I've got a 'school' rant.
I got a call from the Burbank Adult School I was planning on attending for my masonry certification to tell me that they had cancelled the next semester due to a low enrollment in the course.
I figured it would happen. I was pleased with the course and not to thrilled with the teacher. He knew his stuff-but my ideas about him and the way he ran the course were justified.
I went to pick up my refund at the school this morning and saw that the project I finished on Dec. 13th was still standing!:confused:
The last day of class it rained so we did a four hour wrap up class, had our final projects graded and that's where my ire started?
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The teach was a pretty good guy but he taught a class during the week, was going for his master's degree, played drums in a band on the weekends, was working on his house and consulted another JR. college on their masonry classes.
He'd get us going on projects then he'd disappear into the offices to do paperwork. While he was gone people would ask me questions because I was the oldest of the pack and most of the rest of the group were kids. I helped two students, who eventually dropped out because they weren't getting their questions answered- that's when I noticed the dynamic in the class.
Most of the kids had taken his class before and were on the second or third levels of the material. They would come and go, show up late, hungover and one kid had some pot in his pocket that was so strong, I suggested to him that it should back into his car!
Another red flag was a class where he took some materials out of the storage area, used the a saw to cut them and loaded them into his truck....To fix his house! :rolleyes:
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I was the only one there who attended EVERY class and busted out every project, yet the people he knew from the previous classes missed most of the term still received their certs for the class!
In order to get a 'rookie' status and to be considered for a union job, you needed to have a certain number of hours in class. He let people slide and gave them credit on their word that they were doing some side work laying brick.
On the last day of class I asked him if he was going to continue teaching the course. He told us that I 'busted' him-He was going to quit and spend time with his sick dad and not have worry about driving the 40 miles to class on Saturday mornings! Fair enough.
One of his previous students knew this and told me that he would follow the teach to the classes he was giving at a JR college because he needed another term to be considered for the union job.
That gave it away.....He was just half-arseing the course and just giving the kids credit for class time they didn't attend.
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So, On the last of class last semester he assured us that we didn't need to take our projects apart because he would do it for us in the following weeks.....
That's why I was really irritated to see my project still standing TWO MONTHS after the class ended! This guy couldn't even keep his word about cleaning up for us!
I'm not disappointed about what I got out of the class.....It's how much more I missed out on because of the teacher and how he taught the class.
There's a real problem about how kids are being taught in the classrooms in the U.S. THis was an adult course, but if we cannot get quality teachers to teach adults, what does that say for the grade and upper school teachers?:(:rolleyes::mad:
Rant over!
