So, can we assume that you rate pretty well on RYP?
it's even easier to clean your office.
I hate you.
SCMTim, students know that I can punch them through the internet. They can run, but they die tired.
Some people just come across as creepy and smarmy, even if they have good will. Those people don't make good teachers. I don't know that there's much to be done for this guy.
Further, it does bother me that a business whose business is teaching students should care so little about the teaching ability of their staff. It bothers me a lot. So much that I quit university. A lot of it seems to be an inability to separate research from teaching.
Do most professors clean their own offices? I guess I always assumed that maintenace people did the vaccuming.
And FL, I don't know where you did your grad work, but we had two semesters' worth of teacher training and mandatory meetings. It wasn't every week, but still. This was for teaching freshman writing; those who taught the freshman lit courses had to apply and then do another two semesters of occasional meetings. It's somewhere between helpful and a royal pain in the ass. All the boredom of pedegogy coursework with none of the credentials at the end!
And, after all that, I still can't spell pedagogy.
Or paedagogy, if you prefer.
Teaching is brutally difficult. (Admittedly, all my experience was teaching high school students in their second language, so that might have been a little trickier, but the things that drove me nuts were often not related to the language problems.)
I kind of doubt that an ugly haircut and funny clothes are much of a problem, though. I can see being actively stylish or attractive as useful in the classroom, but for people who aren't going to achieve that, do they really have to do much more than appear clean and non-bizarre?
One reason I'm glad I didn't teach is that my small amount of adjunct experience taught me that only 10-20% of the students were interested enough to be willing to do more than the absolute minimum amount of work, whatever that was. With motivated students I might have been a good teacher, but it would have been unreasonable to hope for motivated students.
Results may vary at other schools. I sympathize with the guy, though. "He wants mathletes, and I just want my B" suggests that there are problems at the student end too.
It's weird, because at my last grad school, we had to take a full semester of pedagogical theory while shadowing a graduate instructor for a whole semester. We could devise a syllabus with a great deal of freedom, but we had to teach a sample class for our mentor instructor, turn in lesson plan ideas to the department, and generally show we had our head out of our asses before we got a class.
At my new grad school, students are assigned adjunct jobs at random undergrad schools and walk into the first day of teaching without any instruction. They take a pedagogy seminar for zero credit while teaching their first class. It's the sink-or-swim thing you're talking about.
It would be relatively easy to put grad teachers off a semester while they shadowed someone, no? One measly semester at the beginning rather than them burning out and quitting later?
"He wants mathletes, and I just want my B"
Whether this is a problem or not depends on what the expectations really are, what the course is, if it's required for something else. For example, when I teach courses that are part of general core requirements, I try to think about the fact that people mostly aren't there out of a serious desire to learn the material. This affects course design, presentation, etc. In other words, I think it's fine for students to "just want a B" in some courses.
I sympathize with the prof somewhat. If he's like me, his training has consisted in a) advice from other graduate students b) offhand comments from professors. I've never had a course on how to teach effectively. My university runs seminars and has workshops; they're not mandatory; I don't go. (My evals are about 95% positive. Yes, I obsess over the 5% and worry that one student of forty thinking that I talk too much means I won't be hired.)
The best advice I received is that teaching is a performance. You're putting on a philosophy show; it's not like just researching or discussing things with other students.
He's a math professor, for gawd's sake. The students should just be happy that he can apparently write in English.
I sympathize with the prof somewhat.
You have a bowl haircut straight out of your grade 3 photo?
My own graduate experience was between AWB's two. In the 2 different programs in which I taught, rhetoric and literature, there were weekly meetings about pedagogy, usually on Thursday afternoons, but they were done simultaneously with the first semester of teaching; neither was for credit. Led primarily by other graduate students (great CV line for them) they often led to discussions based out of earnestness than to true preparation for teaching.
What was so frustrating about it was that my program used first years as research assistants, so generally, there was no teaching at all the first year. Moreover, 90% of 2nd years went to rhetoric, then 2 years later to lit, and for that reason, pedagogical progress was pretty standardized. I always wondered why the department wouldn't institute a for-credit, yearlong professional class: devote one semester to research, and another to teaching—particularly to understanding and teaching the curricula taught at that university. But so far as I knew, no one wanted to devote that much time...
While barely treading water, I decided I should try learning to swim somewhere else.
Goodness, I don't know if my hair in grade three counted as a 'hairstyle or 'flyaway stuff on that crazy child.'
Most academics would benefit from a year with a non-academy job, where indeed, clothing, hairstyles, poise, and demeanor are naturally part of the job (in some cases, more than actual expertise.)
RMP is an odd site for evaluations. When I get my writtens back from the department, they all say wonderful, glowing things, even though I beg them to be honest, I need feedback, etc. I get the sense that my classes like me. Then I check RMP and find "This bitch is so hyper in the morning all u want 2 do is shoot her in the face! H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E! DON'T TAKE HER CLASS!"
It is amazing how little emphasis is placed on teaching law professors to teach.
As far as I know, most law professors get no instruction on how to teach. My professors in law school were for the most part brilliant lawyers and/or professors--some famously so. But most of them clearly had a limited mastery of the many easily-learned techniques that make it easier to teach something. For sure, charisma, natural charm and articulateness can go a long way, but there is no need for people to have to rely just those traits (to the extent they have them).
My response is colored, of course, by my military experience, where one of the first things you are taught when you trained to be an officer or noncommissioned officer is how to teach. For sure, it is the stripped down, nuts and bolts approach, with little theory, but it generally can teach even the inarticulate and uneducated how to teach. Just imagine what it would do for smart, clever people.
No, both the professor and Labs are correct. Students DO give much higher evaluations to professors they deem attractive, and let's not forget that traditional-age college undergrads are still at the age where having a bad haircut immediately brands you as a social pariah. Also, of course, it depends what kind of institution this guy teaches at: if it's party central, he's probably getting way tougher evals than he would at an institution that was primarily attended by fellow nerds.
That said, it's true that part of teaching is presentation, and good teachers do realize this; but it is unfair that people who are socially awkward, but enthusiastic and knowledgable about their subjects and perfectly capable of communicating clearly will often run into terrible resistance from students just because they wear out-of-style clothes. I remember a fantastic teacher I had in high school who all the other kids hated simply because she wore bright polyester leisure suits.
When I get my writtens back from the department, they all say wonderful, glowing things, even though I beg them to be honest, I need feedback, etc.
I think part of this is that people often genuinely don't know how to give helpful feedback. They know how to react (as you describe RMP) and they know how to make nice, inoffensive and mostly substance-less comments on the teacher's evaluation forms.
But giving thoughtful feedback is a skill, and undergraduates have often had as little chance to learn this skill as their instructors have had to learn how to teach.
I don't teach, but I do facilitate workshops. I usually sprinkle in a few anecdotes about how we changed some aspect in response to prior participants' feedback.
Recently I've tried appealing to altruism when handing out the evaluation forms -- "Please think about the people who will be takening this workshop in the future" -- but that has resoundingly neutral results so far.
(Also, of my 30-odd undergrad professors, maybe ten of them left adequate time at the end of the class for completing the feedback form. Talk about a way to show that you don't value the process--!)
I'd just as soon rather have substance-free feedback on the official forms. I try to program in other (and earlier) avenues for complaints.
23: I do this too. In the middle of the semester, I have them write an in-class letter, anonymously* if they wish, to me, assessing in detail what's happening in the class, what they wish there were more or less of, how they feel I'm doing, and how they feel they're performing as students. The last bit serves a number of purposes, not least of which is getting them to recognize that how they evaluate me should always be in the context that I'm evaluating them. Since my classes all hinge on the development of a learning community, they have to recognize that the class going to be as good as they make it.
*- This is kind of a joke with us since I inform them on the first day that I very quickly memorize their handwriting.
I should add that these letters end up being pretty stellar examples of how to evaluate a class. They mention specific texts and activities, they talk about what they're learning and how they can apply it to their future careers, and they're almost always harder on themselves than I would be. The class always gets a spike in productivity shortly after this exercise.
I really am in favor of teachers learning to teach and being good at it. I've just ended up with a very low opinion of the intellectual curiosity and intellectual work ethic of the average 20-year-old American. (Call me Allan Bloom.) As far as I know the median bright elite-school student is not much better in that regard than the median second-rank school student, except mentally quicker and better prepared.
If students aren't prepared for class, paring them in class is tedious. (Ha! Joke!)
And of course, substance-free evaluations are the only safe kinds. Doobie evaluations are a thing of the distant past.
I've taught four kinds of students: tippity-top 18 year-olds, veryvery smart adults returning to school, very average German 20-22 year-olds, bored and snobbish French secretaries.
The second group was my favorite; the real challenge was keeping them from taking on unrealistic projects.
The difference between the first and the third group really seemed one of agility, at least 1/2 of which seemed to be a question of attentive, professional training.
French secretary jokes are requested. Do they wear panties?
An interesting thing for me would be to see whether the math teacher's good students liked him better than his weak students. If not, he was probably just plain a bad teacher, and what I've been saying is not relevant to his case.
Or paedagogy, if you prefer.
æ is your friend!
I'm going to start TAing next year. Can't hardly wait.
The only students I love more than returning adult students are returning adult students who just got out of jail. They are super-devoted and keep the rest of the class in line.
There are two things that make me thing he's really not a good teacher.
1) "I admit that I'm a lousy communicator in class."
2) "Prof {X} needs a public speaking course."
This seems to indicate that he's probably not clear on what is expected as far as assignments, test dates, test coverage, or else that he tends to cover material too fast or not clearly enough.
32: I agree. I know plenty of unattractive, badly dressed, slouchy, bad breathed, mean, overly difficult professors who are totally loved because at least they communicated clearly. Mouth-breathing cretins with no teeth, a bad hairpiece, and a nasty attitude can become cult hits with the kids.
And it is very possible to love your subject and yet not be able to communicate it clearly.
What is AWB's relationship to Teh C/ritical T/radition? Are we not supposed to be Googling? Is this cool to ask?
My doctoral program had a lecturing requirement which could be met by teaching one undergraduate course, under departmental supervision (which meant someone sat in a few times, and gave you feedback). There was help available in a fairly unstructured way, and an entire teacher-training certification program (uni wide) was available but not mandatory. The certification involved a certain amount of annoying hoop jumping, so I didn't do it, but I did sit in on a few of their seminars that seemed useful.
Course evaluations seem fairly useless in my experience. They give bean counters beans to count, but don't contain the information you actually want. I've had very positive course evals (and also on RMP someone pointed out to me) but I wouldn't put too much weight on them.
I think the extremes are probably reliable, in that averaged over several years and classes, someone who gets consistently glowing reports is probably doing a good job, and someone who gets horrible ones probably isn't. I suspect the margin for error on the numeric ones is probably around 30-40% though, and the middle ratings are essentially useless.
The editor is my diss director. I wrote the bio/headnotes for the 45 or so new authors added. The editor, of course, writes his own famously clear and delightful intros and had a lot to do with making the headnotes make sense.
'm going to start TAing next year. Can't hardly wait.
It's sad that Ben's RMP site is going to be full of bloggy in-jokes, isn't it?
You have to force Amazon to show you the 3rd ed, since they're trying to get rid of all the 2nds, but it's here.
FL: could be worse. I've got (positive) comments about my ipod on mine.
Wow, that book is not cheap.
I wonder if I will end up getting a free copy. Probably not.
It's 75 on bn.com, according to Book Burro.
We should all give it good reviews, especially praising the headnotes.
I am especially proud of Althusser's. Try slipping into someone's career narrative that he strangled his wife while giving her a massage without sounding too sensationalistic.
His autobiography is interesting and funny. He should have gone crazy sooner.
I already own the 1st edition. Any reason--besides reading your headers, naturlich--to buy the 3rd?
Emerson, I only know one joke, total, and it's about a fighter pilot. The only good part about that secretary gig was that I got to walk through the Bois de Boulogne on my way to it, and the transsexual prostitutes were very colorful.
You only know one joke?! That's no kind of life, JM. Everyone should have at his or her command several jokes, the less funny the better.
Emerson, I only know one joke, total, and it's about a fighter pilot.
Well?
46: Yeah, it's about twice as comprehensive, and now covers much more post-colonial, gender, queer, race, cyborgism, etc, and even goes back and makes all the previous chapters much more comprehensive. Since the first ed, there are maybe a hundred or more added authors.
I only really like one joke. What's the difference between roast beef and pea soup?
In college, my friends and I had a game we called the Althusserian Circle Game. It was based on a game we learned from Malcolm in the Middle, in which you got to punch someone if they looked at a circle you made with your thumb and forefinger below waist level. In our game, you could punch someone, or at least lord it over them, if they responded to hearing their name. At the end of the year, I wrote a parody Eliot poem for one of them as a gift, which included a passage something like the following (I've lost it now):
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying 'Stetson! You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!'
'Hullo!' he said.
'Hah! You responded to your name! You're a subject relative to my ideology, sucker!'
'Wot the ell?'
I tell jokes constantly, when I have an audience that will put up with it. I'm not saying this is an acceptable trait, but it's one my friends and family are bearing up under.
19: Indeed. A major part of my graduate school resentment was the realization that graduate programs are *way* less invested in the success of their students than the military is in the success of its junior officers.
Re. evaluations, after a semester or two of useless ones I've started asking specific questions when it's eval time: "I'd really like some feedback on the texts--which ones did you like, which ones do you think I should leave off, and why?" "Do let me know what you thought of the major assignment; it's the first time I've used it and I want to know if it needs revision or clarification" "Please tell me what you thought of the lecture/discussion balance in class," that kind of thing. Makes a big difference to my evals.
Your reply is excellent. Well stated. We'd welcome any input you have over here at RYS.
RYS
If you're teaching something like math post fucking teaching notes on teh web. It's much harder to improve your teaching ratings if you teach something that actually requires class participation.
54: Maths benefits at least as much from class participation, I suspect. Doesn't mean it's easy to do (particularly in lower level courses, these days).
52: I've tried that with limited success (and tried asking throughout the term...). I haven't seen enough variation in courses yet to be sure, but the trend seems to be that a lot of students in intro or service course just don't care. They'll fill it out based on whether they like you or not (as a person) and avoid the written parts. More senior students with more invested in the process are more likely to give decent feedback, but there are a lot less of them....
Maths benefits at least as much from class participation, I suspect.
I would disagree. The added value from an ongoing two-way dialogue is much smaller in math-y classes than in soft-y classes. I usually let my students know at the beginning of a math-y course that one of the educational goals is to let them find their own best way to acquire the material, rather than fix them on my preferred way. Which also means I don't want them in my classroom if they don't think it's worth their time, and why I try to provide them with the means to learn the material outside the classroom. The positive side effect is a much more hospitable classroom environment and better teaching evals.
"Which also means I don't want them in my classroom if they don't think it's worth their time..."
That's why I wouldn't have liked teaching. Everything I know about is liberal arts stuff, and you cannot say things like that in liberal arts classes. The liberal arts are either electives and distribution requirements, or else comfort zones for less-ambitious students.
It's not in the nature of the material. In my fields, 3 to 5 foreign languages are required, and in Mongol studies, you really should have 7. But the fields are not lucrative enough that many students will make that kind of effort.
liberal arts are either electives and distribution requirements, or else comfort zones for less-ambitious students
Inspiring.
57: I'm not convinced of that. Maths is one of those things you can pretty much only learn by doing. In my experience on either side of the room, the (vastly) most effective classes have been the small ones with lots of interaction, and students presenting at least some of the material. On top of that, of course, you have to work the key stuff out on your own. It helps a lot to bang ideas around and watch other peoples approaches, though.
I have no idea how to generalize this to larger settings, but it works, and the comparison to something like a standard intro calculus stream is night and day. Very few students seem come out of that with a good grasp of the material, but how much of that is setting, I'm not sure.
the small ones with lots of interaction
I have no control over enrollment, the only thing I can influence is who's showing up to class.