I woke up this morning and said as I walked to the bathroom that I am beginning to feel like I never want to wake up again. No, I don’t mean that. What I am feeling, along with my continued illness, is overwhemled by decision of some years ago to teach. There have been some successes and some frustrations but, right now this choice is causing me to find some work that is less tenuous. Being an adjunct, per contract, is not allowing me to reach my goals. Having to do so many things, to find many different income sources, larger and smaller, takes too damn much energy.
I didn’t mention I had a meeting with the Dean of my dept. last week. Our chat was okay. However, one thing I’ve never done but will most certainly in the future is to request a student drop my class if they are a problem. In the past I’ve always tried to keep all students in classes because if the class doesn’t make (the required number for continuing) then, it could possibly be cancelled. That has happened once. The primary reason for doing that is student evaluations of teacher performance. There is a percentage, or range, that is acceptable. In all the classes I’ve had problem students the evaluations are at the bad end of the scale. That has got to be better for me in the long run, however long this run is going to be, because it feeds into the interaction with other students. Those evaluations are as charged with emotion as they are with facts. It’s crazy… anyway, let me go fix some breakfast or something. Well, maybe lunch now that it’s 10am.
Hang in there man. Students are evil huh? My ex complains about them all the time. What else have you been up to?
Teaching can be as frustrating and aggravating as it is rewarding. Sorry to hear it might not be working out for you the way you’d like 🙁
ps, breakfast is an any-time-of-day meal in my house 😉
Lately, I’ve just been trying to rest my cold and, get my paperwork ready for school. You know, every semester the holidays and such change. I’ve also finally updated my course info online. As soon as the semester gets going I’m going to take a canoe trip. We’ve had enough rain for the water levels to be back high enough. That’s always a place to chill out. I don’t have to go very far for that. I need my own canoe. I need a mate too but, that’s another issue. 🙂
I’ll be right over!
hee hee
Yeah, but I’m at work now :p
Ms. Mentor
I’ve found that the Ms. Mentor column http://chronicle.com/jobs/archive/advice/mentor.htm in the Chronicle for Higher Education has some hysterical advice about situations such as you describe. http://chronicle.com/jobs/2003/03/2003032401c.htm is a URL to the column called “The torment of teaching evaluations.” Her advice is focused on women in academia but I think it also applies to all adjunct professors living on the edge of academic continuity. Good Luck this semester.
When I was chair of the student union at school I had to try and organise student evaluations of teachers. My advice to you: ignore them if you can, at least ignore the numbers. For one, they are “feedback” of the most useless sort, with no kind of indication about how to improve, or what you do well and should ephasize, or whether they are rating you based on your teaching or your haircut, or even, did they read the question right and rate you correctly according to what they meant to say. Second, exactly how worthwhile is anonymous feedback? Pretty much worthless, I’d say. They present the appearance of being “objective” data, and certainly large amounts of information are gathered and processed, but the quality and accuracy of the information are generally abysmal. If you want feedback, talk to you students directly – especially at an art school, there’s a chance you’ll get the real thing tht way. But please, please, don’t take these stupid numerical ratings to heart. They exist exclusively to allow administrations to appear to be “keeping tabs” on the quality of product they sell.
I understand that but, I’d rather have somebody sitting in to evaluate my class rather than these things. It’s like playing a game with numbers. Unfortunately, they are quite disturbing if you don’t have a fulltime position. Mine have always had students that love me and that hate me in the same evaluations. At least up until the past 2 years where I’ve attempted to even out the numbers. Again, it’s a numbers game.
Re: Ms. Mentor
I may not have read that exact article but, I’ve seen one similar to it. The entertainment quotient has become higher on my agenda and, the reason my evaluations have become more even. I don’t understand how that works exactly but, I do know with all the so-called “reality programming” on TV, we see ourselves even more as entertainment. So, as long I can remember to smile and laugh, I’ll get through it. I just wish I had more financial security in this effort. I’m at a point where I just cannot afford to teach, it’s putting me in debt.
When I was a school teacher the authorities tried to bring in teacher evaluations but the Union would not have a bar of it. When I started teaching at University I was surprised to see evaluations in use, but the Union made sure there was very strict criteria about how they were used. Also the evaluation was more of a course evaluation rather than an individual teacher assessment.
I actually found them helpful even though on most criteria I was at or near the norms. In my case I taught large courses of 200-600 but in small classes you only need one or two extreme comments to skew the results. This may have been the case with you.