Thread: Do You Find Teaching Electives to Be Different than Required

yes, and the kids expected to do nothing. they learned quick that it was not the case. it was a more relaxed atmosphere than my other classes but we worked just as hard and sometimes harder.

It really gets to me that in an elective class, particularly a "cool" one like Media Studies, that the students act like they do'nt want to be there. It really annoys me. They're the ones who put it down as an option! Duh!

I'm running into this problem too. I teach Creative Writing and we have so few elective options at our school that most of my students are only there because they had no other choice. I have 29 students, from 10th to 12th grade, and I have maybe 5 students who actually care about doing well. They tell me quite frequently that they shouldn't have to do anything and they don't care about it. I make them work quite a bit anyway, and I just don't listen to their complaints. It does get annoying, though, and the fact that the class is quite large makes it pretty difficult to handle.

What makes it even worse is that other teachers always tell me I'm lucky to teach that class, because all I have to do is make them open a notebook and write. As if it's that easy.

I teach Creative Writing, too. It should be an awesome class, but it really depends on the students. I have some that took the class because they love to write (which is good) and some that just needed another English credit. I am busting their butts (they just finished novels), and the ones that are serious about writing love it. The other ones just kind of do the bare minimum, and I really have to work hard to keep them from ruining it for the real writers.

So, yes, I do detect a different attitude about electives. It's not just the students, either. It's me. I approach the class differently.

Oh, definitely. It's a big problem for a few classes I have taught. I taught creative writing, poetry, science fiction and cinema studies. In some of these classes, the students think that they are getting a free pass to goof off.

I have never taught electives but have taken a few along the way and have never looked at them as a "blow off". I realized there was work involved, grades were important to me and I managed to take some courses that I really enjoyed.

Unfortunately a lot of students sign up for certain classes and think that because it's interesting, it's going to be very simple. They think the work is going to be simple. If you assign homework sometimes the students will ask why they have to do anything in the class because it's "supposed to be a fun class."

I would think if they "chose" the elective it would be something that they find interesting, but not a class to just fill time and not do the work assigned. To me it sounds like teaching elective classes might be more difficult than the regular ones.

I have never had the opportunity to teach electives before, but like Brittany I would think the students would be eager to attend and participate in these classes. I guess you will always have a couple of unmotivated students though.