\tOne of my first year students eats during my class and I scold her publicly. I tell her this is rude, she should have had breakfast before 8:40. The class goes well but I must stop now and then to ask for silence. I have two clever-looking students who oscillate non-stop between chattering like old women (they\u2019ll catch the allusion) and looking at me in enraptured attention. No middle term. Others use their computers and I trust they\u2019re not checking Facebook. <\/p>\n
The girl who ate her breakfast in class approaches my table to hand in an exercise and I take the chance to insist that her behaviour was rude. To my surprise she tells me that her seating-row mates were not bothered and I almost scream that I am, and that I am due respect as I\u2019m working. She, very politely using \u2018usted\u2019 all the time, says she won\u2019t eat again if that bothers me so much… She misses my point, thinking this is my personal caprice.<\/p>\n
In the evening I watch a debate on TV3 about why young people are so rude and it turns out their parents don\u2019t have the energy to teach them etiquette = how to behave in public places. I feel tense and upset all the time I\u2019m teaching this class. They\u2019re lovely people, don\u2019t get me wrong, but I can\u2019t be policing them all the time and since they seem to lack the rules of classroom etiquette, here\u2019s what we expect at UAB:<\/p>\n
Teacher at work:
\n– eat and drink before or after class, not during it
\n– listen in silence, unless you want to contribute to class discussion
\n– don\u2019t use the cell phone to text friends
\n– use the computer only to make notes
\n– BRING THE TEXT we\u2019re discussing and a piece of paper to make notes
\n– attendance is expected but not compulsory – if you’re terminally bored, go to the bar<\/p>\n
All this amounts to: I\u2019m not your mother, you\u2019re not children and my class is not a nursery. The classroom is not your living room, either, and I don\u2019t offer a spectacle to be commented on, like a film or a TV show. A classroom is a space for sharing ideas and thinking requires a correct body language and a respectful behaviour as I AM WORKING HARD FOR YOUR BENEFIT. Do I sound authoritarian? Well, I must<\/em> be, otherwise I won\u2019t be able to educate you. And, yes, all this is very important<\/em>. <\/p>\n I know teachers all over Spanish universities share my feeling that first year, as a colleague told me, is becoming Bachillerato<\/em>\u2019s third year, with our classrooms colonised by some of secondary school bad manners (there are worse manners, I know, even worst). But I also know that students very often simply don\u2019t know what is expected from them and this is why I\u2019d rather be specific. I hope this helps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of my first year students eats during my class and I scold her publicly. I tell her this is rude, she should have had breakfast before 8:40. The class goes well but I must stop now and then to ask for silence. I have two clever-looking students who oscillate non-stop between chattering like old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching-tools-and-rules"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}