Great expectations

At the beginning of this school term, I asked my students in a course that I was teaching for the first time to write down their expectations for the course. My intention was for them to write down something like "I hope to learn more about so-and-so" or else "I want to learn how to so-and-so so that I can so-and-so" in order for me to get an idea as to how to deliver the course. At least when I was a student, that was how we students interpreted the phrase "expectations for the course."

But I was in for an big shock: nearly all of my seventy-five students wrote down what amounted to expectations on how the course will be handled. Many wrote, "I hope our teacher will be considerate" or worse, "I expect lots of bonus quizzes." There were even some who said, "I hope to get a good grade in this course". As I read all these written on the forms I provided my students, I began to wonder if this was what students nowadays have become. If it was worth teaching this course at all to students who simply chose to take the course as an easy way to get good grades and not to learn. I would have been less surprised if this were a required course but it isn't. It is a course taken by students of various curricula as an elective. Are Filipino students so lazy nowadays that they take a course in order to get a good grade and not to learn?

I'm afraid that bad start spoiled the rest of term for me. And to make things worse, I gave them an exam last Friday and graded the exams over this three-day weekend. Majority didn't get a passing mark. To think that the exam results in my other courses (required courses, that is) have never been that bad.

I tell you I am extremely disappointed. I had so looked forward to handling this one course because I considered it a challenge to teach a course to students with diverse backgrounds. And now I getting bored teaching this course knowing that my students are not interested in learning about what the course has to offer.