so i made a student cry today. this is all the more impressive when i tell you that i wasn't even in the same room.
some weeks ago, i learned that my TAs are using my quizzes [1] in their other recitations, that is, those connected to other lectures. to be fair, they asked first.
for my students, the quizzes count towards their grade.
for the other students, they don't;
the TAs use them as worksheets.
apparently my first two quizzes were rather easy, and this third was noticeably harder [2]. one student, not in my lecture, ended up crying because of a quiz that doesn't even count towards her grade.
[sighs]
i should have known this was a bad idea.
every lecturer teaches differently, emphasizes different things. there's no reason to believe that one quiz for one class would work for all classes, especially if the lectures are different.
[sighs again]
lately i feel like i've been doing nothing but teaching. [3]
this morning i thought about research and came up with an idea, but later i lost all time to implement it. as for now, i just feel dead on my feet .. and i've still to write a lecture for tomorrow.
[1] last term, the first midterm exam i wrote resulted in a 55% average and general panic amongst my students. i spent an entire month running interference until the second midterm, which was successful for most of my students.
i blame the pacing of the exam, so this term i'm assigning weekly quizzes, if only to train the students to work under time constraints.
[2] most of the problems i write are similar to problems that i've worked out, in lecture. one particular part on one question on this quiz wasn't quite that way, but then again, it was based on one of their homework problems.
[3] this week is an exception: today and yesterday i covered lectures for a colleague, for a different course than the two i'm already teaching.
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