School, 7 weeks in

It's been an unusually rough semester so far. I've got three sections of English 100, and, because of the virus, decided to divide each into three cohorts, so the students only come in one day per week and do the rest of their education online. Several things went wrong with that idea.

Each cohort was supposed to be five or six students, but it's been much more common for a group to be two or three. I didn't account for the football players who assume they don't have to do any work in the class, so in a normal semester the 9 a.m. group with 15 registered students would have been running with six or seven—pretty typical football player behavior. Instead, dividing the group so small, I got the tiny attendance. (And, to be fair, the concept of only coming to class one day per week totally confused two or three of them.)

Another sign of the grimness was that several students waited until week seven to even figure out textbooks, etc. Some of them still don't know how to submit papers. Out of 44 active students, something like a third are failing and five have submitted no work whatsoever. It's discouraging to a teacher. 

But there are signs of life. Half a dozen (including, unfortunately a couple who are failing because they don't submit work) are actually pretty good writers and interesting people, and the readings seem to be opening a few eyes. Maybe the semester isn't a total loss.