Due Dates and the Clarity of Expectations

BTT1O were to hand in their summatives today. I'd told myself to be ready for some students not to be done. I was trying to psych myself up to be a tough guy about it. I was not prepared for almost everyone not to be done. This included a couple of my star students.

On reflection, I did not lay out the tough guy, hard ass expectations all that clearly up front and I have, in general, not done a clear and explicit job of handling due dates. (Which are a mess in the Ontario system, now.) In fact, I need to generally do a better job of being explicit in my expectations with both BTT1O and ICS3M.

I thought that the expectations in terms of what to hand in were well laid out in the summative assignment this time around. I got that part right. But I should have spoken to the importance of meeting the deadline and that the deadline was the beginning of the class.

Attention, Attention

We're fully in summative mode in ICS3M. E/one is working on it in class. One thing that all levels of the summative can use (as a bonus) is the ability to write text to files. So, I spent about 10 mins in class today going over how to do this. What surprised me was the number of students who didn't even bother to pay attention and this was even though I'd told then that it would only take about 10 minutes and that they would need this if they were to go for the bonuse marks on any of the summative levels.

What is perplexing me about this? That it is so clearly in their interest to listen so that they know how to do it and that they aren't? Is it the case that it's not clear to them that it's in their interest?

I'm inclined to think that they are assuming that they don't need to listen now. That they'll be able to get this info from me later when the information will be immediately useful. If I thought this behaviour just came under the heading of general rudeness, that would be one thing. But one student that I particularly singled out for not listening was quite open and nice with me afterwards. It's not intentional rudeness however much it might incidentally be rude.

Perhaps it's the internet generation (Gen I) thing. They're used to information on demand so they just assume that that's how it will be with what I was giving them today.

Alfie Kohn on reform and a Secretary of Education

Kohn, who is surely one of the most interesting and provocative educational theorists out there today, talks about who Obama should choose for Secretary of Education in the U.S. Along the way, he speculates that much of what passes for school reform is actually a retrenchment of the status quo - stateside, at least. Since what happens there often shows up here as at least an influence, I present it for your delectation.