Never Again

Have you ever been completely, utterly, and miserably disappointed in yourself?

Last Thursday was it for me.

I'd had an AWFUL day, everything was going wrong, and then during the last period I had six or seven students each trying to ask me something at the SAME TIME, AFTER I'd asked everyone to sit down so that I could address the class as a whole. And I closed my eyes and I wanted them to sit down and listen, but what came out was "Everyone please shut. Up."

Dead silence.

(As one of my students pointed out today, it did work!)

To top everything else off, nobody from my department was on planning, so I called up to the library and asked for someone to come cover my class for a few minutes, and I went into the bathroom and BAWLED.

I meant to apologize on Friday, but things were still pretty hectic and in the rush, I just didn't remember. So I talked with the students about it yesterday, and told them that while it might not seem like a big deal to them, it was important to me to be a model of what I expect them to be. I said something similar in a comment to a post over at the English Companion ning:

...while I introduce these to students as my Classroom Expectations, I really think that they're expectations for MYSELF more so than my students. I don't expect these things of my students - I hope for them, certainly, but I'm also certainly NOT shocked or horrifically distressed when I see students act contrary to them. I guess my expectation is that if I emphasize the importance of these behaviors and model them consistently, students will BEGIN to follow them.

Image thanks to http://www.parconline.biz/photoart/