My friend told me about an incident at her part time job. I teach part time at the same college, and so I felt compelled to chime in.

Another part time instructor had scheduled a library instruction session. He got sick and decided to send his class to the library without him, even though he wasn’t going to make it in. I can understand the reasoning behind this thinking…library instruction sessions are supposed to be scheduled two weeks in advance. It could potentially screw up the entire schedule to have to push a session back two weeks.

Apparently, the library in question didn’t see a problem with it, because they went ahead with the session. My friend, as the on-duty librarian, taught the class.

She ended up in a situation with a belligerent student calling her a c**t and walking out. Here’s the comment I gave her:

I think that probably several assumptions were made in this situation…

1. The library assumed that they were dealing with adults, not children.

2. The library assumed that the instructor had done his job up to this point.

3. The library assumed that the instructor had already given his students guidelines for the assignment.

Apparently, those assumptions were wrong. 😛

I admit, when I first heard about this situation (without knowing it was you, and without knowing the details), I wondered what the big deal was. I’ve never done this before, but I’m fairly confident that I *could* have sent a class to the library without me, without incident. I would have explained the assignment to the students beforehand. I would have made sure that the librarian in charge had excruciatingly explicit details about the assignment. I would have made sure that the students knew that any questions about the assignment would have to be saved for ME.

At any rate, no one should have been expecting you to play substitute teacher (or babysitter, as the case may be…).

Clearly, this guy doesn’t have control over his class…and if he’s really missed that many classes, he has no business teaching. That’s ridiculous. He seems to be leaving a lot of people to pick up after him, which is uncalled for. No wonder his students don’t know how to behave themselves…

I’m a little bit shocked about a couple of things…first, that this guy has really missed several classes. We’re not even halfway through the semester. I’ve felt guilty canceling A class on those rare few occasions when I had to.

Second…well, I’m shocked that college students can’t be expected to behave themselves for an hour-long library session without their instructor present.