I want to say first off that I'll take whatever attacks you've got for me. There's nothing you can say to me that I haven't felt myself.I'm 12 years into a teaching career. I teach at a modest state uni in the upper Midwest. I got tenure 5 years ago and still like my job and discipline. But I've known that over the past couple of years I've sort of cooled to the idea of racing into class and making the students work. My mindset had become: "Fuck 'em if they don't want to work." I flunk people fairly regularly. I set the standards and when they are missed I just gave the Fs.
I didn't look forward to the room any more, I read CM and other academic blogs to commiserate with other complainers, and chalked up this current generation of students as a loss.
My evals went down. I actually saw people write "He doesn't care about teaching." And none of it bugged me. "Fucking flakes," I would say.
This semester I have a student named Fanny. She's my best student. She came in as my best student. I gave her first essay an A. It was great. I wrote "Great" on it. Her second, too. The truth is she's way better than the other students. I continued to tear up those papers, but for Fanny, I had nothing but one or two word replies. I figured she'd be happy. Who wouldn't be happy with As? That's why they come, right?
The truth is Fanny didn't cross my mind very much. I spent my energy on the troublemakers and dullards that make up most of my classes. I gave them their Cs and Ds and Fs, and wrote "Sloppy," or "Perfunctory," or "Random" on their essays. It was just like any other semester.
Then Fanny stopped coming. Then Fanny's drop slip hit my mailbox.
I didn't know what to make of it. There are countless reasons why students drop, of course, but this felt odd.
After class yesterday I asked someone who sat next to her to stay after for a second. I knew they lived in the same sorority and that they were pals.
"Do you know why Franny dropped?" I asked. "She's all right, isn't she?"
The girl sort of grimaced. "Uh, yeah, she's okay."
"Well, did she tell you she was dropping. Do you know why?"
She did not want to say anything; I could tell. But I think she knew I was going to wait until I found out.
"Uh, she said she didn't think you were teaching her anything."
And I let the friend go.
I sat in my office feeling pissed off for a while. I couldn't shake it all day.
The next day I was in another class. I was passing out an assignment. I was showing them the format stuff, how many paragraphs to do. When their rough draft was due, and what peer conference group they'd be in. When it was due.
And I thought to myself, "I'm not teaching ANYONE anything."
I was giving out assignments. Grading them. Passing them back. Students who came in dumb, went out dumb. Students like Fanny who came in good, got good grades, not much help, and then went on their ways.
I couldn't think of a time when my class wasn't like that. I had the hoops for them to jump through. I graded their achievement, and that was it. It was all assignments and grading.
I thought about my undergrad days and of course I had classes like that, too, but I had hated them. I loved the classes where we mixed things up. Where the teacher didn't give a shit about assignments; he or she wanted to make us think and contend and discuss. I had lost that somewhere along the way. I had gotten into a sort of autopilot mode and had never gotten called on it.
Until Fanny.
I'm going to do better. I feel like a real shit, a shitty professor who has probably let a lot of students down over the years. I failed Fanny, and I wish I could get her to come back.
- Tod from Toledo
Tod. Remember that you can always do better next time. It sounds very trite, but it IS true. I read your post and kept thinking to myself "Is this me? Is this me?" I have pared down my comments by a lot this semester. I have loved it.
ReplyDeleteOne suggestion, though you know what you need to do to fix this anyway: I always give the good students lots of comments. They love praise. I love giving it to them. I wrote (from my Kindle...WOW it is hard to proofread on a Kindle) in another thread about my roommate using macros to simplify comments. I have not used them for the "bad" students----the ones with extreme needs. I just don't think they read the comments. (Instead, I have been offering the carrot of a rewrite with a completely new grade, but ONLY if they come see me to get an essay review....it's been FABULOUS!) But, for the great students, while I don't have macros, I do have categories of things I say over and over and over again. I try to make them specific and they are always sincere, thought they feel less so when I realize I said the same thing to another "great" student just a little while ago.
You sound really down about this, and maybe that is a good thing because you will revamp your whole style and change things up and invigorate yourself in the process. But do remember that everyone, no matter their profession, goes through a slump sometimes. You are going to work on picking yourself out of that slump and that is a wonderful thing.
On another note. My experience of lurking and occasionally commenting here has not been that it hurts my attitude with my students. In fact, I have noticed that bitching on here (and reading the wonderful rants of others) has the opposite effect of improving my attitude. I think it is because when I realize it is not just me, that I am not seriously flawed in some way that is causing my students to flake out, I actually am energized to keep trying. This place gives me hope, as weird as that might sound to some readers.
Me too, Bella, me too. Having a place like this - and realising I'm not the only person struggling with a variety of issues I never expected to deal with - definitely helps me take things less personally and go back to the fray re-energised - because damn it there are good students out there who DESERVE someone to push them and fight for them to get a good education...
DeleteThe fault isn't entirely yours. We are punished by students whenever we do things that are outside their expectations. We are only rarely rewarded. Doing original things requires extra work, which goes largely uncompensated and unnoticed by our peers and supervisors.
ReplyDeleteWe can change this, of course - in particular, you can change student expectations by setting the tone in the first days of class or even the first days of their college degree - but it's hard to do.
Tod, you are probably the best judge of your classroom performance, so if you think you can do better you probably can.
ReplyDeleteBUT
It sounds to me like this student wanted more head patting or even a fucking trophy. Students are shit at knowing if they are learning. My advice is to break out the gold star stickers for the really good students. Hell, maybe even scratch-and-sniff.
If she didn't make a nuisance of herself, didn't draw attention to herself all this time (aside from nonchalantly doing 'A' work) but just quietly dropped without even a snotty e-mail to let him know why, there's nothing to back up this notion.
DeleteHe asked her friend why she dropped. The friend didn't volunteer the information. No passive-aggressive game playing is indicated here.
Students know if they're learning. They sometimes blame the wrong party if they're NOT learning, but they know whether they're learning or not.
We cannot teach anyone anything. We can demonstrate and elucidate, but that will not change the failure rate if the student does not participate. I'm sitting here marking papers and I do not give a shit about what students may think of me, the class, or the assignments. The students who had a desire to improve did. Both of them.
ReplyDeleteI fear for this world if it's to be run by SockStuffers. Here's what college was when and where I went:
ReplyDeleteA complete shattering of who you were in high school, a rebuilding into who you would be as an adult.
A chance to meet and be in dialogue with some incredibly smart people: students, faculty, and visiting speakers and researchers.
Having your smug political (or apolitical) views challenged.
Seeing fabulous amateur art, performance, and athletics.
A chance to test your ideas and receive rigorous feedback.
A chance to grow a real soul instead of internalizing the prefab self-help crap that surrounded you.
A chance to see things in larger and larger frames: conceptual, historical, political, etc.
A chance to know people who would become important contributors to the world, before they had done so.
Thanks F&T. You got there before I did and said exactly what I was thinking.
DeleteI remember during my first semester, sitting in one of those big freshmen classes (the horror!) while a bearded guy in a tweed jacket delivered a lecture (the horror!), and I realized "Wow, this guy knows shit I never dreamed of, and high-school was just scratching the surface!" It was a jolt and I loved it.
Wow! Perhaps it's the program he's in. Or maybe even the institution. Whatever the case may be, I truly feel bad for him and his peers' undergrad experience.
DeleteI was so inspired by many of the theorists that I was introduced to during my undergrad - Hebdige, Chomsky, Hall, Williams, Gramsci - just to name a few. I'd say that they were one of the major reasons I even decided to pursue grad school. Heck, I still draw from them in my research now!
So, really, if you don't learn much in college, then what's the point of even going???
I know I'm doing the wrong thing, but StockStalker, just go away, okay? You so ruin this page every time you open your ignorant mouth.
ReplyDeleteThe more you reward the behavior, the more the behavior will persist :)
DeleteTod, snap out of it. Fanny was most likely a snowflake.
ReplyDeleteThink on this:
What student DROPS A CLASS they are doing well in? What student spends money, gets good grades, and then DROPS A CLASS because they "aren't learning anything"? An idiot, that's who. I simply don't believe it. Either her friend is lying or Fanny is. Hell, she may have run out of money to pay someone to write those papers for her, for all you know!
Think on this: Your assignments were more than just busy work, no? You assigned some reading, no? You gave some sort of lecture or activity in every class, no? Then you were teaching. You may not like your LEVEL of teaching, but I doubt you were doing nothing. And besides, it's their job to LEARN. There's always something to LEARN. If Fanny was too fucking stupid to get something good out of your class, that's her fault, not yours. In the olden days, we used to find something we liked in a class and go to THE LIBRARY and read more about it. ALL ON OUR OWN! Heaven forfend.
Now, if this was a wake-up call that helps you get your pedagogical groove back, so be it. But you are so NOT to blame for Fanny dropping your class. Normal students do not just do that! They don't. Most classes are too expensive and going off schedule like that can force them to stay another term... which we all know if far too common thanks to their flakery to begin with!
I agree with The_Myth. What student drops a class they are doing well in? It makes absolutely no sense. Sounds like Fanny likes to be the center of attention and if she isn't she just quits. However, you should have written more than "Great" on her papers (assuming that you didn't). If you just write "Great," how are students going to know exactly what you found great and build upon it? Still, even with this Fanny sounds like a mystery. She could have come to your office hours or talked to you after class and asked what that "Great" meant.
DeleteObviously, I can't speak for Franny (and I won't swear that I wasn't a snowflake), but I most certainly DID drop a few classes I could have done well in, simply because I wasn't enjoying them. That's one of the perks of enrolling in more than fifteen credits of classes per semester; as long as everything over twelve is charged at a flat rate, which I think is true at most schools, you can drop away if you feel like it.
DeleteSounds like Fanny's parents are paying her tuition, and she has a massive ego. If she felt like she wasn't being challenged, why didn't she talk to you? In my experience, students who are doing well are often more likely to make contact with me and ask questions. I do try to give at least one question or suggestion on even the best papers, although I comment less on a good paper than a bad one.
ReplyDeleteI never had a class where I didn't learn anything as a student, because even if the prof was boring, I did the reading. There was this one girl I knew as a student who never talked in class, although she was supposedly really smart and getting good grades. I asked her why, and she said "well, the conversation is so rarely up to my level." What an asshole. Fuck her, and anyone like her.
That was my exact thought: "I never took a class where I learned nothing."
DeleteEven if a professor didn't give much feedback on papers, I still learned while writing them.
And I still credit those professors for teaching me to some degree, even if it was by lecturing on a topic I had not encountered before or just getting me to read a book I would never have picked up otherwise.
Was this an intro-level course, I wonder? I can imagine a student getting bent out of shape about having to take an intro course that she feels is beneath her level of knowledge or whatever.
I took an AP course in high school, did well, and went to said department at my college to ask about taking sophomore-level courses as a freshman. The department said no, so instead of not taking any courses in that subject during my first year, I took the intro courses. Were they easy As? Yeah, but I wasn't a snot about it. The classes expanded upon topics that were glossed over in my AP class, and the rest was a good review.
Anyways, I'm not saying that some professors aren't lazy teachers; Tod admits to phoning it in.
I'm just skeptical of the argument "I'm not learning *anything* in this class."
I'm of two minds here. I agree that we do fail our best students when we don't give them at least as much attention as our worst ones. The comments may be of a very different kind -- more suggestions of the "what would happen if you tried this?" variety than slightly-prettied-up versions of "for the love of God, at least do this" -- but they still deserve some sort of comments, even if they're only of the "think about these things then submit this to the student magazine/undergraduate conference/what have you" or "have you read x? You might enjoy it" variety.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I agree with WhatLadder, and others above, who suggest that Fanny bore some responsibility to ask for more if she wanted more. That's doubly true if she's at a large institution staffed by overworked faculty. I've become quite appreciative of students who are assertive (but not rude or entitled) in seeking out extra attention from me: the extra conference, the follow-up email with a pasted-in thesis or paragraph saying "is this better? I tried to x; am I on the right track?" I may occasionally groan inwardly at the need to pay attention to one more thing, but at least I know that the effort I put into helping them is actually worthwhile.
Or maybe I'm just feeling unusually cheerful because I had an unexpectedly good day: it was the first day of conferences, only a few very good students signed up (the rest preferring to wait until the last minute to produce a draft), and I had time to spend 30-45 minutes apiece commenting on 3 papers whose authors had genuinely done their best to do everything I'd mentioned in class. One was an A-, one was a B-, and one wasn't quite complete enough to receive a preliminary grade yet, all were solid pieces of work, and their authors were glad to receive substantive comments, and clearly intended to make substantive revisions (which may or may not happen, but at the very least they seemed to be learning something from thinking about the possibilities). If most teaching ays went like today (and if someone would increase my salary by c. 30%), I'd be a much happier woman.
Fanny failed herself, man! You didn't tell her to drop the class. She chose to do that. SHE chose not to learn anything; it certainly wasn't the only alternative to her. I dropped classes I was doing well in as a student for a variety of reasons, usually because the courses turned out to not be what I'd expected, but I never blamed the professor for not teaching me anything (that's pure entitlement snowflake logic).
ReplyDeleteThat said, if you're feeling like a prof flake, then at least the experience allows you to rethink what you really want to be doing in class.
We all fail a few, Tod, but I know what you mean. The middle-to-low segment of a class can be so exhausting that you forget to challenge the top. I certainly dropped a few classes in which I thought the profs were phoning it in, so I don't blame Fanny. But I don't blame you either -- you're a good teacher if you recognize your mistakes and try not to repeat them. That's all any of us can do.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteEvery now and then, a science major will show up in my general-ed, Intro-Astronomy-for-Non-Majors class, which usually has over 100 students. I therefore state several times, openly to the entire class at the beginning of the semester, that this is a course specifically designed for people -not- majoring in science. I also tell everyone that I have other, more mathematically rigorous courses on astronomy, which are designed for science majors. I also make it a point to track down any science majors, if I can in this large class, and explicitly remind them of this.
ReplyDeleteI therefore have little sympathy whenever a science major subsequently whines that the course is "too easy" or "boring." What exactly were they expecting? Science for non-scientists is not easy to teach, since I need to be so gentle, and it's important. (If you think it's not important, do you also think that climate change is a hoax?)
On the other hand, I do teach to the top 10-20% of students who are supposed to be there and want to be there, in every class. I was one of those students, so my sympathies are with them. (I hated group work when I was a student, since it would inevitably degenerate into me doing everything and the other clowns in the group taking credit for it. Or we would follow the advice of the clowns, do the work wrong, and my grade would suffer.)
If I do, the other 40-50% of fence sitters also come around, sometimes. The remaining 30-50% of the class don't want to be there and won't improve, no matter what I do. I see no reason to expend my limited time and energy on them, since it will inevitably come at the expense of the students who do want to learn. I don't even take attendance, partly because I'd just as soon not have the losers there, to make trouble. (Partly also, taking attendance in a class of over 100 just takes too much time.)
Remember the end of "Generation X Goes to College," by Peter Sachs? He describes having a tough time with a class full of poor students who clearly don't want to learn. He's then surprised to be told by one of his rare, good students: "Please don't give up. Give the few of us who want to learn a chance."
That, I think, is a wonderful philosophy of teaching. Anyone who calls me an "elitist" might remember that education is supposed to be a meritocracy. They can also kiss my rumpus.
Try to teach the old way- "mixing it up," not caring much about assignments, etc., but having discussions and real engagement. What will happen? Some admin dweeb will call you up sooner and later and say, "Some students are reporting that you aren't giving clear instructions or making your expectations clear."
ReplyDeleteGiving them hoops to jump through and evaluating their jumps is what many students and many in the assessment/admin/retention/marketing community actually want. There is a path that satiates the beast while still doing real teaching and learning, but it is difficult and getting narrower all the time.
This really struck a chord with me.
ReplyDeleteThe courses I tend to teach are all required first-year classes. Most students do not want to be there and put as little effort into the class as they possibly can. A good 30% have very little chance of passing; 60% will do the bare minimum to get through with a C (the grade they need to fulfill the requirement); 8% will put enough effort in to achieve a grade in the B range; 2% know everything the course could teach them before the first class, but they need the course to fulfill the requirement. I often feel terrible for these students as I repeat the same instructions over and over and over again (because, like you, I often seem to be merely giving out instructions and grading papers based on whether or not these instructions have been followed). I often want to say to these students in the 2% "Why don't you challenge the course? You already know everything I'm teaching." But, for the most part, these students make the class for me: they engage in the discussions, they follow instructions, they behave in class as though everyone is as smart as they are, and they act as though they are indeed learning something in my class. They are the reason I still love teaching.
Occasionally, however, one of the 2% will be a contemptuous asshole. They make their attitude clear in their body language and eye-rolling...in their smirks as you repeat for the tenth time some instruction that a "lesser" student hasn't understood. During peer-editing sessions, instead of helping their classmates, they are cruel and condescending about other people's writing efforts. And they may be intelligent, but they lack the imagination to engage; indeed, proving their superiority with every sigh and eye-roll seems more important than engaging in process.
I'm not suggesting that Fanny is one of the contemptuous few; what I'm suggesting is that it was Fanny's responsibility to engage in the process. If your course was not required and she could channel her intellectual energies into a more challenging course at a higher level, then good for her, but to shift the blame to you for "not teaching her anything" is arrogant and immature.