Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Back to what I was discussing yesterday. During the afternoon lab class, one of the groups only had three members working, despite warning them how much difficulty the earlier class had with the experiment.
In fact, David and I had to ask the groups from the other class to move to the neighboring Robotics lab when they still hadn't finished with the manual even as the 2pm class started trickling in. I, at least, also tried to make an effort to make the experiment easier to the groups, without resorting to outright spoonfeeding.

Anyway, one of the more industrious members of this group I mentioned was absent, and the last member, Justin, begged off since he said he couldn't understand the concepts.

He was at another table studying his notes in my lecture. In the middle of the class, he had in fact approached me asking for a remedial lecture, he said even if it meant paying me, something he hadn't mentioned since the first meeting of Mathematical Methods 1 last term.

For the consultation, I told him to look at the schedule posted on the door of the faculty room. As for the tutorial he wants, I said that I had already contacted the Young Educators' Society (YES) for scheduling one before our next long exam.

I just knew he would come up with an excuse to insist on his paid tutorial, something I haven't done since the mid-nineties with a person who was also currently my student in the same subject I'm tutoring. Of course, even if I didn't intend it, that person had an undue edge over her classmates during the exams.

Which is why I have tried to avoid that as much as possible. Justin's excuse was that he comprehended better on one-on-one sessions. I told him upfront that I considered paid tutorials only as a last resort when all other means have been exhausted and have failed.

He left the classroom to look at my advising schedule, and when he returned he asked me, "Why are all your consultation hours at times when I have classes?"

That started to irritate me, because of the inherent assumption or accusation behind the wording of his question. He could have just stated, "Sir, I have classes during your consultation hours. Isn't there any other way?"

"That wasn't intentional, if that's what you mean," I said. And I told him that I had suggested to Y.E.S. officers to pass out a survey first asking the students when they would prefer a tutorial session to be scheduled.

Then I told him that he should be helping his groupmates. Even though he could not help in the procedures, it didn't mean he could not even record the measurements for his classmates. After all, one of the things they are supposed to learn in the lab class is about teamwork, which he was not demonstrating.

I would have gone on further that it would not have hurt for him to try and comprehend the concepts by practice instead of waiting for the teacher to hold his hand, but then he already got up and stood behind his groupmates.

Later on though, going out of the room, I saw him sitting on the stairs. Either he got put out by what I said or he had acted too late to have reversed the ire of his groupmates.

Yesterday I found out that the latter was true, although the former could be also.

But the point is, I don't give in to tantrum tactics.