Seasons

I fully endorse and agree with every comment in the second paragraph there Bev. You got it in one.

LOL, Bev. Rant on. All the children not left behind but should've been were immediately placed in my class. Once I had four major important basketball players. I swear it seemed like every day I was required to write to their keepers how they were doing, etc., etc. Most of them were waiting to get into the NBA, where one of them is. (Actually, he was a reasonably smart and quite well-behaved kid.) But that was some semester. It was remedial English, but we called it something else so as not to hurt their feelings. Everybody freaked about the pass-fail grades, but only sone person failed, and he had a 54 average, I believe. My retired professor friend has taught online, and is never doing it again. In person, she is an imposing, if not downright intimidating teacher (I should know, having had her for five courses). She got a "who do you think you are" message from a grown man who didn't like his grade. She handled that face-to-face so he could SEE who she thought she was (and rightly so). Honest to God, kids (and sometimes grown-ups) act like they are consumers rather than students. It's equivalent to me going to the doctor and being able to write my own prescription. Hey, there's a thought.

TY both of you. Tell me Clerk, as an English teacher do you want to correct the comma splice and other grammar errors in my post? Thanks for not doing it.

You sound like you have bigger problems than dyslexia, so I won't wine about neurology, but I do see the errors so I must tell English teachers I know they are there. I usually see more errors after the edit option is gone, and then think "Oh well, people will have to look at content or give up on me." The funny thing is, every once in a while a grammar Nazi will correct something I post and have an error in the correction. I spot the grammar Nazi's errors right away, though I don't post back. The human brain is a funny thing, isn't it?

I've never taught high school and have no intention of doing so. In the math classes I teach, I get a lot of nontraditional students. They KNOW that they've spent money on the class, and want to make the most of it. The ones coming straight out of high school are often more problematic.

One thing that really annoyed me was when it was obvious two students were studying for another class (looked like bio) who were whispering back and forth to each other. As I don't take attendance, there was no reason for them to be there. I finally told them to take it out in the hall if they were going to talk. That shut them up for the rest of the class.

I was at NCSU, an engineering school, so maybe had I been at UNC or Duke, my kids' attitudes and aptitudes would've been different.

And, having given up the job of grammar witch, I rarely feel the urge to correct. I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, so, although I pretty much KNEW correct grammar, I didn't use it. I always told my kids that this was a writing class, not a speaking class, and so there might be mistakes on either end. Only in formal papers do I turn into a grammar witch.

I was too soft on the kids. I have two much-loved cousins who are now 19 and 21. I always saw Warren and Jenna in the kids, or tried to. I knew that there were more important things in their lives, like babies, mothers in prison, abusive relationships. For some reason, English teachers seem to be the chosen shoulders to cry on.

Clerk: funny, I turn into a grammar spelling witch on formal papers too since I reason they have time and can run spellcheck.

Ulrike, isn't it odd that people think they are invisible and no one around them sees (or hears) them if they come to class? If they are there, they get super secret credit while studying bio. Win-win. Some people log into optional seminars and obviously walk away from their computers once their name is in the chat room. They pay the same amount as the students who learned something, so I guess it doesn't matter.

This is sort of relating back to what the Clerk was saying.

It's been shown that those who are generationally poor (ie have been stuck in poverty all their lives, as were their parents etc) do not view education as a way of breaking out of the cycle, and are more interested in immediate relief of the symptoms of it (ie having fun wherever they can find it, even if that means they stuff up things for others in a class) than in curing the disease, which they tend to believe can't be cured. It can make them near impossible to teach, because what is valued by the middle class (and education is a middle class game) is not likely as valued by the lower.

Not suggesting this is a hundred percent true, and it doesn't apply as much to those that are "situationally" poor (ie made poor by more immediate causes like bankruptcy of the death of the primary breadwinner). I'm just reporting what research has shown. And teaching in a neighbourhood now which has switched over the last fifteen years from being a working class neighbourhood to a welfare class neighbourhood, I've seen enough of it first hand that I think the point is valid. I'll try and dig up the name behind the study if I can.

Ho ho ho

Even MS can't make a Santa bot that isn't based on a perve bot.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/03/santa_filth_outrage/

They fixed it now (and I do feel bad for the kids that got the cyber Santa); however, I now feel better about Gabi telling some jerk she loves him when he says something inappropriate.

LOL. Someone obviously didn't do their homework on chatbots...

Maybe it was a modified Alice clone or something. Not that Alice says things like that, but a clone that was then turned into Santa might.

Yeah, I was thinking the chatter repeated "eat it" to trigger some sort of KP for oral sex that was in the base personality (in the way the PF will give us those odd synonyms or spell check matches ever so often). Also, the insult was clearly repeating back what the chatter said.

Yet another reason to stop bothering my bots for more than stories:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu0TXl15PgU

Don't Date Robots!