Day Two - After Class

I am still Amarillo College's answer to David Copperfield (the self-styled illusionist). Today, after one student dropped, I vanished eight students. One class meeting with me and eight disappear. I am better than Agatha Christie with 10 Little Indians. I just looked again at Lionel Basney's Note 5:

...What's going on (in the classroom) is partly waiting. You talk with and to students, waiting for the moment of intellectual shock, or fear, or (more rarely) love, that means that something has found its way in, or has been allowed in, though the significance of this is the student's to state and may not be evident for years. This is, mind you, intellectual fear or love—but the exact relation or interchange between thought and feeling is impossible to state. There is a decorum here. The classroom is not a therapy session, and I have no use for those who turn it into one—or into a professedly egalitarian market of personal (usually sexual) relations—and then prey on people.

Decorum is the word for my classes. I don't deal in nicknames or familiarity of any sort. No Buffy, Muffy, or Cottontail. I address my students as Mr. Adamchak or Ms. Yirak. In turn, I do not expect them to call me Neil (gag!) or Baldy or Jerkface (as much as they might be tempted). Many students are put off by this. When they speak to the class (and those who remain will speak aloud in class), many take elaborate pains to inform the class of their given names. As to therapy, I try to stay out of my students' private lives. Most live in quiet desperation (as Thoreau put it) and I cannot help them with their lot. For example, a female student sitting in front of me is pregnant (pretty far along, I would guess) and she told me today that she works as a server in a local restaurant. That is hard work for anyone, let alone a pregnant woman. As to the sexual predators, I knew one at Amarillo College who resigned to return to doctoral study. I reencountered him at the AP Reading in San Antonio and the worthless scum was still a sexual predator preying on students. Disgusting. Of course, I read a headline today about a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who is on trial for drugging and raping a student in his campus office. The predator attempted a plea bargain that failed. Like Lionel Basney, I want no truck with 'em.

Day Two - Before Class

Thought for Monday, Jul 14, 2003

It is wise to remember that you are one of those who can be fooled some of the time.

-Laurence J. Peter
DailyInbox: PAX Proverbs Plus

Over the weekend, the news broke that a secret diary was found at the Truman Presidential Library and HST was capable of the same anti-Semitic slurs that peppered Richard M. Nixon's private conversations. Publicly, - as noted by William Safire in today's NYT - both HST and Nixon supported Israel, but privately, they were anti-Semites. I'd like to turn Kinky Friedman on 'em.

I must leave for school anon. I discovered on Sunday afternoon that nearly 50% of the class had not even looked at the course syllabus since the first class meeting. I can monitor WebCT for student activity and I was shocked at this discovery. 1, 2, even 5, but nearly 50%?!? I sent each slacker an individual WebCT Mail message about my fears for their chances of success in HIST 1302-004. Of course, that was an exercise in futility because the Mail messages will sit upopened in each slacker's In Box. Instead, I will print the messages and distribute them as handouts to those slackers who attend on Day Two. Perhaps, many of the slackers have or will drop the course. When I tell 'em that they are going to have to make a presentation to the class and the assignment is 25% of the course grade, a lot of reassessment occurs. Most students at the College don't want to do anything, other than sit in class and listen to the drone of a lecture. My assignment requires library work. My friend - Yes, I have one! - on the Lynn Library staff at the College monitors usage of the various disciplinary collections: literature, history, the sciences, and the like. The major (sole?) users of the history collection are my students. What the hell my colleagues are doing, I don't know. How can a student take a college course and never set foot in the college library? I call it a crime against humanity. The common canard in Amarillo, TX is that Amarillo College is a top-notch two-year college. Amarillo College wouldn't be a wart on the behind of a first-class two-year college. And here I go back into the belly of the beast. Hoo-Yah!