Friday, January 06, 2006

Finish the Textbook you Lazy Teacher!


A couple of days ago I finished grading the finals for a class I teach at a nursing school. The goal of the class was for the students to learn English they might have to use at a hospital with patients who speak English.
On the final test, students had a chance to write the good points and bad points of the class. A lot of the students wrote that the bad point was that we did not finish the textbook.
The textbook had 12 chapters and we finished 9. I wanted to finish all 12 but some students were overwhelmed and I did not want to leave too many behind.
Some of the students who wrote they wanted to finish the textbook did very well on the test. Thus, I thought their reaction was to be expected; I knew that slowing the pace of the class would be at the expense of the prodogies. The shocker was that quite a few students who got 40-50/100 (40 - 50%) on the final test wrote that they wished we had finished the textbook.
I wonder why.......

3 comments:

Sean said...

In my syllabus at the beginning of the semester I inform the students which units I intend to teach. I also include [i]subject to change without notice[/i] because you really can't tell how much you'll be able to cover each semester.

Enjoy your vacation.

JH said...

Goof tip. I too will be more explicit on the point at the beginning of the next semester.

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