For today my students finished reading Steve Lopez's The Soloist, but there were many absent and late due to trains. I gave them a quiz in which they had to give the complete context of ten quotations taken from the chapters read for today. One student answered none and them slept for the rest of the class; another student was given to sleep-like sluggishness, but as soon as I handed back an A on a short in-class identification of topic sentences from a given thesis, he perked right up!
Before they wrote the one minute essay, I read some of the questions from last time, one being, "Can you tell the difference between someone who is really trying and a slacker?" I merely quipped, "Yup." Several students said variations on the "I'd better buckle down and get to work" theme, for which I was pleased.
Today's responses ranged from "Finding hard to understand how the eassys is be structure or how it's supporse to be structure" to "did we get graded on the presentations?" to "the work load on us is too much." Some days I'm just not sure what to do next. I have urged students to make appointments to see me, but not one has done so; instead, their need to interrupt the class to make a fuss about their personal issues seems fully appropriate to them.
It will come, I know, but it is so frustrating until it does!
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