I don't know if anyone is still reading these comments, but I just wanted to report an amazing update. The other day, I had a meeting with The Angry Student. Quite randomly in the middle of the meeting, he APOLOGIZED for his behavior in the class I initially wrote about, and said he had done research on the point I was trying to make, and discovered that indeed, my point had merit. He also agreed with that my point was not a matter of "reading too much into the text" in the style of a "typical academic" (which is what he had claimed) but rather that it was a matter of his own resistance to that specific reading. !!! It was like a dream, where the person who made you angry suddenly recanted and agreed that you were totally right and even had insight into their character. Yes, it's still somewhat problematic that he could only come to this conclusion by getting verification from other critics instead of looking to how I was trying to guide the students in the text (another male-female dynamic in my opinion), BUT I do feel that he has a lot more respect for me now and will stop pulling this shit, at least in a really disrespectful way. He is argumentative by nature, but I think it won't be as bad. And it just goes to show how students are still processing beyond the classroom, and that things just don't always sink in immediately.
This has been one of the weirdest teaching experiences, but it's certainly taught me a lot!
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Posted by Poppy Red to academicsecret at 3/27/2007 04:55:19 PM
