen behind, way behind, and gambled that if she acted insubordinately, she could intimidate the instructor and finagle her way to a passing grade. That kind of unscrupulous student strategizing is not uncommon and colleagues have been known to encourage such behavior.

Of the three who remained, one did scintillating work to be published later this summer or early in the fall, and a second did excellent work, again, to be published later this summer or early in the fall. The third did okay but might have done better if, again, I had been better organized.

One of my new game plans call for grooming students to win journalism awards.

*This was the first time I taught the class and because I anticipated stumbling here and stumbling there for a first-time class, I actually imagined that I had made the requirements for this class much easier.

This class requires out-of-class interviews for articles that must be submitted for publication in the WORD at hunterword.com. Its publishing imperative causes course requirements and demands and expectations to be higher than the other MEDP 292 classes. Students who earned Bs in MEDP 292 have said that this class required more effort than many of their other classes, but not appreciably more, just more than students were accustomed to doing. It has, however, helped many students to earn internships and jobs at some of the best news media in the country.

I’ve taught full time at Rutgers U., News Brunswick campus, where I first began requiring students to submit articles for publication to the student daily newspaper, The Targum. I wanted to do the same when I was teaching part-time at LIU-Brooklyn but it’s student newspaper wasn’t publishing then. At Hunter, I have had more exceptional and outstanding students than at the other schools, and started the WORD because the Hunter student-run news media wasn’t up to the task when I started teaching at Hunter (though I’ve been told more than once in the last year that things had changed at the student-run news publication called The Envoy). I believed that students who were serious about journalism careers need a portfolio of published and broadcast work, but eventually, at Hunter, I learned that requiring students to produce portfolios was an excellent way to teach journalism classes.

Nevertheless, MEDP 292 has been a source of dissonance for students, the ones whom I describe as 30-40P (and colleagues who should know better). When I first started requiring students to publish articles in the WORD at its earlier site, the WORD, I quickly noticed a strong demarcation between students who earnestly attempted to do the course work and those who didn’t. It was that simple. Students who could have gotten C’s under my earlier, not-required-to-publish classes were earning F’s.

Cutting to the chase for this past semester:
A:
Two started the semester off being seriously late or missing class and flunking assignments (by missing deadlines or turning in poor work). Prognosis for them them was that they would turn out to be 30-40P students AKA ThirtyFortyP and that they would likely drop or flunk the class. That projection was way off, obviously.

B+:
There’s not much to say other than that one could have easily earned an A but was comfortable with the B+.

B-:
I realized after the registrar received my course grades that two students could have easily received C+ or less if I had been more scrupulous of their work. Tears quelled and queued up more than once during the semester for one upset about rewriting assignments, and there was the accompanying whining aloud about trying to do the assignments (and the whiney supplicating was insincere [as it usually is]). Whiney-ness, however, has been known to unnerve an instructor’s pedagogical resolve.

Another came to my office to whine about the workload – he was the self-appointed spokesman for others upset about the workload – and about the copyediting/critiquing of his work, saying on one occasion, and this is a real good paraphrase (quotation marks for effect), “My girlfriend thinks I’m a great writer, why don’t you”? He regarded the copyediting of his work, which required serious rewriting, as personal contempt of him. “The copyediting, critiquing,” I said (quotation marks for effect), “has nothing to do with you personally, it’s about the quality of the work that you turn in.” He came to office because of an email I sent to 292 students that semester about whining in class. It was much better, I said in the email, if students talked to the professor before or after class – and that they could also schedule an appointment – if they had concerns that had nothing to do with the class assignment. He, enterprising student that he considered himself, wanted to complain about the work load. I was willing to listen but not comply with his wish for me to reduce the course load.

Later, when he stated aloud in class that students writing about me on rateyourprofessor.com either loved me or hated me, I suspected a game was in play. Sure enough, in a subsequent class, he made a reference to me being a jerk. I told him that his comment was insulting. “That’s because I luv’ ya’,” he replied.

My acerbic rejoinder in class, timed for the maximum effect but tempered nevertheless, caused him to wince in embarrassment. I won’t disclose it nor the nature of it here because I probably will need it later (but I didn’t show him any luv).

The remaining student getting a B-minus, who regarded himself as a “creative” writer, had an eccentric news writing style, and because he botched early assignments, I overlooked his talent. But I caught up with it later in the semester, I’m happy to say, though I wish I had been more aware much earlier in the course. However, botching assignments – missing deadlines or ignoring class guidelines – can throw off an instructor’s perception.

F:
One absolutely refused to follow guidelines, no matter my constant reminders and pointed but soft criticisms, oral and written. He wanted a C for doing F work (and could have easily got a B). The F made him wail.

The second expected special consideration even though he wasn’t turning in assignments and was ignoring course requirements and doing really sloppy work. His job (he said he had three), his family demands, the full course load he was taking as well as his political commitments (early in the semester he said he worked for an elected official in the Bronx and then later he said he was a community leader) should have been, he wrote in a long email after I told him in him office that he couldn’t pass the class, factored into some kind of passing grade. In class he openly engaged in nefarious academic conning, that was, for example, saying aloud that he was being denied special treatment that he said other students were receiving. I ignored the deceit and told him that he could appeal his final grade if he felt he had been treated unfairly. He still had the opportunity to earn a passing grade at that particular moment in the semester but chose to continue his con.

I plan to publish his long email letter protesting his F – I want to deconstruct it because of the benefits and insights that might become available to others reading this essay – but not on this site.

The following says all there could be said about the third: She missed some classes, and I emailed her that I had left two graded and edited assignments on my office door for her. She scribbled a message on the envelope containing the assignments – “this sucks.” Her communiqué meant to me that she was withdrawing from the course. Why else scribble the message on the envelope and leave the assignments?

When she later showed up for class – sans assignments – I teased, in so many words, (quotation marks for effect): “Someone wrote a insulting remark on the envelope I left for you on my door. I know it wasn’t you [I smiled deceitfully].” Her sheepish grin was a sufficient response. She picked up the assignments on the door but eventually stopped attending class and ignored emails with suggestions for her to salvage the course.

So much for this semester.

Sometime soon, I want to publish a review of spring semester 2008:

1A+
1B+
4B
2C+
1C
1D
1F
1WU
4W

My thematic focus will be on the student who got the A+ and the student who got the D and the student who got the F. The D and F students had the talent for A, that’s for sure, but they chose the 30-40P AKA ThirtyFortyP path.

Gregg Morris