the week after (before) spring break…playing blog catchup

our last couple of ta meetings were interesting because  and dr. g actually made changes to the schedule based on our comments. felt like a novel concept and i like the fluidity of this experience. 

COMMENTS IN RANDOM ORDER

::March 4 TA Meeting Notes::

• We had the opportunity to vent a bit at this meeting and while I aired some concerns about time management, I feel like that’s mostly my fault. I think I come at this experience a little differently because I’m older. I have lots of experience working with this age group, so the things they do don’t surprise me all that much. I’ve practiced detachment for awhile and know how to prioritize and how to set things aside if necessary. I call it “educated slacking.” The other experience I’ve had that helps in this situation is that I usually have way too much to do and not a lot of time to do it in. So, this has felt normal. 
• I liked the advice that Dr. G gave us regarding not overthinking this too much. He emphasized that we are an academic resource for the students and that boundaries need to be drawn somewhere.

::March 5 Class Notes:: 

• Student questions early in the class and asking how class info applies to them made it feel like a smaller class. I feel like they’re participating much more and like they are more comfortable doing so. 
• Group exercise with Piaget stages returned to groups of 3 which were much more manageable and because it wasn’t saved until the end of class, they had more time to work through it. As a TA, I didn’t really need to help at all, which was interesting. 

::March 10 Class Notes::

• I thought the adult attachment information was very interesting and directly applicable to real life. I went to the website myself and took the quiz and found it very informative. Would be interesting for them to take a look at all the surveys and tests that show up on myspace and facebook and have them analyze what is being measured. Perhaps as an extra credit project?
• I LOVED the horror movie/classical conditioning thing. This is partly because I’m a huge horror movie fan, but it was also a refreshing point of view. Pavlov’s dogs can be hard to grasp and it’s a little boring. However, the video made it more real, and did the Harlow video. I thought the texting example and the roommate video was very relevant and helped bring the material together from different perspectives. 

::March 11 TA Meeting Notes::

• We received a revised TA syllabus with more room to work on things and less to do. I’m somewhat relieved considering the amount of stuff that needs to be done for other classes and things in April. 
• Interestingly, we found out that attendance hovers around 87% which I thought was pretty darn good for a class this size. I think the fact that Dr. G keeps things interesting is a compelling reason for them to attend. 
• We had some interesting discussion about textbooks and I found the world of textbook publishing shockingly similar to that of record labels. I have a feeling that students didn’t put much thought into the book they bought. In fact, I’d be shocked if they did. Considering most of them are freshmen and I doubt they’ve ever had a choice for textbooks, their choice was likely uneducated. I think textbook choice would work better for upperclassmen, but I think it’s kind of wasted on freshmen. 

STUDENT ENTITLEMENTI’ve been thinking  a lot about students taking responsibility for their education. I feel the generation gap at times in that my previous college experience was a scrappy one. Professors didn’t worry about whether or not I was in class, participated, earned good grades and I didn’t have any TA’s in any of my classes. All through school I had two part time jobs and it was my responsbility to learn the material presented in class. There were no review sessions or practice tests or study tables and if I did poorly, it was my job to figure out how to fix it. Our discussions about student entitlement really irritate me sometimes, not because of the idea, but because these students aren’t being taught to fend for themselves. What I’d really like to tell these students is “buck up and figure it out” but I don’t think that would be appropriate. 

I printed the article by Ellen Greenberger but have to read it yet. I am very curious about the links between entitlement, incivility, view of the professor and grades.  Although part of me wonders what would come out of such research. If it’s determined that a sense of entitlement increases incivility in class but has no effect on grades, would that produce a recommendation to teachers to ignore incivility? What if incivility does contribute to lower grades, then what? Aren’t college students adults and shouldn’t they be responsible for their own grades? Granted, we could show that these things are related and hopefully provide some recommendations for professors to run their classes, but without those recommendations, I think we’d just be collecting some interesting information.