Professors and the Such

I feel it is necessary to insert a disclaimer here: This view does not apply to every teacher and/or professor, just some of the ones I have observed. That means the number of relatives and friends who are currently reading this blog and are teachers, future teachers or professors, remember that this probably does not apply to you. No kicking my butt, okay?

Anyways, on to my original topic. Do you ever have that gut-wrenching, heart twisting, head stinging moment when a professor or teacher says, “Let’s do something fun”? And you look around the classroom and everyone in the class seems to be in as much pain as you are.

           

“Fun” is not the word usually associated with education, unless the student is learning something he or she wants to learn. When I took my first creative writing classes in high school, I was having fun. The word “fun,” however, usually pops up in the required classes. The professor’s smile grows wide and, the wider it is, the more likely it is that you are not going to have any fun. I will now demonstrate the difference between “good fun” and “bad fun.”

Bad Fun

One of my professors was out of town last week and decided it would be “fun” to go on an online chat room and still hold class. Unfortunately, such professor did not pay attention to the details because, at last, the chat room the professor chose only allowed 10 people to chat at a time. Since there are 15 people in the class and I was the 12^th to log on, it wasn’t “fun” for me to huddle on my roommate’s bed with three other people, all trying to join in on the chat on one tiny computer. This little demonstration of “fun” was not successful, yet my teacher still wanted us to perform the online chat for another two classes, even though only 75% of the class can actually chat.

Good Fun

One of my professors, who I must admit I’m a little biased towards because it’s impossible not to love her, had the whole class come in an hour early so we could watch the entirety of a movie associated with our class (about women). I might have groaned a little bit from the idea of sitting in class for an extra hour. I already have 2 two hour classes in my life; I don’t want to have to do extra work. A few of us in the class showed up at the designated time and were enthralled with the movie by the time 2:00, the registered class time, started. This event was actually fun, probably because this professor didn’t say the actual words “this is going to be fun.” She asked us if we were interested in seeing the movie then asked our feedback afterwords, which I truly appreciated. At the college-level, you are adults paying for an education. Your input seems like it should be noticed when it comes to what you want to learn.

So, let’s recap—bad fun is when the professor actually tells the class “this will be fun” and then doesn’t ask if it was actually fun for you or not. Actual fun is when the professor asks the students’ input before and after the activity and doesn’t actually say, “this will be fun.”

Until next time.