It's not that I would mind feeding my students; it's just that, by the end of the semester, I'm barely managing to feed myself regularly (and have the increasingly-queasy stomach to prove it). I can't imagine adding another thing to my "to do" list, and, besides, I'm not very good at carrying off anything that might, even by the remotest stretch, be construed as bribery. So the several weeks of 10-hour days full of one-on-one conferences will just have to do as proof that I care about my students. Fingers crossed that that's sufficient.
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ReplyDeleteWow, no idea what happened there with my comment. It was supposed to read:
ReplyDeleteThey could have saved you a slice! Given what I see on twitter, I'm pretty sure students view our feeding them treats when evals are being done as a bribe and it makes them somewhat resentful. Our evals are all online, so we no longer administer them, but our college now wants us to give "incentives" of extra credit to get students to do the evaluations. Sigh.
Mine are actually online, too, but we were in a computer classroom (hence the sign), and I was asking them to fill them out while I was conferencing with other groups, in hopes of getting less-than-abysmal return rates (this worked in about 50% of my sections).
DeleteMany of my colleagues had a last-day-of-class pizza party for the class we teach (a 1-credit pass/fail" intro to college life" class). I told my class that I wasn't going to spend $200 feeding them when they all have meal plans at the cafeteria. And there is free pizza on campus at least once a week and free food nearly every day at the various club meetings and other events. So we did something else instead, and they had fun, and no pizza was involved.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a problem with other faculty giving pizza parties but my class did take a vote and they wanted to learn self-defense, so that's what we did (no contact, because of liability, it was more about situational awareness), and then I offered to take them down to the street carts for a cheap lunch, entirely optional, the two best students opted to come with me. We had a tasty lunch and a good conversation and that was that.
No pizza was involved and to my surprise, they actually liked me. I just lucked out and had a really good group of freshmen, no slackers or wiseacres, even the worst students were merely indifferent but they still did their work.
I do not think pizza is necessarily bribery - some professors just like to treat their students and can afford to do so. Whereas I don't think I'd do it even if I could afford it. Maybe donuts, though.
Sounds like a good solution (there's a lot to be said for allowing students to self-select when volunteering to spend additional time with them).
DeleteThis semester I had an amazing class of students. I am sad to see them move on...I almost want to bring treats to the final. They asked so many good questions and they made class fun for me. It was quite odd.
ReplyDeleteLove the last sentence; it shouldn't be odd when we get a class like that, but. . .
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