Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

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

This term, because of the unification of the grades in lecture and lab classes for all subjects, and not just in computer programming as it was three years ago, in my two lab classes, I have no say about whether the students are passing or not.

It’s really in the hands of the lecture professors, to whom I passed my raw percentages of the students’ efforts two days ago. This is in my sections of Basic Electronics Lab (for the regular engineering sophomores – and some irregulars, including a certain student) and Feedback and Control Lab (irregular juniors and seniors).

As a formality one of the teachers, who is a part-timer, after all, sent me back an email with the students’ final ratings “to see if it was satisfactory” but what does that say about the dictatorial nature of it all if the teachers can arbitrarily say “I don’t want this student to pass” despite all evidence to the contrary?

What somewhat bothers me is that knowing that during the teachers’ evaluation in the middle of the term, the personnel in charge of that who went to my class said that the students were rating both the lecture and lab classes, even though the teachers were different. What if one of them brings the other down? Will they both not be renewed to teach again? What if the good teacher pulls up the score of the not-so-good teacher? Will they both be renewed?

I guess I will have to wait and see about this until the evaluations are given after I have passed to the registrar’s office all of my students’ grades.

By the way, I don’t know if I will still have to encode the grades of the lab classes, which are just going to be the same as the lecture classes, or if the registrar personnel will remember that they only have to copy the list for themselves.

In other news, during our in-campus workshop yesterday (the off-campus component is tomorrow until Saturday) the possibility was discussed about have a faculty “support” group, in other words making official the threat I often tell my slacking students who keep using the same old tricks on different teachers, which is that “the teachers talk among themselves about students giving them trouble.

Of course, it had to be couched in the guise of sharing effective teaching strategies, although to be able to do that, we must first identify what are obstacles we face in class – which are usually from the students resisting regular instruction.

This is something to look forward to every month starting the next term.

Session 1597 will have to come up with new excuses to use on the new teachers. Class dismissed.