Teaching rant

Saw The Bourne Ultimatum on the weekend. Loved it. Have loved all the Bourne movies. Explosions, hand-to-hand combat, great car chases. What's not to love? Decided it was all right to treat myself, coz I'd worked like heck to finish grading two classes' worth of papers. My students never listen to me. Well, that's a little unfair, because some of them do listen to me, but for the most part, it's like - in one ear, out the other. I tell them, "Just follow these criteria, don't be careless with the grammar, and there's nothing to prevent you from getting a full score." And what do they do? Completely disregard every single criterion I have conveniently and painstakingly typed out for them! On top of that, screw English grammar, which they've studied for, oh, I don't know, twelve freakin' years! I've taken to chanting "subject-verb agreement" before I detail any assignment, not that it seems to have made a difference. And can you believe my Engineering students are getting so rowdy I've actually had to employ the countdown method? You know, when you start counting down - "Five...four..." - and once you hit "one", they've gotta shut up or there'll be some dire consequences? Geez, it's like a kindergarten class or something. I know it's not the most scintillating class in the world. There aren't any bells or whistles, but I am seriously trying. No one wants to be a boring teacher. I'm sure every teacher wants to be the cool, hip teacher who totally inspired their students. It's not easy, though. I let my kids listen to Green Day's American Idiot, but we had to spend half an hour going over the political nuances of the song...try doing that with twenty-nine disinterested kids who can't seem to grasp that "can must do" is not a legitimate linguistic construction. However, I forged on and was rewarded when they turned in their reflections and one student (one is better than none!) said he enjoyed the activity. Yay! I feel almost as good as Bourne did when he strangled a guy to death with a towel. Oh, wait, that was a bit gruesome...

Final thought: Oh, great, now Europe's The Final Countdown is stuck in my head!