(no subject)

[felis_ultharus]

Last two days at work have been chaos. No teacher should have to correct their attendance four times -- much less a multiple of teachers. No teacher should suddenly remember that they didn't actually have any of the classes they reported on their attendance all last month.

And no teacher should require us to make out two payroll correction slips for the same class in the same week -- the second to correct the correction.

Otherwise, writing is continuing well. I should be 10% through my heavy edit today. And I think it's definite that D&D shall be canceled for this Sunday, though it'd be fun to get together with people :)

Comments

[melting-penguin.livejournal.com]

Ouch! Bad teachers, bad! I imagine it continues to be the usual suspects...

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I used to have a group I called "The Michaels and Janetta" (two Michaels weren't there when you were, another who's always been the very last one in my book).

Two of the Michaels have pledged to do better. One of them was transferred to Sophie's book. This last one *failed* to use white-out today, so Gerri had to take the white-out away from him and apply it for him >_<

(He'd been issued white-out by MLS because he kept needing to borrow it, but now someone's going to have to sit him down and teach him basic white-out skills.)

Janetta gets worse every month. We had to redo her attendance three times this week. She doesn't return calls, either. I'm almost positive she's screening us.

Nancy is a perpetual nightmare for Eric. I have a new one named Nicki who had to redo her attendance again this week.

I mean, they're all nice people, and they're all good teachers in the classroom. All of the Michaels are the sweetest people you'd ever want to meet, especially the one who's white-out-challenged (I had a class with him at Concordia).

But I'm amazed they actually make it to their classes at all. All those room numbers and times and dates would probably confuse them!

[maidenofirisa.livejournal.com]

How complicated is it to fill out those attendance? I'm always amused by the stories you have about this but I don't get how they can happen. It's just attendance, right? They've got to make these mistakes intentionally...

[melting-penguin.livejournal.com]

It couldn't be much simpler to do. But, many teachers devote their energies to the classroom and can't be bothered with admin details. These ones are forgiven. It's the ones who can't fill out paperwork and get complaints from the students that are truly reviled. It just gets tiring when the same people, month after month, year after year, need the same damned phone calls, ne?

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

It shouldn't be too difficult. They have to write in the date of the class in the part that says "date" -- the page is in French, but that word is identical in both languages.

(They often get days -- and sometimes even months -- wrong. Sometimes they write in classes on one day that happened on two. Sometimes, I swear they're making it up.)

Then they have to fill in the students' attendance. Just the number of hours they were there, rounded to the nearest quarter of an hour.

(This is particularly disturbing if it's completely different from the teacher's -- teacher was there 1.5 hours, and the student was there 2? Was the teacher late? How does the teacher know the student was there? And what about teachers who use decimal, fraction, and minutes on the same sheet? What are we supposed to do with a teacher who writes "140" once for "1 hour, 40 minutes" and another time for "1.40 hours"?)

Then they have to put in their hours. This is the box they get paid for, yet they often forget.

Then they have to sign for it, but they forget that on an even more regular basis. Or they sign on the wrong line.

We long since gave up trying to get them to write in which lesson they're supposed to be teaching. Some of them, in fact, seem frightening ignorant about how the lesson system works -- why can't they remember the lesson numbers they're supposed to have been teaching for the last 5 to 10 weeks?

Lastly, there's a box for us, the ped pool, to fill in. It is not for teachers to notice. They are not supposed to touch it. Under no circumstances are they allowed to touch it.

Guess which box is the only one that's filled in on a regular basis?

I won't even go into the confusion over the abbreviations giving reasons for student absences -- even though they're keyed, in French, below the bottom row.

[teecs.livejournal.com]

I too an curious about how hard attendance can be. While entertaining, I am confused about how someone can teach, but not fill out attendance...

Glad to hear the editing is going well:D

[yumemisama.livejournal.com]

Well, Felis is in the English department, if I recall rightly. You get the reverse too, such as physics professors who can't manage to spell "parabolic" or "parallel" correctly anywhere on a full-page homework sheet. The best one we get down here are the elementary education majors, who frequently can't count OR spell, but can name all of their colors with the aid of flash cards! >_<

(NAU started as a teaching college in 1899, but the Education department has sadly since dteriorated into a catch-all for people who can't pass anything else.)

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Thanks :)

As for the gory details, I just went into them in the comment above :/

[yumemisama.livejournal.com]

...I am really glad I work where I do. I'm with ITS during the year and Residence Life this summer. Both departments are more or less autonomous within the university, because if either one quit mopping up after other departments the world would grind to a halt.

There is an interview process in place at ITS to prevent the hiring of retarded monkeys. Most of us who work in the labs got a three-question interivew -- "Can you work a computer?" "Can you work Office?" "Can you answer a telephone?" Anybody who had to be given more than three questions in order to get three correct answers is sent home, never to be heard from again.

The ResLife process is similar, except they hold the interviews in a dormitory workroom and get the desk clerk (who is usually a Resident Assistant) to unofficially weed out the lobotomy victims beforehand. I am 90% sure I got my summer job because my interview was delayed, and I therefore ended up talking to the desk clerk about biochemistry, memetics, and D&D.

I have seen people too clueless to work a power stapler, but they were generally people who had multiple PhDs, and had called the Helpdesk because their word processor was mysteriously eating text as they typed, and they had somehow failed to notice that the computer that had been in their office for years had an INSERT key.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I like my job.

But yeah -- common sense doesn't get a lot of play in Academia. Everyone should be able to operate basic office supplies and a word processing program before they should be able to get a PhD. Hell, they should have that before they leave elementary school :/

[yumemisama.livejournal.com]

As I discovered my first two years up here, when I was a dual major in math/physics and also required to take the freshman liberal studies classes, most PhDs can spell XOR add. This is why they hire students as clerical aides. While the undergrad students can't generally do either very well, they are very aggressively mediocre at both, which is an improvement.

I have hope for you. You have to be able to at least recognize Arabic numerals if you play D&D. ^^;;