It started so innocently...

I thought this project to have my students get to know someone different from themselves was going to be such an engaging project after they had read Steve Lopez's The Soloist and W. A. Mathieu's The Musical Life, but it has utterly bombed. The students were in an uproar last week, most not handing in the essay due on how Lopez and Mathieu depict music in their books, and all complaining that they didn't understand anything, that I wasn't fair, and whatever difficulties they were having were somehow my fault. I've never had a class like this. The students wander in late, hop up whenever they please, drag in mounds of food after break, and their concentration levels are so low that I can go over something 17 times and STILL they cannot get it right on their essays.



I'm at a complete loss. One student said in anger, "Is it true that nobody doesn't never pass your class?" To be speaking so incorrectly in a college level English class is indicative of the sense of urgency and drive these students don't seem to have. I have told them that I cannot help them if they cannot explain what questions they have, and I cannot move them forward if they refuse to do the writing. It staggers me that students can be so unmotivated.