Teaching online has been eventful, which is ironic, since it doesn’t look that way. Watching me teach now is seeing me sitting at my computer, typing. It’s only when you might catch a glimpse of me with a medieval jester puppet as I make a video that an “event” is evident.
There were struggles when I had to teach my first fully online courses at Davis and when I had to convert my Los Rios semester classes to online mid term.
Right now, I’m teaching my first fully online Los Rios course.
I’m better prepared, both through the few months of experience I have and through the course I took for certification to teach online.
I’m grappling with a problem I assume is common. Many of my community college students aren’t doing any of the readings or watching any of the videos. They’re just going to assignments.
And then they fail the assignments because they didn’t do the reading.
The Davis students last term learned their lesson quickly. They either started doing at least some of the reading or they dropped.
My current students aren’t learning that lesson quickly. I can post announcements and videos and write comments on their assignments all day long, but if they aren’t doing the readings/viewings, then they aren’t seeing those corrections.
In class, I could pull them aside. I could make an announcement to the whole class that they would at least be in the room for.
I’ve managed to find ways to pull most of them aside, virtually.
Except one student.
She added the class with a PTA the second day. And I honestly don’t think she’s read anything.
Not the syllabus or schedule. Not the announcements. Not my comments to her. Not the textbook.
She’s failing, not surprisingly.
Over a week ago, she wrote on an assignment that she was confused because the dates kept changing.
I haven’t changed a single date.
The schedule I give the students is complete at the very start of class.
And we stick to it.
It takes an emergency–and not just a personal one. The only time I’ve changed due dates in recent memory was when school closed because of the fires.
So I wrote her a note back, telling her that I wanted to figure out where the confusion was so we could get her on track.
And then I remembered that she didn’t read my comments on her submissions. So I sent her an email through Canvas and an email the regular way.
No response.
She didn’t disappear, though. She keeps turning in failing assignments.
It’s been a week. She’s gotten a second email (I know she uses her email–she emailed me twice at the start of term) and a phone call.
Yes. A phone call. (Their numbers are on the roster in the Los Rios system.)
She didn’t pick up, but I left a message that I wanted to get in touch because I wanted to help her figure out the assignments and the dates.
No response.
I don’t know what to do now.
If this were a movie, I would find a way to find her, neglect my family and my other students, and babysit her little sister, while helping her complete her assignments.
This movie idea–that we should all reach every student all the time–is damaging and pervasive.
At every conference, it’s reiterated that if our students can’t pass our classes, it’s because we’re doing something wrong.
This is an excellent example of how that’s not true.
But I still want to help her.
And she’s not going to let me.
Sometimes people need to start making efforts to save themselves. Or responding to people.
A lot of people have corona brain these days and don’t have enough executive function going on to figure things out. (God knows I have had it going on for months and only now started snapping out of it.) She and other ones may just not be able to be problem solving in their brains or thinking about “I should do the reading” or god knows what else. And a lot of people are just dropping out of communication now, too.
But if they don’t respond, there isn’t anything we can do. Really can’t go over to their house and do a welfare check and hold their hand any more….