Engage or Don't.
With the Web, ya just never kno. I've been posted on Rate Your Students. The post shares the subject line of this one. My thanks to S for forwarding the blog to me. It's about managing students, teaching, and why I have not yet gone postal. The post was harmlessly, but interestingly edited, so here's my original:
>I apologize for the length here. Turns out I have lots of responses to this
>blog and its assumptions, the RMP site and its assumptions. Some of the
>following is reaction, some of it turned into advice. No condescension is
>meant by that. I just started thinking about what I do that nips most "student
>problems" and "problem students" in the bud. Most, certainly not all.
>
>So, I went and read Rate My Professors. I read three or four threads. (I'm
>rated there. I have a smiley face for an overall rating, and it seems the 8
>who have rated me "like" me and think my class is about as demanding as I
>make it.) There are professors answering the students in the threads I saw, and
>most of the discussion that I read was thoughtful and dominated by
>students who are really thinking about and engaged with their education. I would
>suggest the thread about this site as an example: It's called Rate My Students,
>and here's the link.> .
>
>I'm a Humanities prof at an art school in the South, and a friend sent me
>the link to this blog with a question: "Catharsis?" Maybe. We have an ideal
>or value in common as professors, and that is that an education is a valuable
>thing, a good in itself. We are also generous: we want to share what we
>know. We are idealists of one stripe or another. The world from which our students
>come, and to which they will return, and in which they work while in
>college, does not hold those values. Also, I try to remember that 18 year olds are
>not now the people they will become, and the that person I'm teaching may not
>emerge for a while. Sure, I have students who drive me mad, and their
>general poverty of talent for "being students" is frustrating. That's their
>education. I tell them about this. They perk up. I was not always a perfect doll as
>an undergrad myself -- and now, I'm on the other side of the desk. Asked
>about me at 18, most of my profs would likely have just crossed their fingers,
>rolled their eyes, or held silent. I was not a treat. I earned the grade. But I
>was not a treat.
>
>Sure we are sometimes appalled. Sure some of our students do come to class
>in altered states (since there have been universities, or symposia for that
>matter, students have come to class altered). Sure we wish some of them
>would put some clothes on. Sure, they sometimes threaten to kill us (four profs
>in my experience, all women, have been so threatened). Sure, the sense of
>entitlement is obnoxious and the result of their upbringing and previous
>education. Yes. Absolutely. This, in the modern age, is the job. As one of my former
>profs said when I asked why he never shared certain students' position
>papers, "I don't need them." After I blinked in astonishment, he said something
>like,"You, on the other hand, are actually trying to get Lacan. Your
>position papers get shared because you're trying. That is, you're sometimes wrong in
>a really interesting way, and it bothers you. Them? They're wrong and don't
>care." That was the day I learned that I could and should really expect adult
>level, heavy duty creative and critical thinking from my students. He "needed" us
>too, on some level, so he let the "problem children" go. And, well, taking
>that position saves me some emotional energy that is better spent on people
>who love me. Why try to feed someone who's not hungry?
>
>I sometimes explain to my students what kind of work goes into becoming
>their prof. Some of them really do not know, can't even guess. I put it in
>terms of "becoming a professional" and "paying dues in any profession" -- because
>we do -- and because doing well in college shows a willingness to learn, and
>to pay those dues. Some of them listen.
>
>Bitch, moan, vent, shake fist at heavens. Please do. Because teaching is a
>human interaction and it affects us just like any other human interaction.
>But then get on with it, stay open to them. We're the experienced adults in
>this context. We've been on both sides of the desk. We were not all perfect at
>being students when we were young. But, we caught the bug, fell in love
>with learning, and here we are. The ones with talent, and dedication, and
>drive, they need and want our guidance, advice ,and tutelage. RMP.com is proof of
>that. It's also proof that some people are vindictive and vengeful and spoiled.
>What, really, is new? Vent away.
>
>We need not be concerned. There is no statistical standardization for the
>RMP site. None. So the ratings you find there are without any real value
>compared to your course evaluations, which are properly measured. Some are
>offered in good faith, some are just emotive, and there's no standardization like
>the IDEA folks and other evaluations companies have. And I bet our
>administrators do not have time to dig around for what "the jock in the
>back" had to say.
>
>I talk to my students about accepted methodologies, about national
>standards, about how accreditation works. I tell them to go read the
>syllabi for similar courses at other schools by searching on the web. They do. And then
>they know it's not them against me in whatever Oedipal drama they're still
>working out with their families. It's them against what's expected of them Out In
>The World (where their flat tire and their hangover and their break up don't
>matter and their habitual rebellious self-sabotage doesn't matter either).
>Then, I can be their guide and advisor, not their neurotic adversary. Most of
>the time, this works. And some kids, and some adults, are simply unaware that a
>touch of medication and therapy would do them a world of good. ;-) Probably
>including me.
>
>Miss class? Have a receipt for the fix on that flat. Dead grandma? Funeral
>program. Missing homework? Email went to Mars? Nope. Leave me a hardcopy
>too. Dog ate your laptop (really, got that one)? Bring the receipt for the new
>laptop, and shoot that dog because it is a menace. Life has a paper trail. I
>make them show me the trail. Really cuts down the self-sabotaging and
>cynically manipulative lies they sometimes resort to. No paper trail, no extra
>help, no extension, nothing.
>
>For my part, they get to choose. Engage or don't. I have a whole new crop
>to be available to next term. I'm a blip on your radar, you're a blip on mine.
>That blip can help you or not. I assume they're grown-ups, I treat them
>like grown-ups, most of them act like grown-ups. "Here's the community rules for
>my class. Come back next week and I will understand that to mean you agree
>to these rules. So, when you break them, you just get the consequences as
>spelled out in the rules. Your call."
>
>Most of the time, that works.When it doesn't, they fail.
>
>Also, just remember, one foolish adjunct prof at SMU was fired for the
>content of her blog, which was most entertaining and unkind to her (rather
>privileged) students. The blog did not name names. It is NOT hard to cross
>the line here.
>
>With my admiration.