Posted by
Steve on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 4:27:10 PM
As summer semester 2006 is almost over, I am waxing nostalgic for the students that have completed my class and will now go on to the higher division classes.
Each semester I get a new group of students ranging in age from 17 to 50. Most of them want to go into some form of health care field, usually nursing. At first, I do not know names or much about them. After a few classes, I have learned their names. By the middle of the semester, I usually know quite a bit about them and their lives outside of school. By the end of the semester, they are family.
Some semesters I get students that are terrific. Some semesters I get an "average" group. But, the one thing that sets my students in the classes I teach from other classes I taught is the feeling of family by the end of a semester. I think the students become a family because they all are going into a health care field and have a mutual interest. They will be taking the upper division classes together. So, it makes sense for them to build a relationship in my class that will follow through the three other Biology classes they have to take at South Mountain Community College.
When I see my former students in the upper level classes, they remember me and I notice that the groups they worked with in my class have continued in the upper level classes. There is some mixing, but for the most part, students that share a group in my class will continue that same group all the way through the biology classes.
I like my students to succeed. If I had my way, all of them would receive an "A". All of them do not earn an A. The students that do what I ask and turn in all their assignments usually get grades in the high B or above range. Students that do not turn everything in get "C's" or maybe "B's". Some even get lower grades. One semester I had a student that missed an A by one point. I did not give it to her, because, she had turned in only three current event reports instead of the 10 required. She knew she did not deserve the A and was not mad. But it illustrates the situation of not completing all the assignments. I had one student this semester that had an A, except that she did not complete one assignment at all. This caused her grade to drop one whole letter grade.
I tell students these stories at the beginning of each semester. But, most students do not believe that I could possibly be talking to them. It is amazing to me that students will try to get by with doing less than the minimum that the teacher requires.
Another semester starts in about a month. Then the process will start all over again. I enjoy the new classes, but right now, I miss the old one that has become so familiar.