My plan to observe an English 1000 class this morning fell through, so it will be my next/final observation. For now, I'm going to write about my Q2 course--Qualitative Analysis, Part 2. The members of this class are a fascinating mix of age, race, nationality and subject specialties. One student requires a dog and 2 interpreters -- and is a very active participant in the class. Two of my friends from the 2001 Missouri Writing Project are in there with me, and we've noticed and discussed the different levels of understanding that our classmates bring to the class. Four weeks ago, we spent much of the entire class period discussing the syllabus in minute detail. Several students were very vocal about the many ways that completing the final project would be impossible in their field of study. Two people are gathering data in other countries, so I can see how they may need special accomodations and altered expectations, but many of the concerns seemed to be blown out of proportion for the task at hand. Our professor was patient, articulate and diplomatic throughout this proceedure, and offered to meet with anyone still confused outside of our regularly scheduled class time, but the questions continued, eroding what was left of our class time. I began to worry that I had somehow misunderstood the gravity and scope of task at hand, but a brief check for clarification revealed that my understanding of the project was clear, and on target. If that was the case, then why were my classmates behaving as if they had little ability to read and understand the goals/objectives/project directions/expected outcomes stated on the syllabus? How had they made it this far, academically? Given their level of confusion, how did they operate a moving vehicle or roam out in the world without a keeper? Had one of Hulu's alien representatives gobbled up most of their brain? Were they only capable of processing auditory information in 60 second chunks?

My hypothesis is that a small percentage of the students were truly puzzled--and since some of them were operating in L2, their confusion was understandable. However, I think others continued to ask questions to delay a discussion of our reading assignment. If I wanted to be mindful about this, I'd say that I noticed that my classmates had so many questions about course requirements that our class time was consumed in the Q & A process. If a deeper analysis was required, I'd note that our different cultures and subject expertise impacted understanding in a negative way. When I talked with my friends after class, we concluded that some of our classmates understood the assignment, some needed clarification, and the rest were just wasting our class time because they felt like being disagreeable.