Exasperation 4

I have had enough! As I can no longer tolerate any more nonsense during my lessons, I sent out the following as a part of a larger email to my groups.

Class Conduct

"COURSE X" requires all students to come in prepared for the lesson. During my rounds in class on Tue 1 Sep as well as during the previous few lessons, I noticed many of you came in to class prepared. At least you have read the articles and tried to come in prepared. Thank you and keep up the good work. However, I also observed that some of you did NOT read before coming to class. You know who you are; you were trying very hard to evade detection (especially when I ask for volunteers for class presentations) and were furiously trying to catch up during the discussions. I am not oblivious to your unbecoming behaviour. There is another telling sign of your unprepared state: Your reading is annotation-free. Surely, there are questions that you might have, clarifications that you might need or notes that you can make to remind you of the idea flow of the passage.

Reading and making sense of the assigned readings is the first and most elementary step in a student's preparations. Coming in prepared is also the minimum respect students show themselves, the minimum basic courtesy they show their friends and the minimum effort students put in to being contributors in the group. Given that you are freshmen, I have already given you a two week grace period for you to get used to university life and get up to speed with the demands of university classes. At this point, you have exhausted all the goodwill that I can possibly offer. I HAVE RUN OUT OF PATIENCE AND TOLERANCE FOR STUDENTS WHO COME TO CLASS UNPREPARED.

From the next lesson onwards, students who have entirely annotation-free article printouts and claim that they have read and understood the assigned article shall immediately take the floor and lead the class in the discussion of the article. At the same time, they must be able to answer all the questions that I have regarding the article. If any student is unprepared or if I deem him/her unprepared, the student will be removed immediately from the lesson and may be considered ABSENT. It is my duty to remind that the university's absenteeism policy will still apply.

We can all be very adult when handling matters related to class conduct; if students cannot behave like adults and be responsible for themselves, I will have no choice but to resort to management methods meant for younger students.