Howdy all. Leslie asked for a "Howdy" and here it is.I'm at an SLAC in the new South and pretty happy with my colleagues and students. But I have my days of misery and I've been reading CM for a month or so.
I think the main problem in our profession is the erosion of standards. Even though I've only been teaching 10 years, I feel a great deal of pressure to pass students who don't deserve it, and to give A's to students who are mediocre.
Now, I can't point to a moment where my job would have been in jeopardy or something, but the subtle pressure from administrators, chairpeople, and colleagues feels real to me.
I'd like to stand up to the pressure, give grades as they are earned, but the idea of being the unpopular prof just makes me uneasy. Occasionally my own student evaluations are awfully harsh, claims that are flat out lies, but more than that a perception that I'm the only one who's ruining the college experience for my otherwise happy students.
Am I guilty of trying to be popular? Maybe so. Do I need a strong backbone? Probably.
When I figured my final grades for the past semester, I learned that my four classes came out to these GPAs: 3.1, 3.5, and 3.1. That's more than a B, and an A- in one class. That doesn't jibe with how I view my own students - who feel like mostly C students - but the numbers don't lie. Looking at the list now I see too many B students who are clearly C students, and a handful of B students who got A's. That's wrong, I know, but a couple of the A students have simply badgered me into giving better grades than they deserve.
And before I get slammed for that, I want to make sure you ask yourself if you've ever done the same thing. I'm betting I'm not alone.
I always get a bit of courage over a break, and I know that I want to change my approach for the spring semester. So, if you've gone through a similar transformation, share the steps.
So that's my howdy. I'm ready to be miserable!
Is this the 5th member of the Miami of Ohio faculty who run this whole page? Shameless.
ReplyDeleteYer gettin' on my noives, anonymouse2....
ReplyDeleteI didn't know Miami of Ohio was an SLAC in the New South. You learn something new every day.
ReplyDelete@Terry: do you have tenure? You said you've been teaching for ten years, but not whether or not you have tenure.
If you have tenure, I would give different advice than if you don't.
Strelnikov has made his first joke. Pot, kettle, and so on.
ReplyDeleteGetting on nerves? Now you know what it's like. Give us some Russian history, Strelly, and make sure we know that you've got firerams training, and that you'd not be afraid to use it in defense of whatever insane worldview you have.
I do my best, my level best, to ignore you, but you've ruined SO many of these posts with your posturing. I hate that this comment thread has taken away what I SHOULD be writing...
Welcome, Terry.
Can we not feed the troll and avoid attacking the legitimate commentors even if we don't like them much?
ReplyDeleteThis is a shared blog, everyone. I know I've scuffled here before, but I like the place too much to let it go down whimpering. Can't the moderators delete some of the shite!
ReplyDeleteWelcome, Terry! Since you've been visiting for a wee bit, you have already been sharing in the misery. Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteSeriously, have a good break.
New England Natalie, thank you for your post. Frankly, I'm grateful for Strelnikov's unique, edgy voice/persona. There is a difference between trolling and providing opinions that differ from those of the mainstream. Strelnikov's posts are often invitations to engage in real dialogue.
And since Kimmie has brought it up, I don't feel as though the site is sinking. Did I miss that memo? I come here to share the misery. I read other posts and feel better about my lot in life, part of a greater community. I throw out rants, smackdowns, genuinely bad poetry (often in haiku form), and feel better about my lot in life, part of a greater community.
Seems to work.
I do not have tenure. I can see how that would matter.
ReplyDelete@Terry--
ReplyDeleteWell, of course tenure matters. It matters because if you're not tenured, it's a much more delicate thing to piss off colleagues and students. I don't worry about high teaching evals, and if any colleague tried to tell me to grade easier, I'd tell them (politely) to fuck off.
In part because I have tenure, I fail exactly how many students need to fail, and I never let policies slide, or make exceptions to my syllabus. In my intro to comp course (that great academic sieve), exactly six students passed with a "C" or better (which is necessary for them not to have to take the course again), out of the original 19 that showed up for the first two weeks of class. In a 200-level sophomore course, about 2/3 of them made it through with a D or better.
The "subtle pressure" you feel is due at least in part to the fact that your colleagues and administrators CAN pressure you. If you don't have tenure and aren't even in a tenure line, that's the highest-pressure situation of all.
If you are letting B students badger you into As, because you are worried about your popularity, in part because you are untenured, or not even in a tenure line, this is very understandable and natural.
If you want advice on how to not do that, the simplest advice is to have an ironclad syllabus and not to deviate from it one iota. All attempts at "badgering" are met with a variation on "well, excel figures everything out, and unless there's some mathematical mistake, what will show up as your grade is what excel shows you have earned for the semester." Lots of sympathy, no budging. Math is math.
The idea that you feel badgered and then respond to the badgering by doing what the student wants is a sign that there's an imbalance there, but it's understandable if you are worried about evaluations, and students complaining about you to your chair.
I do not worry about these things. I never feel badgered. I have tenure.
@Bernice
ReplyDeleteYou go girl! This post is not your regular, sweet self. I have to disagree, though. I'm with Greta on this one. Strelnikov has a strong, opinionated voice. I may not agree with him sometimes, but his is a unique, different voice. Just like yours. Maybe you are feeling less tolerant at the end of the semester with Snowflakes in your lashes?!
Anyway, welcome Terry. It is possible to be a tough teacher and still be liked. The negative, false reviews will never cease completely no matter what you do. Teach what you know to be important about your subject. Balance integrity and getting along as best you can. The fact that you are questioning your class results indicates that you already have integrity. Play nice when you have to, but don't cave to the popularity pressure.
Great advice on the Syllabus from Stella!
ReplyDelete@Terry:
ReplyDeleteI have tenure now, and I use it more all the time, to fight eroding standards. Even with tenure, it's tough: I've been yelled at by my department chair for telling a student "do your own homework," and for telling another student I'd be unavailable to discuss his grade until my next office hours.
I've been where you are, and it's tough. Without strong support from your higher-ups, maintaining standards as a contingent faculty member is very much a balancing act, over a lake of fire, with piranhas in it. (Asbestos piranhas, all right?)
As an Accursed Visiting Assistant Professor, I never did stoop as low as Peter Sachs describes in Generation X Goes to College, but I sure did get yelled at a lot. I also developed many ways of avoiding confrontations, and outright being sneaky: for example, never use Blackboard or post a grade breakdown online, because they're on a computer which they promptly use to e-mail complaints to the chair. Never argue with a student face-to-face about a grade: put it off as much as you can, and take advantage of their short attention spans.
This can lead to one’s classes becoming bland, inoffensive, unchallenging, and therefore quite useless: it’s such a shame, but that’s what they want. By the time they realize that’s not what they really want, they will have graduated and it’ll be too late.
Fortunately, I got tenure, and my courses now have far more educational value than they used to, or at least I like to think so. Without tenure, by now I’d be seriously considering some other line of work. Like what, you might ask, seeing as I'm an astronomer? Well gee, how about...UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION? It seems there are always lucrative jobs opening up there, although I might have a tough time keeping a straight face. (This is why I never considered astrology, either.)
Thanks so much for the great comments and suggestions!
ReplyDelete@Terry--
ReplyDeleteWelcome! I hope you're on your way to earning tenure, rather than being a longtime contingent at a SLAC (where I thought such positions were less common). Either way, I'm glad you're here, and raising some important questions.
I'm a relatively longtime (10 years) full-time non-TT faculty member at an R2 that really wants to be an R1, and I, too, find myself going through periods when I'm pretty disgusted with my own grade inflation, which stems from all the reasons mentioned above (and tends to result in relatively few As, but also relatively few grades below a B-). For reasons I can't quite explain, I seem to have broken out of that pattern this semester, giving both more (well-deserved) As and A-s and more Cs and Ds. I'm not quite sure what happened, though I'm pretty sure that the change can be attributed in part to public discussions of the first stages of a big, much-ballyhooed university initiative that made me stop and think (and eventually say), "wait a minute! I'm already doing, on a regular basis in general education classes, what they're/you're setting up a big project to see if they/you might possibly have a few students do at the end of their academic careers in small, specialized classes taught by faculty with half my load. That must mean that, whatever my student evaluation scores -- which are all over the map -- say, I'm doing a pretty good job." As part of this response, I found myself clarifying, for myself and for my students, what I have long expected them to do, and really holding them to doing it (in part to prove that it can, in fact, be done, at the gen ed level, with the tools we have available now, and without half a dozen studies, committees, pilot projects, and assorted other forms of navel-gazing -- some of which are, to be fair, mandated by Powers Outside The University).
So I guess I'd second the suggestions above about clarifying standards and sticking to them.
Mind you, I'm not yet sure what effect my new attitude has had on my evaluation scores, my relationships with colleagues, and/or my chances for getting my contract renewed. I fear there might be some backlash. For the moment, however, I know that I feel better, which will make for a more restful vacation once I get these more-varied and satisfying but still *?%#! grades in.
Now there's an argument for tenure that parents might listen to. Maybe.
ReplyDeleteWelcome, Terry!
Strel, I feel strangely protective of you. I must be getting sentimental in my old age.
And anonymous2 is clearly Tim (Not Jim) who has some weird obsession with Miami U. of Ohio. Soooo tiresome.
Welcome, Terry!
ReplyDeleteLast summer I was working on a review of all of my classes, evaluations, and grades in an effort to make changes to my courses. Like you, I found a few courses that had average grades that were too high (evaluation scores did not appear to be related to grades, BTW).
What I discovered in this process was that it was *my* fault that grades in some classes were artificially high. In an effort to get students to *learn* I made too many easy or unearned points available and, as a result, people who failed tests could still pass the class. I was upset with myself when I saw these results and dramatically changed my point allocation for the past semester.
In the one class that I teach every fall, the changes in the course definitely resulted in changes to the overall grades. Surprisingly, no one failed, but I had more Ds than ever before. On the flip side, there were a couple of As which were extremely uncommon even with the artificially inflated grades.
I am pleased with these results, really. Some students were challenged to try harder and earned better grades; others didn't rise to the challenge and got the grade they deserved.
I'd like to add that I've always had a strict syllabus and have never given in to whining and grade grubbing -- even though I'm not on a tenure track. As it clearly states on my syllabus, students get the grade they earn. I don't even round up to the nearest whole point! I know not everyone in my contract employment position feels comfortable laying down the law and sticking to it, but it's the only was that works for me.
I hope you are able to find what works for you! And ignore the petty stuff going on on this blog right now. It comes and goes, but the overall quality of the community remains.
I have no idea if this makes sense for anyone other than me.
ReplyDeleteAs an adjuncty adjunct I wrote a letter to my chair about how the semester went. I identified the strengths and weaknesses of the class and talked about what I wanted to do differently next semester.
This way, my voice gets in there, too, under the wave of student crap-ola.
This may work better for me as I am new to this particular Adjuncty Adjunct job and so it will be read as part of an unfortunately eager personality rather than a sudden turn-around. But, for what it's worth, I did it.
I should not write this but I am sorry that Bernice feels that I am the locus of all Evil on the Internet and a plague on this website. People need help, psychological and emotional help, and I'm not trained as a counselor or a shrink, but I'm beginning to think she might need that help. This is why I avoid her; I don't want to set her off, then read somewhere that College X suffered a spate of chainsaw murders where the sentence FUCK THE RUSSIAN IN HELL was written on the walls in the victims' blood.
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas Terry Porter.
I'm really appreciative of all the comments.
ReplyDeleteI feel like people see our dynamic with Strelnikov and probably don't know how to deal with it.
ReplyDeleteStrel can piss me off for such minor reasons. And then he can come back with a strong rebuttal.
It's aggravating. It keeps me honest. I hate him one day and appreciate him the next.
I like to think of it as "nuance." And it rather disproves TimNotJim/Anonymouse2's pretend point that we all want to agree with each other and then smoke a bong in our Miami of Ohio dorm.
More relative to this post, though: I think this is a GREAT reason for tenure. My mom is an anti-tenure prof herself (with tenure). We argue over this and I hadn't thought about the grade-grubbing aspect. Til now.
I consider myself the house kibitzer....I shouldn't have done the whole chainsaw/blood-n'-guts screaming horror/Manson Family Wonderland thing then sign off with "Merry Christmas Terry Porter" like the end title of some grindhouse schlock film....Jebus, how creepy is that?
ReplyDeleteSo, seriously, I'm glad that Mr. Porter is here and that he posts more.
Merry Christmas.
@Blackdog
ReplyDeleteI've been teaching over 20 years and I still talk to or e-mail my supervisors/Dept heads with self-evals and semester summaries. It keeps communications lines open and sometimes eases the way for frank discussion of problem areas.
For example, I had the most D's ever in two math classes. Since I've been teaching these classes for several years with good success and pretty normal grade distribution, this is an anomaly that could have repercussions to me such as complaints or bad evals. By telling my supervisors upfront instead of waiting, I put those potentially bad evals and complaints in context.
Most supervisors are interested in input of this kind to a point. I try to make sure I'm not being too defensive or whiny. I share good stuff too! We adjuncts have to look out for ourselves any way we can.
@Strelnikov
I enjoy Bernice's posts often. Obviously you two don't like each other. Agree to disagree without personal attacks? Both of you?
Count me in as another reader who enjoys both Bernice and Strelnikov, but not the tension between the two. To risk a cliche, variety is the spice of life (and avoiding the spices one doesn't personally enjoy generally works pretty well).
ReplyDelete@ Prof and Circumstance
ReplyDeleteI don't want to sound like a sniveling child, but I didn't begin this....I have no feelings for or against Bernice, all I know is that she dislikes my online presence and she has made that known on more than one occasion. This is why I do not engage her comments. I was being serious about possible psychological or emotional issues on her part, not the Texas Chainsaw bit. I don't want her to leave, but I don't know what to do with her so I leave her alone....if anything, the posters who get my Irish up are the trolls (especially the clowns who have been appearing for the last couple of days, they remind me of the infamous 1990s pirate jammer "LAD - the voice of the night"; all shit-talk, all the time.)
I will continue to leave her alone if she avoids bad-mouthing me, but I have no faith that any agreement can be held to on her end because she attacks me appropos to nothing.
I'm joining the conversation rather late, so just buttressing what others have said - having tenure does change one's approach. Pre-tenure, I spent wayyy more time making very detailed notes about my grading approach etc. so that if the chair ever contacted me I had a document ready with my grading rationale. It consumed my time, but I never had to renege on a grade because I made my case in such detail the admin-type that was bugging me would clearly have looked like a total ass asking me to consider a grade bump, and this type of thing was important to me at the time. Now, with tenure, I just say "Nope" and that's that, as I work somewhere where one needs to commit a crime or something before tenure will be revoked.
ReplyDeleteNow I am wondering if Strel and Yaro are both at Miami, in some kind of Jekyll/Hyde relationship. If Anastasia is just Stella, hangin' out in Oxford, channeling a younger self. If Bipolar Beth disappeared only to reemerge as Richard Tingle, Ph.D., and the one/two of them are on the synchronized skating team at ol' J. Crew U. If I--myself--am--Tim (Not Jim).
ReplyDeleteAAAAAAAAggghhh, stop messing with my brain, internets!
The Internet can pull that Pazuzu the Demon thing where it has you convinced of one thing and then it becomes little Linda Blair screaming YOUR MOTHER SUCKS COCKS IN HELL....be certain of one thing: I may be a fake Russian, but I am not that second coming of Christ we call Yaro Foodie.
ReplyDelete@Marcia--
ReplyDeleteI always did like the name Anastasia.
Oh crap, I meant to post the above comment from my Stella account...
ReplyDelete@Anastasia...
ReplyDeleteDid no one notice how funny your 5:31 comment was? I did...thanks for the chuckle.
Archie, er, I mean, Darla, or, should I say, Yaro...
Coming very late to the conversation let me toss my two cents in:
ReplyDeleteI'm an adjunct math professor, my brother in law is a TT math prof at a community college in NJ.
Two days ago we had a conversation re this topic-it was his first semester at the school and it did not go as well as planned. In fact, two students withdrew and went to the registrar asking for refunds-his dept. chair said it was the first time this ever happened. He also laid down the law: the college wants to raise retention rates so no more than 1/3 of the class can receive either a D, F, or W, otherwise, the instructor is deemed as to not performing his or her job properly.
If having a conversation like this does not contribute to grade inflation then nothing does.