On giving a little less of a shit...

I do still care about my students and their progress, so in that regard, yes: I still give a shit. However, I'm getting better at picking my battles. Two students in the 101 have missed every class so far--for different reasons, but still. One of them swore up and down he'd get caught up on his own, and he did, I admit, submit two of seven assignments, but he still hasn't actually been in class, and he hasn't been reinstated on my roster. If he's not officially on the roster by Wednesday, I'll have to decide whether to boot him or not. The other showed up today; her reason for missing class is that she thought she was in an online course. This comes from sloppy reading (the section above mine is online--but mine very clearly has a classroom and meeting times listed; on top of which the student thought she was in another colleague's class, whose section is immediately below mine). It also comes from making rash assumptions. She said she'd thought, "Why do I have to go to class if it's online?" (Well, if days and times are listed, that might indicate that there's a different assumption you should make.)

Anyway, Paul was astounded that I'm allowing her to be in the class--he was pissed off with students in his class who gave him the same "I thought it was an online class" thing--but I just can't be bothered to be tough with them about the fact that they've fucked themselves over pretty royally already. I am 99.99% positive that neither student will make it to the half-way point. If either of them does, it's more likely to be the young man--but really, students who get themselves this far behind the curve usually end up going off the rails and failing. I'm certainly not going to try to rescue them; I've told them they'll most likely crash--and now I just wait to see how they handle things. I'm not lifting a finger to help unless I see a real reason to, and so far I don't.

Then there's the student in Nature in Lit whom I think I mentioned yesterday: hasn't so much as logged in, never mind doing any work. I sent her another email, but ... well, she's probably not reading email, either. Poor William had a student in an online class last semester who never did any work but never withdrew--and the student is in his class again this semester and again has not checked in at all (which makes one wonder about the student's thought process: "This was a total disaster last semester, but let me do exactly the same thing again"?) I haven't yet taken "attendance" for last week; I'll do that tomorrow, when I can sit at the computer and make some sense of what I'm doing. I have assignments to mark for the SF class, too, but if I don't get to them before class tomorrow, I'm not going to feel dreadful. It would be nice to clear them out of my hair, but the online course needs a little attention first.

Shifting gears back to the 101: I'm not entirely enthusiastic about the potential of the group, but they impressed the librarian who was running our information literacy session. She said they were engaged and asking good questions (I didn't notice a lot of that, but OK), and she was absolutely thrilled that one student--the unquestioned rock-star of the class, already--asked whether she'd be able to access databases once she's no longer at NCC, possibly no longer in school at all, as it might be useful to her in her career. I'm glad the student is aware that some of what she's learning may be beneficial beyond academia--but she's a bit like a student in the "bad" 101 last semester: super bright and capable but hard to get a read on: is she snotty and hostile or just smart and bored?

Time will tell.

In any event, I am going to do some life-maintenance I didn't get done over the weekend and then head home. it will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow of note.