1/18/08

Wednesday evening, I received an E-Mail from a student who wanted to register for my class. It had grammar which was less than perfect, no name or identifying signature besides the E-mail address from which it was sent, it was a whole two sentences long marked by only one period. I immediately felt it was sent to the wrong person. The student wished entry into my class while not specifying which one and this prompted a certain amount of disdain due to the investigation needed for a response I felt needed. The mental picture of a bummed out education major took form.

As it turned out, the student was an education major and an issue with the writing aspect of c-base prevented him from being enrolled in the degree program. He wanted to be in my 215 class to make up for the issue/deficiency. He has a job and a family which he needs to work around, thus making his schedule quite limited. His advisor even E-mailed me and gave her support for his admittance into my class. This is where my conundrum begins. My 215 class is already filled to maximum capacity. Even then, I am still only in my 2nd semester. I truly do not feel as if I would be able to hold another student. To add further discomfort, the average age in the class is 19. He is supporting a family. The only thing which really leant itself to him being in the class is that he is truly the only person who needed the class without question. All of my other students were in it to fill a gen-ed or for what they see as a blow off class (I do plan to prove them wrong).

The student came and met with me after class, without my prior warning, to talk to me about the enrollment. He was middle-age and did appear to be more professional than the others. I told him my class was full and while I really did want to help him, I could not in the way he wanted. I simply was ill-equipped to handle more students at that time. Allowing him in would do nothing more than hurt everyone, including him, in terms of what they got out of the class. What I did do was open my lap top and look at what classes were available for him to take (He was limited to 203,205, and 215, our creative writing line up). I advised him to take a non-fiction class for a few reason.

One, he would most likely benefit from it more than a short story class. There is a practical reasoning and self-exploration to it which would benefit him and his future students more than I felt the short story class would.

Second, he already knew the G.A. teaching it and smiled when he realized who it was. I took it to mean they were on good terms.

This incident really just brought me to realize that despite my age and actual status in the eyes of the university, there are still judgment calls we, the G.A.’s have to make which affect more than our students, but also their families. And while we may be the bottom on the seniority list, we still need to make the same class decisions that a tenured professor would.

To top it off, this has set a precedent for how I’ll handle the situation.

The Pounding Thumper

Let this be the first entry for the pounding thumper. First, the title. Back in high school, I had a plethora of nicknames. One of these was Thumper. Now, no one calles ne Thumper. But everytime I do anything online which needs a superficial but eloquent name, I feel pounding thumper does nicely. So there. It's your explanation.

I will add a much more which is relevant to teaching.