Look at this great attitude:
If they are going to give me the tech (and I
love my techy toys, no matter what people say about them and
I also love making the students realize that I am just as
smart about them as they are, if not smarter because I
actually take the time to figure out how they really work
rather than just how to avoid work while using them!), then
I am going to play with it and use it to help the students
and to help myself. Take the Google Classroom with the
really easy way to tell if they submitted their work or not-
they can no longer tell me that I just lost it (or worse, I
threw it out because I just hate them and can’t stand
for some students to do well, which is a total lie. I am the
absolute worst about keeping things way longer than
necessary just to avoid that, but the little liars will say
what they will when they will to get mommy and daddy on
their side against the mean, old teacher lady who
doesn’t think their mere presence in her classroom rates
an A without their having to lift a finger to do any work!).
If it never got submitted then I can’t grade it, Give me
nothing with which to work and I can give you nothing but a
zero for a grade. Period. Nice and neat. No way to say
“so-and-so took my paper out of the turn in tray and
hid it so I would fail” or other nonsense since the
paper was never there to steal in the first place. If you
don’t type the doc and submit it from your chromebook
during the time allotted in class, you just didn’t do
the assignment. You made the poor choice and you have no one
else to blame. Instant accountability and instant
consequences for lack of effort and industry. Take that,
Twitter and InstaGram and all you social media for your
immediacy. The immediacy of the technology will now backfire
on the lazier students if used properly. Now we can pay them
back for all the snarky, crappy lies they post about us on
their little social media by just letting them be themselves
and show their true colors. Ain’t life grand when the
worm turns and bites them back for their misuse of things?
And the good students who always do their work will have
theirs safely turned in where no one can “borrow”
it and take it for their own unless they just flat out send
that other student a copy some other way, which is, again, a
poor choice but theirs to make and ours to shoot down when
we catch it. I have two years left in this gig and unless
the quality of students improves, I am totally out of here
because I am tired of spoiled rotten brats who don’t
care to learn. I will make myself available to the students
who do want to learn as a tutor (free for those who
can’t afford it of course) after I retire, but I will no
longer need to deal with the brats. Ah, sweet freedom, I
long for thee and I see a light at the end of the tunnel. I
can’t wait for the evening of the scales to begin. I am
totally psyched about it all. I haven’t been this
psyched about anything since I had to quit teaching Latin
because I didn’t get to finish my certification due to
the birth of my second child.
Ruth, the
female curmudgeon who really loves her job but can’t
stand stupid in any form, no matter the source