Ask Lemmy

I teach industrial electronics at a community college. We get a wide spectrum of students, many are average students, some upper 10% absorb information like a sponge and i barely have to teach them anything, then there's the lower 10% who are so clueless and confused that you don't understand how they arrived to class on their own (assuming they didn't literally have help from somebody). They can barely count, they don't know what fractions are, they can't keep papers and handouts organized, they have horrible spatial reasoning, etc. The sad part is they know how bad they are... even if you're a dummy, you're but clueless about it, especially when you see the other 15 people in a class who ate learning and progressing to the next thing yet you cannot grasp the items being presented. These people are still on problem number 2 after 15 minutes when others are already done with the whole first page. Anyway what always happens is I'll drag them through the classwork but they do horrible on quizzes and exams, muddle through with a C average (which really means you don't understand the content), then they usually wash out during the 3rd or 4th semester. It's very predictable during their very first classes but hey it's not my job to profile people even if it's a guarantee 🤷‍♂️