Louis said: > > I think some of us are being too harsh. We aren't > very understanding of our very young students. > We're not walking in their shoes or remembering how > we were like at those ages. > And Louis hit a nerve, as usual; it's early in the morning:
I was not a "nerd" in those days. That came later for me. I was a late bloomer--those frontal lobes resisted maturation for a long time. At 19 I decided California was the place for me and I hitch hiked from Chicago to California in November! Scares me to death to think back on it. But I still have memories of a family in Arkansas that wanted to take me home for Sunday dinner with the grandparents, horrible truck drivers who got fresh and I had jump out of the cab of a moving truck, and lots of interesting people with lots of stories. BUT I was also interested in what was going on around me. I walked blocks campaigning for McCarthy, I knew every statistic and battle in Viet Nam and wrote letters to anonymous soldiers (I failed in motivating our psych club to send home baked cookies to my son's unit in Marez--outside of Mosul), I liked Mark Twain, so at 18 I drove myself down to Hannibal, MO to see his birth place and all the 'touristy' stuff about him. I read every book he wrote or that was written about him and I still love to watch the Mark Twain comedy awards on PBS. Eventually I went to Angel's Camp and Twain Harte in California. I WAS different. So I DO have a hard time relating. I asked my 19-year old son about some of the things I expected my students to know and he didn't know much of it until I cued him. He vaguely knew something about Head Start as day care. I had to cue him with Prison in Iraq to get him to remember the Abu Gharib story. He does know about fly-fishing from seeing A River Runs Through It and his laptop home page is CNN; he mostly reads the headlines only--and he is like a lot of his friends who are not nerds. He is not a stellar student, last semester he was tickled to get all the (passing) letter grades on one report card: A, B, C, D. But he knows a lot about very many different things. So, I AM struggling to understand my students. In each section of 20 about 2 seem to know something about the world. The other 18 just seem so lost. I'm worried about how they are going to function in everyday life with such a poor understing of THEIR 'other' people! These students will have a hard time relating beyond their limited world. I'm thinking of somehow incorporating magazine/newspaper assignments into my classes from now on so at least they have to skim them to find information for assignments. Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 619-260-4006 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---- Original message ---- >Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:04:34 -0500 >From: "Louis Schmier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: RE: [tips] Am I expecting too much? >To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <[email protected]> > > Make it a good day. > > --Louis-- > > Louis Schmier > http://therandomthoughts.edublogs.org/ > Department of History > http://www.newforums.com/Auth_L_Schmier.asp > Valdosta State University > Valdosta, Georgia 31698 /\ /\ > /\ /\ > (229-333-5947) > /^\\/ \/ \ /\/\____/\ \/\ > > / \ \__ \/ / \ /\/ \ \ /\ > > //\/\/ /\ \_ / /___\/\ \ \ \/ \ > > /\"If you want to climb mountains \ /\ > _/ > \ don't practice on mole hills" -/ \ > > > > --- > To make changes to your subscription contact: > > Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ---
