Angry Teacher Rant

I am so DONE!

On a typical day, I love my students, I love my job...but yesterday, I felt like I hated them. I am serious. In my mind, every one of them was lazy, apathetic, superficial, had no character, no work ethic. You would not have wanted to be inside my head yesterday - it was not pretty.

I've complained all semester long about grading their thesis papers. Grading these things are the bane of my professional existence, but I put a TON of time into assessing their rough drafts...going over it with a fine-toothed comb, marking every grammar error, error in development, organization, weak thesis statements, lack of unity...you name it.

It is so FRUSTRATING to get their final drafts and compare them to the rough drafts. Do you know what they fixed???? The commas, the periods, the capital letters, the spacing...anything that did not require THOUGHT and only mistakes the I POINTED OUT.

Anything that required them to THINK or DO MORE WORK they conveniently left out.

"You need another example here. Develop this paragraph a little more." I got nothing.

"How is this information tied to your thesis? Make a connection."Still nothing.

"Repetitive. Keep all like information together." Did they move it? Of course not!

"Too much quoting. You need to paraphrase." Do you know what was there? SAME.EXACT.WORDS.

Just to name a few.

In fairness, I did get some great papers. I do have students who work hard, take pride in their work and have an excellent work ethic.

But it just made me sad how many students don't. Shoddy work. No effort. They check out during class, do their work incorrectly, and then have the gall to ignore the corrections I MAKE FOR THEM!

They have been doing these kinds of papers since 9th grade. I don't get it.

The seniors need to get a 75 on their thesis in order to graduate. Some got a 70 or 75, and instead of just making all the corrections, they calculatively determine what they needed to do to get the 3 or 5 points needed to pass. That's it.

I was going over a paper with a student about what needed to be done to fix her paper, and she said, point blank, " Just tell me what I need to do to get 3 points." "Well, really, it would be best to..." " No, honestly, I just want the 3 points."

OK, summer vacation is more for the teacher than the student. Case in point.

You would not want me teaching your kids in this frame of mind. Look for a rebuttal in the future about how wonderful my students are and how motivated and enthusiastic and how bright....

But just not today.