Professors Deserve Respect

This morning I went to Kraft with Holly to work out. Kraft is a work-out facility for students at the University. At the beginning of October I purchased a one month membership since I basically had no more motivation to run outside because of the cold and increasing period of darkness, not to mention the crazy hills J. Thus far I have enjoyed working out at Kraft.

The Kraft work-out facility on campus

 

After working out I had my history class. The class starts at 12:15 pm, however, today the professor was late. An informal rule in college is if the professor doesn’t show up within 15 minutes of when class should have started, students can leave. By the time our professor had shown up most of the students had left since it was 12:45 pm.

The professor we had today was Henry Minde and this was his first and only lecture with us. In my history course, we have different professors almost every class period to teach the day’s topic upon which they are experts in. Today’s topic was ethnic minorities and the Norwegianization policy. Minde has written many articles on this topic and we have read a few of them in my culture class.

When Minde arrived he was very flustered since the History department had given him the wrong room and he had trouble unlocking the room. In Norway all the classrooms are locked and you have to enter a code to gain access. After we were inside the room, the professor then had troubles with the computer and projector. While waiting we sat quietly chatting since there was nothing we could do. He was having a rough start in teaching today.

Once everything was running and the power point was up we began lecture. Minde seemed really nervous and he read from his power point slides that were almost entirely writing. I will have to admit his lecture was quite boring, but I wanted to be respectful so I gave him my attention the whole class period. A couple of students, however, did not pay attention in class today and were very disrespectful. There were only 8 students today and so the actions of the two students did not go unnoticed. During lecture, the two students interrupted the professor a couple of times to sternly correct his pronunciation of words. They also laughed at him when he had trouble working the old light projector. I did not approve of their actions in class today.

Throughout class I kept thinking about how the professor felt. Here is a professor who was already frazzled from being late to class that had to teach a class in not his primary language and was now being disrespected by students. I give this professor as well as others respect for coming into a class where they don’t know the students and teaching a course in English. Although most Norwegians have a good understanding of English, it’s still a challenge for many to teach in only English. Our professor had a more difficult time teaching in English than most professors I’ve had. If I were in his position I would of course be nervous and it would be difficult to teach in another language. Even though the two students were from different countries where English was not their primary language, they had no right to be as disrespectful as they were.

Even though lecture did not go the greatest, I did learn that Henry Minde has Saami heritage. Now whether he considers himself Saami or not is his choice, but he did mention in lecture that his parents did not teach him Saami due to the negative image associated with the Saami culture during the Norwegianization period. After hearing and reading about the Norwegianization policy and its effects in my culture class, it was neat to hear firsthand about some of the experiences. It brings new meaning to the information I have learned and will learn.