Clarissa's Blog

Opinions, art, debate

teaching

  • AI Effect

    I know nobody cares right now because of the election but I need to share that I let my students use absolutely any AI tools during the midterm and they made the exact same mistakes as students from several years ago when there was no AI. I observed zero AI effect. This year’s grades are… Continue reading

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  • Where I Fail As a Teacher

    I’m a very good teacher but I’m far from perfect. There is a lot of room for improvement in my teaching. One thing that I consistently fail at is mixing students up as often as I should. In a language course, students tend to choose one or two partners they are most comfortable with. Since… Continue reading

  • What’s Up With These Students?

    My Advanced Spanish students are very special. There is a lot of grammar in the course, which always makes me feel apologetic. “I’m sorry for all these grammar activities,” I told them. “I know they must be boring.” “No, no!” the students responded enthusiastically. “We LOVE grammar. Can you bring some more grammar exercises? We… Continue reading

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  • Perfect People and a Sense of Humor

    So yesterday we finished watching the movie Nine Queens in the two sections of my language course. One of the sections enjoyed the film. People laughed, one student clapped, another student made enthusiastic “woo-hoo” noises, everything went great. In the other section, however, as the credits started to roll, I perceived a gathering tension. “What… Continue reading

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  • What’s the Point of Testing?

    For me, everything that happens in the course of teaching should contribute to improving the students’ knowledge, and testing is no exception. If the only thing that a test (an exam, a quiz, etc.) achieves is to provide a number or a letter, it means we have all wasted our time administering and taking the… Continue reading

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  • A Funny Teaching Story

    I know you like them. 🙂 We are practicing irregular verbs in the Preterite (those who have taken Spanish know what a pain in the behind those verbs are) when a student suddenly explodes. Student: I don’t understand how everybody else is just guessing these conjugations! Clarissa: They aren’t guessing, Andrew. They are consulting pages… Continue reading

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  • Why Do They Just Give Up?

    There is a new and disturbing trend that I’m seeing among students. They sometimes give up before even trying. I didn’t see anything like this before but in the last couple of years this started to happen. Last semester, for example, my most brilliant student – really, an extremely bright guy who obviously enjoyed the… Continue reading

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  • St. Valentine’s in the Classroom

    When I walked into my Advanced Spanish classroom yesterday, I saw the words “Happy St. Valentine’s Day, Brianna!” written on the board. The message was written in Spanish and Brianna* later told me that her boyfriend, who doesn’t speak a word of Spanish, had found out how to write the Spanish version of the greeting… Continue reading

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  • How to Motivate Young Academics

    I have a genius proposal as to how to promote enthusiasm for teaching among new faculty members and get them to love their students. The proposal is very simple, it costs nothing to implement, and the results will be spectacular. Freshly minted PhDs who enter colleges as new Assistant Professors should be given only Freshman… Continue reading

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  • What Makes a Good Teacher?

    “I loved Clarissa!”, “Clarissa is an awesome teacher!”, “She does not intimidate students and truly creates a good comfortable learning atmosphere”, “I did not even dread going to class, nor did I even desire to skip – loved Clarissa!”, “She’s obviously brilliant and teaches very effectively. She fosters a very supportive and reassuring environment”, “The… Continue reading