Digital Analogue

Frustrating teaching day

Today just didn't go very well, teaching-wise. In FP, I had the hardest time yet trying to prod the students into discussion. I suppose that my discussion questions aren't good enough, but seriously, for most of the class it felt like they all would've rather just sat there in uncomfortable silence. A few of them might not have read the assignment, but I think that wasn't the problem for most of them. One kept answering questions in such a way as to shut down discussion---not sure if that was intentional or not---and another clearly seemed to disapprove of my lack of control, though apparently not enough to actually say very much. (I did manage to coax out a few comments, at least.) Towards the end of the class, there was a bit of actual back-and-forth between students, but it felt very fragile. When it veered a bit from what we'd actually read, I was leery of trying to steer it back, because I'm pretty sure that if I had opened my mouth, they would've all closed theirs again. Arrghhh. Of course, I can't blame them---I'm the one that's supposed to draw them out of their shells and cause them to re-examine and re-form their world view, right? I'm the one that's supposed to make them able to understand how to evaluate and make choices, right? I just don't know how. Up till today, I kind of thought I was doing alright, but then, blahhh.

Fast on the heels of that failure, I moved on to my CS 141 class. Although I've been generally happy with my pacing and such this term, today I felt like I was ineffective when I was lecturing, ineffective when I was eliciting responses, and ineffective when I put them in small groups. I "covered" most of what I wanted to cover for today, but I felt somehow that nobody walked out understanding anything other than what they'd walked in with.

And I have no idea why. Some days, I do something wrong, and I know what I can do to fix it. But I just have no idea why today completely failed to work. So I'm mostly reduced to just hoping things go better Wednesday. What a frustrating feeling.

'Sudoku comes from a Japanese word meaning "You won't believe the amount of time I have to kill."' --Howard Leff