During the first week of classes, I immediately noticed two students who managed to throw slight hiccups into the otherwise successful beginning we had as an English 101 group. When I proposed free writes or any sort of in-class discussion, they would roll their eyes and turn to the student next to them to try an illicit some sort of mirrored disgust. As class progressed, they became more forward with their disinterest in the class. If they didn’t complete their homework, they would try to make it into a joke and convince the students surrounding them to laugh along. When I have students present in front of one another, these two students think it’s amusing that their work is so terrible and attempt to undermine the validity of the project by acting like it’s unimportant to perform well on homework in this course.

For the remainder of the class, I paired these two students up to work with one another as poster partners, and so on. At first I thought it might be best to have them work with my more high-achieving students in class, but those students came back to me with so many complaints that I thought it best to just put the two together. I’ve tried to engage them; I call them out in class in a “light-hearted” way and then address my issues with them later in an email so as not to embarrass them, and when I had conferences I really tried to find out what they were interested in or what they found exciting about the class, but not only did I really not get anything out of the discussion, they make me feel uncomfortable with the lack of respect they show me.

Not only did I put these two students to save others from poor work partners, I put them together to try and contain the really negative attitudes that they perpetrate during class time. I once overheard these two students commenting telling my two most enthusiastic students that they found it really “weird” and “kinda lame” that these two students went above and beyond with their audio literacy collage. I have tried to flip these students’ opinions around and engage them in class, but if I can’t seem to do that, I’m going to minimize the negative impact they have on their peers during such a crucial time of self-development and growth that a first year experiences at this point in the quarter. These students are still learning how to be students, and I don’t want anyone telling them that putting forth work into projects and classes that they care about isn’t cool. The toxicity that these two students are putting forth emulates from not only their own dissatisfaction with elements of the course, but also their desire to try and turn other students against the curriculum and against the overall intent of the class.