Class-y

Everyone on campus has a short fuse this week; we are all -- by which I mean students, faculty, and administrators -- on our last nerve, and it shows. In my midday class, we were scooting along pretty well with peer revisions on the last out-of-class essay when I heard one student yell a racial slur (or what I consider to be a racial slur) to another young man of the same race. The "yeller" immediately apologized to me and to the class. The other student didn't care, and I honestly don't care how they talk to each other -- out of my class. In my class, I care about respect, and the fact that the "yellee" was okay with the word didn't make me see the incident as any more appropriate. The "yeller" is one of the best students in the class, always attentive and courteous, never late with work. I accepted his apology and told him not to use any derogatory terms for people of any group in my class again ever. I followed up with, "Would you want me to yell that in class?" Both young men said at the same time, "No, ma'am!" And I let it go and we went on with what we were doing. However, I did have the thought after class that if the "yeller" had been white, I would have kicked him out of class without hesitation. Is that right? In general, I don't have rules that apply differently to different groups of students, but this was a weird (and, I'm happy to say, rare) situation. I think I handled it in the best way in that moment, but I will think more about what to do if and when there is a next time.

In my evening class, I had a really hard time keeping students on task, mostly because we were going over when to -- and when not to -- use commas. I can see how two and a half hours of that could grate on one's nerves. Well, in truth we did commas for about one and a half hours, after completing peer revisions of rough drafts. The class is two and a half hours long, far too long for a developmental composition class. Classroom management is my forte -- I've led workshops on it for other instructors and am even certified in the field -- but this group was apparently unaware of that. They repeatedly lapsed into side conversations and I made the choice not to talk over them. I just waited, but while waiting I made it clear that the more class time they wasted, the more comma work we would do. "I can do this all night," I told them. And eventually what happened was what I knew would happen: The students who weren't being chatty started (gently) making the others shut up. We got through what we needed to, and we were all incredibly ready to leave at 7:50. I need a lot of sleep to gear up for whatever tomorrow may bring.