Scattered musings: two teaching-related thoughts

1.  I'll just put this out there: I'm uncomfortable with mocking students for crying in offices (not least because I have also cried in offices).  Sure, tears may be manipulative sometimes, and they're certainly no fun for the instructor (who could do without the Alice in Wonderland moment), but it feels as though we're blaming the crying student for not having a sense of proportion about the relative values of grades and life.  And yet, most of them are far too inexperienced to have that sense of proportion, especially if they've spent their entire lives in school.

2.  I attended a presentation on "flipped" classrooms this afternoon, and was wondering if there are any humanities types out there who have tried this approach.  It seemed to me that a blended flipped classroom might work quite well in skills classes--for example, model a close reading for the students online, and then have them experiment with in-class exercises.  Or discuss the revision process online and then have students work on revising papers in the computer lab.  But the instructor who presented was quite upfront about how negatively the students responded to a fully flipped course (including regular complaints to the department chair and furious course evaluations--it would probably be too dangerous for an adjunct or untenured faculty member to experiment this way). In particular, the students apparently felt that the instructor wasn't doing enough, even though the actual process of constructing the course was more work than the usual approach...