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Emtpy Classroom
Saturday, April 30, 2005-11:22 PM
A few months ago a clerical mistake left a room full of students without a teacher for three weeks. Today another mistake left a teacher in an otherwise empty room.
At 2:19 PM this afternoon I was the only person in a classroom hoping thirty students would run through the door before class was supposed to begin at 2:20. This didn't happen.
After a few rounds of explanations and re-explanations between administration, teachers, and students, it became clear why my classroom was empty. A different teacher had scheduled an exam that conflicted with my class. That and a few other extenuating circumstances I won't go into now meant nobody thought they had to come to my class.
Next the finger pointing and apologizing began.
Nobody blamed me. That should have been because it wasn't my fault. But it might actually have been because I was a foreigner.
If you want to see who does the apologizing, start at the bottom of the totem pole, in this case the students.
The conversation up to that point had been in Chinese and for the most part I understood.
But under the impression that I was still clueless, or perhaps to teach a lesson, a student was instructed to tell me what went wrong. She began by saying she was sorry.
In fairness the students weren't the only ones to take the fall. The director apologized as well. But if you ask me, this kind of mistake is, to use hardass parlance, "unacceptable" and will continue happening until the university's culture and policies change.
Classes are freely scheduled and rescheduled at the whims of teachers and to compensate for classes that fall on holidays. It's not hard to see why there is so much confusion.
These problems can be avoided. If you want, teach students about responsibility and have them apologize for everything. But that won't fix the problem.
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