Yay!

My Wednesday night class is finally finished! Hooray! While I love teaching the material, and the adult students, I hatehatehate teaching the class in the format and at night. This group was particularly hard, because there were a handful of students who never understood the whole group discussion format idea, and rarely if ever opened their mouths. Which will cost them, as participation is a huge part of their grade.

Tonight their final projects were due, and about half blew those. Some had clearly never read the instructions, or listened to same when we went over them in class. Some had made a small effort and then blown it off. Two simply abdicated the whole thing - both howling to the winds about special circumstances (they are chronic whiners and slackers according to other profs who've had them in classes). One guy - I expected great things of him - let me down by creating Tibetan prayer flags... but then he blew it by talking about how they were used instead of using them (as he'd said he would) to show Tibetan demands/prayers for independence/autonomy in China. It could have been a great project - but he blew it, and it didn't even meet the basic reqs of the assignment.

The ones who nailed it redeemed the evening. One made a giant clam, to illustrate the issues of the Pacific pearl trade and technologies. Very cool, and just nailed the assignment. Another did a painting about the issues of development, deforestation and destruction of wildlife in India. One made a child's coffin, and filled it with the causes of infant mortality. One created a model of that enormous building in Dubai; he nearly blew the project until he finally focused on his artifact - surrounded by sand, awash at its base in oil, a gilded tower - not golden, as he noted, because it was built by the oil-elite using poorly paid workers and at the expense of those workers and the people of the country - glittering high-rises going up instead of schools, hospitals, infrastructure. One created a banner for ending child labor - each symbol represented how child labor was exploited: diamonds, mining, cocoa/coffee bean pickers, etc.. Another used one of the artist's model-thingies as 'the modern protestor' of the Arab Spring.

So the class ended well. Except that my single foreign student - one of the notorious slackers - came in an hour and a half late and expected to present his project. This despite an earlier email exchange in which I told him that all projects were due at the beginning of class time, and that if he came in late I would not accept the project and he'd lose 25% of his grade. An hour and a half? Be serious. No way. Which I told him, and ended the class. When I got up to my office, there he was, ready to whine at me. He's been full of excuses all term long, and has been in or emailed me a dozen times in the last week about this project. He'd changed his project with nearly every contact - and not one of them would meet the assignment. He came in at 10, showed me what he was working on - and no, it wouldn't work either. He wanted more examples - which we'd gone over again and again. Tonight he tells me that he's had this 'personal thing' that's kept him from concentrating. He won't tell me anything else, but wants me to accept his project. I tell him it still doesn't meet the requirements of the assignment and no, I don't accept late submissions. And of course, he won't let it go. (It didn't help that I really really needed to go to the bathroom...). I was more than a bit worried he'd follow me to my car, try to intimidate me into changing his grade (there've been incidents on our campus like that). He didn't, but I was really jumpy.

I fully expect him to come back tomorrow and try again and again and again. He's never had to live with a solid NO apparently, and has no intention of starting now.

However. The class is over. I don't ever have to teach another... crap. I don't plan on ever having to teach another night class. Never say never, right?