Teaching -- student blues

This is the tale of two students -- both of whom are disturbing --

Student A:
Student A has been at least two of my classes. This semester she's in my logic class and not doing great. It is often the case that students struggle with the material at this point in the course. What really bothered me was that she and her pal had the same mistakes on their exam...

The funny thing about logic is that if two students cheat and get the right answer, then they'll never get caught. In logic, the wrong answers are usually unique, the right answers uniform. I confronted Student A and "friend" about their exams. It became pretty clear what was happening -- as Student A began to cry and "friend" got cold and asked how to find the tutor (clearly, she figured out that from three seats away she could no longer cheat!). Sadly, Student A did a very poor job on the exam -- so I didn't need to fail them both. After "friend" went off to find the tutor, Student A told me that she was going to lie and say that "friend" had contributed to the project she did all on her own.

I don't think it is much of a coincidence that "friend" is friends with Voldemort from way back-- they are peas in a pod and richly deserve one another.

Student X
Student X has been in every course of mine, starting with the very first class I ever taught at BNCC Student X is smart, funny, charming and engaging. Student X also has a terrible pattern of preventing his own success. He makes the choice to slack-off during the semester and try to make-up at the end. I probably contributed to this problem when I let Student X do this in my class the first semester. X got a pretty low grade in this course -- but he passed.

Student X also took a couple of summer courses with me. The short summer courses and compressed time of the semester seemed to allow X to get decent grades before his innate-slacker took over. The fact that X felt he had something to prove to me after a signifcant boo boo in the spring semester might have helped keep him on track.

Then, X also got involved in one of my CC related projects --and I got to know him better. At this point, X is kind of like a friend, kind of a student and nearly a younger cousin or sibling... in some ways. In many ways X also has a pattern of being quasi-disrespectful and avoiding me when I have news he doesn't want to hear. I figured out how to work with X, and often write the behavior off to X's rough family situation -- as those behaviors are typical of a person in that situation.

This year, X got further involved in the activity (this is year 3 of the me/X relationship..). X lead me to believe that school was going well for him -- and when grades came back, that wasn't the case. It also turns out that X is familiar with this kind of trouble --

By this time X convinced me that, if only he could finish at BNCC, he could get things together. I went to a pretty decent amout of time, effort and stress about X and made a deal that got X back into school. I even helped X with tuition money--- and what does X do but not do the f-ing work in my class.

Correction... he does just enough to continue participation in the campus activity (I wouldn't let him continue without it)... and recently -- I even gave some un-warranted extensions on projects -- and he still wouldn't do the work. At this point X is failing -- and NOW he wants to talk about make-ups etc. This is after ignoring multiple messages and "nagging" -- sometimes eye rolls accompany the ignoring behavior.

I'm having a hard time with this because it seems like X is a monster of my own creation -- on the other hand, why should I let him pass on when he clearly doesn't have the work habits to survive where he wants to finish his degree? As it stands, I've left it up to X to devise a plan to pull his own cookies out of the fire. Clearly, he doesn' t think much of my syllabus etc -- as he won't condescend to do the work I assign -- so, I'll see what he comes up with.

The bottom line is that I've done much more worrying about X's academic life than he has. Those times are over -- it is time for him to prove that he actually has the skils and small amount of self-discipline necessary to pass my easy classes (truth be told, he's in trouble in the other one as well).

We'll see --- I'll keep you posted.