Comments on: A Tale of Two Collaborative Classrooms: Early Success and Follow-on Failure /resources/a-tale-of-two-collaborative-classrooms-early-success-and-follow-on-failure/ The Voice of Interpreters and Translators Thu, 14 Jan 2021 16:20:59 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Ana Gauz /resources/a-tale-of-two-collaborative-classrooms-early-success-and-follow-on-failure/#comment-635 Tue, 20 Sep 2016 12:53:05 +0000 https://www.ata-chronicle.online/?p=7807#comment-635 First of all, your departure from NYU was a huge loss for the school, as well as the phasing out of the online translation certification program, in which I’m glad I had the chance to participate. Enrolling in that program was the best thing I did when I decided to pursue a career in translation, and you are part of the story since you were there at the time and were, therefore, responsible for the great courses and the incredible group of instructors guiding me and my colleagues. Here’s my public “thank you.”

With that out of the way, I’d like to comment on the experiences you described in your text. I never taught in a classroom myself but have friends who are teachers or instructors, and they go through the same disparaging experiences as you did, having groups of students so different on matters of previous knowledge, initiative/proactivity, and engagement. It also seems that the main culprit in that hapless situation was the school when it decided to open up registration to the general public. Right there, it pushed through the window the best chance it had to put together a cohesive group of students.

I can understand the school’s need to make the course financially justifiable, however, putting together such a classroom won’t benefit anyone in the long term. Students don’t grow as they should, the teacher is left frustrated, and the school risks having its reputation tarnished.

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