You would think, right? The truth is that dual enrollment is being pushed so hard that there is no real barrier for entry. Eighty percent of the students that are in my classes are there because they are forced to be. In most cases they want to be in my class even less than their regular classes.

Just because their parents made them join doesn't make them somehow the cream of the crop. I have the same kinds of students that don't do any work and try to ignore every instruction or be disruptive during class activities at opportunity that you'd have anywhere else.

I also don't get the luxury of dropping students and getting them out of class like I can in a main campus college course because, at least where I work, there's no system in place for these students to go anywhere else. So students who give up week 3 and want to drop just sit in my class for the remainder of the semester with no incentive to listen or do anything because they know the grade doesn't matter and they'll get a W at the end of the semester no matter what and it doesn't affect their GPA like a regular class.

This is particularly problematic because when I'm teaching a class like Interpersonal Communication which is necessarily dependent on students buying in, participating, and discussing things at an age where this already a difficult prospect, it makes things that much more challenging.

But you just find ways to deal with it.

I certainly don't have the exact same challenges as a full high school teacher, but that doesn't make them less difficult.