The second-worst class ever.

This is a photo of a ball of yarn because I am wishing I could be at home, sitting next to it, knitting.

This semester, I have the second-worst class I have ever had. The worst was several years ago. I had recently become chairperson of the department and we were in the habit of offering one evening class for general education each term. Usually an adjunct taught it, but our regular adjunct had decided to take another job and moved away three weeks before the class was to start. The class was scheduled with an accelerated format that began halfway through the normal term, so all the potential instructors I contacted were unavailable. None of my colleagues could, or wanted to, take this on. There were 24 students registered, so it was fully subscribed, and I felt it would be not nice to cancel such a full class. In the end, I decided it was my duty, as chair, to teach the class.

I had three weeks to plan the class, working on it while teaching my usual schedule as always. I put as much thought into it as I could: planned what I thought would be interesting and novel lab experiences for the students, considered the likely backgrounds of the students (all non-science majors taking the course to fulfill the dreaded lab science requirement), and prepared texts and assignments that I hoped would allow them to appreciate some of what I love about chemistry. It wasn't the best class I had ever designed, but I thought it would be satisfactory and maybe even good. I was hopeful.

Nope. From the first night, the students seemed shocked that I expected them to actually pay attention, do the homework, and show understanding of the topics. Some of them did not come to class with paper to take notes. Some flipped helplessly through the text instead of making eye contact with me. After the two-hours of lecture we took a ten minute break and then reconvened in the lab. Some students would show up for the beginning of lab and then sneak out when my back was turned. Did they really think I wouldn't notice? The rest would do the absolute minimum work as fast as possible and then leave, sometimes less than half an hour after we'd started.

As the weeks progressed, a few students became a little hostile. They would answer questions I posed with a defiant "I don't know" and then just stare at me. I discovered two young men were copying each other's lab reports (so they could take turns skipping the lab time) and I kicked them both out of the class which did not improve morale for the others. Anyway, I was disappointed and frustrated, but I had a full schedule of other courses to teach so I tried to do the best I could with the time I had. Ever since, I have described this class as my worst-ever. And my department has never again offered that course in the accelerated, evening format.

Well, my current class is causing almost as much unhappiness. This is a class I regularly teach every year. It is required for our majors and it occasionally attracts some others. Students take it as juniors or seniors, so they normally have two or three years of background in chemistry and I expect them to use it. The group I have this year is terrible. So terrible that I don't know how they managed to become juniors and seniors in this major. I now wish that I had been documenting all of the ridiculous things that have happened since we started in January. I suspected that I would have some problems with one or two of the students, based on having them in a previous class, but I boggle at the scale of things. Example: in class one day, not one of the students knew how to convert between two SI units. This is taught in the very first week of the very first course in our major, and it is used frequently thereafter in all courses.

The straw that broke the camel's back happened in lab. We were performing an analysis of lead in samples of brass and each student needed to clean and weigh one piece of lead (as a standard). In my announcements at the start of the period, I said as clearly as possible that each person should take one piece of lead, but I noticed that most of the students had actually taken more. All right, I thought, it might be difficult to transfer a single tiny piece of metal from a small bottle into a beaker. We'll just collect all of that extra at the end. It may be indicative of how the first 14 weeks of the semester have gone that I wasn't even very upset that they had disregarded my direct, specific instructions. Next, each student weighed their single pieces of metal and took them into another lab for the analysis. I went with them to help set things up and describe what was going on. As each student finished, he or she went back into the first lab and thus I was the last person to return. Upon entering the original lab, I said to the group, "Who has leftover lead for disposal?" The student closest to me looked up and answered, "Oh, we threw it in the trash."

I definitely lost my cool. Did you not just write a risk assessment while preparing for this lab experiment in which you all wrote that lead is toxic and harmful to the environment and should always be collected for proper disposal?!? Yes, they did. Why then did you think it was all right to throw the lead into the trash? Because G. [one of the students] said it was OK.  What?!?!?!?!?

At this point, I mentally flashed to a recurring conversation I've had with a colleague from another department. We sort-of-but-not-really joke that there are certain things that should be grounds for automatic failure in some courses. I am standing in my lab, listening a student say something incredibly stupid, and I'm actually thinking: you all just failed this class - get out of here right now. But of course I didn't say that out loud. I was the most speechless I have ever been. I'm a little surprised I didn't faint dead away.

Since that lab, I'm just counting the days until the end of the semester. There is nothing that can salvage this one.