Tuesday, November 18, 2008

The Upper 0.33%

I'd like to quantify one of my gripes about teaching recitations at Mall University. Today, the recitations were to discuss a classic book that they were assigned for this week. This means that my job was to spur a conversation and moderate it: make sure that they were understanding the reading. So, generally, their first assignment each week is to do the readings, and then to come to recitation with the book, ready to discuss it.

This week, as I have in the past, I did a poll of who had done the readings. I have a total of 66 students, but a handful have dropped out. So, of the about 60 who came to the three recitations, one student had done the readings. For two recitations, nobody had read anything, and one girl read in one recitation. Attendance was fairly high. However, the average per recitation was about 0.33% of the students having read.

3 comments:

Holly said...

Well. I guess you could just read them the goddamn book during recitation hours.

Greg von Winckel said...

On the bright side, it means your class is only %0.33 fag.

Rufus said...

Holly- I've done that before, actually. To be honest, I do that pretty often now. This week, I gave them things to look for when they do read the book, told them I wasn't keen to do their work for them, and ended recitation.

Greg- Yeah, when that girl told me she's been reading, I reamed her out pretty bad about it.