Hoping to Learn

I had heard that this class was a hard class. So hard, that an extra fee was attached to it to pay for tutoring. The tutors attend the class as well as having scheduled hours. And, in my opinion, they are completely unnecessary, because my particular instructor has no idea how to teach.

By the sixth week of a class meeting two times a week, the instructor had cancelled five classes, and missed two (the first two misses were due to contractual issues for which I cannot wholly blame the instructor). If I missed that many classes, I would not expect to be receiving a passing grade, but I tried to give the instructor the benefit of the doubt. Illness can strike anyone, and just because there are only four seventy-five minute time periods (this instructor has two class sections) that this person has to show up to work, doesn’t mean it is any less difficult to deal with being sick.

After all, one could use the time that they are not in class to catch up on grading, right?

Not so much.

As of this writing, it has been more than 32 days since the semester’s first exam was due. Half of the exam was multiple choice, instantly graded through the magic of the internet. The other half of the exam was short answer questions, and I have still not received my grade for it. Nor has anyone else that I know of.

After completely missing two weeks of class, the syllabus naturally had to be adjusted somewhat. You might think that once a new, accelerated syllabus was set, that it would be followed precisely.

But you’d be wrong.

In a move that I find appalling, there are to be no more exams in the new syllabus. Instead, workbooks will be completed. I’m not sure how the teacher plans to grade the workbooks, in part because I have no idea what they look like. The first one was to be posted, according to the syllabus, “over the weekend” of the 10th of October. But instead, we received an email the morning of the 13th, explaining that the workbook would be posted soon.

As of the 22nd, it still isn’t posted.

And then there are the classes themselves. Usually by this time in the semester, I will have memorized my classmates names, based on roll call. But this instructor has not taken attendance since the first class they came to (the third class in the semester). And, in addition to not calling roll, which I admit is a quibble, it seems to me that the instructor is not reading the textbook. And therefore, is catering to students who also choose not to read the textbook.

Exhibit A: As the instructor wrote an example on the board, a student asked for an example of the difference between a sound with aspiration and one without. An example of this was spelled out explicitly in the chapter of the textbook we were supposed to read, but the instructor responded by claiming that they couldn’t think of a good example of the difference.

Exhibit B: Upon working through an exercise, the instructor commented that I was doing well. I said that the example we were working on was laid out in the book, and the instructor replied, “Well, not everyone has read the textbook.”

I might be reading some defensiveness into that reply. I might not.

As a person pursuing a second bachelor’s degree, this is the only class in this particular subject that I am required to take. Based on the textbook, I find the subject matter interesting, but based on the class experience, I doubt I would have the ability to take a class that requires this class as a prerequisite successfully.

Sure, I hope that the class will improve as the semester goes on. I hope that the instructor will get a handle on grading and figure out how to read the textbook teach follow their own syllabus.

But I hope a lot of things. . .