"So, how are your classes going", asks the Creative Writing tutor with whom I share an office. I only really see her on the day she has an office hour, and she isn't usually this chatty. I was worried she felt left out of the 'early modernist faction' that is the rest of our shared office, and I'm really pleased that she doesn't seem to be quite as cut off as I thought.
I say mine are going really well: chatty students (not always on the right topic, but easily steered back on track), good attendance, reasonable amount of preparation (although we'll see - so far they haven't had a vast amount of prep to do...). All in all, I'm quite pleased with how they're doing. "How about you?", I ask.
"Well, not too bad. Although they aren't coping very well with the virtual learning environment - and when I look at other tutors' folders there, their students seem to be coping much better". I point out that this might not actually be the case - the other tutors might just be tidying up their folders. "And," she says, "they've taken a vote and decided they are scared of me, and that wasn't the sort of atmosphere I was going for."
"Well, no.... Taken a vote? How did they tell you this?"
"Just that they'd taken a vote and were scared of me. Are yours scared of you?"
I'm fairly sure my students aren't scared of me. If they are, they really don't show it. Maybe I'm just not a scary person - not that Creative Writing tutor is. Maybe I just have more confident students. Maybe I'm not scary enough. I guess time will tell - will they read the novels for later classes / hand in their work on time / continue with the good attendance...?
But I think that if your students are prepared to tell you that they have taken a vote and decided that they are scared of you, then they can't be that scared. My advice would probably be to find a way to make them laugh; a shared giggle goes a long way.
Any other suggestions?
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