I’m a high school math teacher in a wonderful school.
I can’t be late for class. If I do, then 35 adolescents are locked out of a classroom, making noise and disrupting classes. It doesn’t matter how good my excuse is, I cannot be late for class.
I can’t go to the bathroom when I need to…I can’t leave those same 35 kids on their own. How long is your class, an hour? My guess is that you’ve managed to be in a car for more than 90 minutes without pulling over for a bathroom break. Invest in a calendar, and incredibly graphic discomfort another poster wrote about won’t be an issue. (Or if it is, during the course of a 90 minute class, get to a doctor ASAP. No healthy woman I’ve ever met needed to go to a bathroom every 40 minutes.)
Wanna talk workload? In 3 weeks I’m getting 160 geometry projects. That’s on top of daily prep, the normal course of tests and quizzes, and a massive project we as a school are undertaking that involves me basically writing another textbook, due at the end of March. ( I say “another” because I already wrote one for another course last year.)
Oh, and did I mention that I have 3 kids? So when school is over, I have to pick up/ drop off, make dinner, help my 11 year old with her homework, do all the usual “second shift” mom stuff. Oh, and laundry. And food shopping. And making dinner. And planning a birthday party for that same 11 year old, who turns 12 in two weeks. And looking at colleges with her older brother.
Oh, and it’s 1:28 on a Saturday afternoon. I just got home from work. Yep, on a Saturday. We had to be in from 10 - 12:30 for an open house.
My point, of course, is that your professor is trying to give you a teeny, tiny little glimpse into the world of adult life. He absolutely sounds FAIR.
Fair is knowing what the requirements are ahead of time. You do. Fair is giving a reasonable workload. Four page essays in college is reasonable. Fair is treating your students with respect; you say he is “nice and doesn’t yell.” Fair is treating all your students equally; you’ve said nothing to suggest that you’re being unfairly targeted by his classroom policies.
A friend of mine, the dean at our school, has a pretty stock answer when kids whine that a normal workload is unfair: “If you had any inkling of what “fair” was, you would be down on your knees, thanking God that the world isn’t fair.”
