I've decided to start a new series asking faculty to share their "best" and "worst" stories in the classroom.
Dr. Kurt Lemmert (Frostburg State University) sent me the following "first day horror story."
"I was scheduled to teach a Calculus I class, followed immediately by two sections of Elementary Probability and Statistics (back to back to back). On the first day, one guy showed up about ten minutes late for Calculus. I figured he got lost or something and so I just went over, got his name, and gave him the course guide. A few minutes later, I saw that he was fast asleep with his head down on the desk. I bumped his desk, and said, "Hey, it might be a good idea to stay awake for the first class!" A few minutes later, he was zonked again, so I just ignored him. As the 50 -minute class ended, the other students' movement awakened the sleeper. I went over and said, "You were late, you slept through the rest of the class entirely, and now it's time to leave." He slowly blinked a few times, looked at the clock and said to me, "No, I'm in your next class, too." And he was. And your suspicions are correct - he slept through that one also."
Okay, here are two worst stories (mine, anyway). As in really worst.
While getting the room ready for the final exam a few years ago, I heard a commotion out in the hall. I ran up the stairs of the lecture hall and opened the door into the corridor, and EMTs were rushing down the corridor toward one of my students who lay on the floor. I and my other students watched them try to revive him unsuccessfully. It turned out that he had overdosed on stimulants trying to cram for finals.
For a couple of weeks, I had a cohort of students complain to me that one of their cohort had disappeared (he had), and they couldn't contact him (and they had a major assignment due). I finally agreed to step in and contact the student (I usually don't, because part of group work is learning to work with a group). I emailed him and rather tersely requested that he please contact the other students in his cohort. About a week later, I got an email message from an AOL account I didn't know. It was my student's father, who wrote to apologize that he hadn't gotten hold of me earlier to tell me his son had died in a car wreck. I felt really awful about that email message I'd sent.
Posted by: rightwingprof | March 25, 2007 at 01:06 PM
Wow! I would have to say these ARE worst teaching stories. Thanks for coming by to share.
Posted by: Delaney Kirk | March 25, 2007 at 07:33 PM