Sad is not good enough to explain how I feel on this last day of class. After class, today, I stayed in the classroom as everyone was leaving, and found myself alone and so ready to cry. What was so special this semester for me? I was so happy at the end of last semester, when I was finally able to get rid of those many troublemakers! I did have some good students but I think that the problems I encountered during that semester just prevented me to do my best as a human person. I know that my students have learned a lot, and so it was not a "bad" semester per say, but I didn't get attached to these 48 or so students the way I got attached to my students this semester! They were so strong, so intelligent, and so studious! I know, I'm saying this at the end of the semester and the beginning was rough for all of us. One student today told me that he had felt so lost at the beginning, because it was his first semester in the US and so many things were different, his classes were so hard, and he was so unsure of how things had to be done... I explained that I knew that, that I could feel for them, that I knew how they felt because I had felt the same, but at the same time I couldn't just make our class a "time to relax and not worry" because they still had to learn something! I would not have helped them if I had accepted things the way they were during the first weeks: being late, not doing homework, missing class... So we did fight a lot at first, and I know that I haven't always been very kind, but I had no choice. I think they understand this now, fortunately. Once they knew what I expected them to do and how I wanted things to go, we had a much better time together. Some good friendships have obviously been created between the students too, and I am glad about that. One reason why I think that my students didn't hate me in the end is because they gave me some interesting feedback, either online or when we were discussing in class or individually. They were not scared to tell me what they thought and went through, and I'm grateful for that because it will help me make next semester a good semester too.
On Monday, after I returned their third draft and made some comments about them (work on dividing your information into section, combine information from all your papers, etc.), we went over APA rules. I had written an exercise with different sources (book title, author, article title, page numbers, etc.), and they had to write the reference using the APA manual. It was not easy and it was interesting to see that many of the students were able to do quite well on the exercise, with some guidance, but when they had to do it in the actual paper, they did it all wrong again. Last semester, I spent about two weeks with my students working on APA exclusively, and even then, many had not mastered it by the end of the semester. In fact, at the end of last semester, many students felt like all they had done during the whole semester was to learn about APA. So this semester, I didn't really insist and we only spent a few days with it. When they'll need it, they'll know where to look (and they'll know whom to ask too--I still have students from last semester asking me questions about it!).
The final draft of their final project was due on Wednesday. I thought about simply grading the paper without giving any feedback, since I knew some students wouldn't read the feedback I would spend much time to write, so I decided to let my students choose between two options: to make an appointment with me and read/grade their paper together, or to simply get a grade. EIGHT out of 12 students chose to meet with me! Wow, that was very unexpected! I was very happy about that, of course, because it means that they really cared about their writing skills, and I was happy too because it gave me some time to spend with those students individually and discuss together one last time. I enjoyed those times so much! I really need to have those long conferences earlier during the semester next year. It takes a lot of time to meet with everyone but it is the best time to know one another, ask about what is going on in the lives of my students that could influence their class performance, to be a little less "uptight" for a while. During those conferences yesterday and today, I kept repeating "thank you for your good work, thank you for being such a great student!" and that's really how I felt. I had such amazing students, I had so many questions I wanted to ask them, so many things I wanted to discuss still... Many have gone from writing a vague opinion paper earlier this semester to doing some real research and thinking, and coming up with amazing papers. At first, I asked the students to write an 8-10 page paper, but then I felt bad and required only 5-7 pages on the final paper, but about half of the students wrote between 8 and 15 pages! This is mostly engineers we're talking about! Who knew that future engineers, psychologists, managers, and pharmacists could be such good writers?
Today, I told my students about the fact that they would have to work twice as much to be accepted and get good "positions" as students and in the workplace. I also encouraged them to keep writing because several of them are excellent writers! I would say that the top five people in my class this semester were better writers than the top 10 English-speaking students in my sections last semester! Maybe it is because my students last semester quickly got into the "dryness" of the academic writing style while my international students were still using some of that creativity and "personal touch" that makes papers much more interesting to read. I don't know, but it really was a pleasure to read some of these papers.
A last fun thing from this week is the fact that I asked my students to write in my journal in their languages. I got some cool stuff, which of course, I will never be able to understand, but which will be very precious to me. It makes me want to learn all those languages to be able to understand what my students wrote. It was also a great opportunity to discuss about their languages and countries, and for my students to actually be the "teacher" for once. I learned so much this semester!
Well, I guess that's it for this semester. I still don't know how I will teach and what I will teach next semester, but I am already excited! Take care my dearest students, Rohit, Arjun, Loc, Danish, Alan, Hans, Kester, Daniel, Esteban, Nishit, David, Dong Ah, Abdulaziz... I hope we can still be friends in the future!
