I got a text in all caps today from my daughter, who is in her senior year of college. It read: “MY WEDNESDAY CLASS WAS JUST CANCELLED.” That class is next week and is the day before Thanksgiving. I have been in enough classrooms to know that this professor was instant hero. And he knew it too.
Students love when classes are cancelled. In 25 years of teaching college, I rarely cancelled mine. In fact, when I was pregnant with that same daughter, I had students come to me and also write in my evaluations that they thought for sure I would be cancelling a lot of classes because of my pregnancy, and they were surprised (some disappointed, quite honestly) that I never called in sick.
Continue reading “For Teachers: In Consideration of Students Who Take You At Your Word”
I am sitting at Starbucks, fearful that I have not been productive enough last week. So I am using the day to alleviate that fear and to write. When I come here, my routine is always the same, even though I need to change it. I log on to the wifi, check MSN for headlines in case anything momentous happened over night, check email, and check Facebook. The last check is the one I need to discontinue, except for today!
The Writing Life 