Surprised by students

Lately I've been surprising my students in ways that surprise me, creating a feedback loop of surprises on top of surprises.  Not a bad situation as the semester moves toward its muddled middle.

Students are surprised that I don't care about staples, and I'm surprised at the depth of their surprise. Apparently they've all encountered the stapler Nazis out there. Sure, staples are nice, but an unstapled paper is not the hill I want to die on. I noticed that more than half of today's homework assignments are stapled, thanks to one generous student who always carries a stapler and will happily share. 

Students in another class were shocked when I told them I don't care where they sit. We were required to use seating charts for the past two years and to limit student movement in the classroom because of the fear of Covid transmission, but this morning they expressed surprise when I allowed some folks to switch seats. I mean, we're not in third grade anymore! Let's move around!

And a student in another class was so surprised that she called me the best teacher ever, an exaggeration for sure but I'll accept applause whether I've earned it or not. All I did was provide full MLA-style citations for required readings in the coursepack. I mean, if I want students to refer to these readings in their writing, they need to know how to cite them, right? Not that big a deal.

Today I plan to surprise a set of students by cancelling Wednesday's class. Giving them a day off probably makes me the worst professor ever pedagogically speaking, but they're turning in a major assignment on that date and I'm not sure they'll be alert enough to attend to any new material I try to introduce. I'm not even going to call it a "research day" and tell them to work where they like. They've worked hard--they've earned a day off.

So, of course, have I. After spending the entire weekend grading papers, I ought to get right down to work tackling the next set, but instead I just might reward myself with an hour of absolute idleness. And that will be the biggest surprise of all.