Someone asked me to tell the story of the time I was part of a classroom mutiny. I was a sophomore in college and at the time I was intending to train as a high school English teacher.
I was in a class where the point of the class was to make visits to schools. This required the class to be a solid four hour block of time five days per week. We only visited schools 6 times during the 6 week term. Most of the sections of this class let students out after a two hour lecture, but my professor was determined to fill every single hour. He did it with the most mundane stuff. It is ironic that my first “How to be a teacher” class is the only one where I’ve seen students successfully mutiny against a professor.
It started with an extremely poor decision on the professor’s part. He decided that there would be a grand total of 100 points possible for the entire term. This meant that any time he gave a 5 point quiz, we all argued vehemently about every single point. The professor was very frustrated by this behavior and kept saying “It’s just one point!” But 5 lost points meant no A, and a lost A could mean a lost scholarship, so we fought hard.
Then we spent hours and hours taking personality tests just to fill up the four hour block of time. One personality test can be interesting, but taking 8 different ones was a little excessive and none of us could see how it was training us to be teachers. To make matters worse, we began to lose respect for the man who was supposed to be teaching us how to be teachers.
The students began to band together. We all had to pass this class and the professor had become an obstacle. The level of frustration continued to rise as people lost points over personality tests or other inane things. Groups of students discussed walking out of the class after two hours, but the professor held our points hostage, so no one did. Instead we sat like uncooperative lumps in class and only did the work which had points attached. There were no class discussions because none of us would discuss.
In hindsight I feel sorry for this professor. Things had gone horribly wrong, he had no control over the class and he had to stand up in front of us for 4 hours to lecture to what must have felt like a brick wall. And yet he refused to back down, even though he was overheard complaining about what our class was doing to his blood pressure. He kept us there for the full four hours and would not expand the point range. My sympathy dries up when I think how he refused to negotiate at all.
The stand-off ended a week prior to the end of the term, when a group of students went to the Dean and complained. We don’t know what the Dean said, but the professor surrendered. He increased the number of points possible. He also stopped teaching us. Instead he brought in guest lecturers for the last week of classes. It was the best week we’d had. The lecturers were fascinating and I learned more about teaching and life than I’d learned all term. I didn’t mind staying for 4 hours to hear the guests. I still remember some of those lectures.
To my knowledge that professor never taught that class again. He may have taught other classes, but I never again put myself in one. In fact, I can’t even remember his name.