Fun with student evaluations
Worst teacher I've ever had in my life. Doesn't explain stories well & assignments are extremely confusing and wierd [sic]. He doesn't give any points for grammar. Swore/used foul language in class. Offended me. Made me dislike a subject I used to have passion for.
...so I take it that's a 'no,' then?
He is the absolute worst teacher I have had. He's confusing, makes no sense and I don't think he should be teaching. He doesn't know how to grade. Overall he sucks.
What can you do? ON THE OTHER HAND:
I thought he made the class less awful than others.
SO THERE!
And if one may toot one's own horn for a moment:
I felt very challenged when it came time to write my papers. Mr. Moses made me think in ways I've never thought in, and introduced me to a completely different style of authors and writing in this course. This is what you go to college for.
and
Opened my mind way beyond my expectations for the class.
Suck it, haters!
...so I take it that's a 'no,' then?
He is the absolute worst teacher I have had. He's confusing, makes no sense and I don't think he should be teaching. He doesn't know how to grade. Overall he sucks.
What can you do? ON THE OTHER HAND:
I thought he made the class less awful than others.
SO THERE!
And if one may toot one's own horn for a moment:
I felt very challenged when it came time to write my papers. Mr. Moses made me think in ways I've never thought in, and introduced me to a completely different style of authors and writing in this course. This is what you go to college for.
and
Opened my mind way beyond my expectations for the class.
Suck it, haters!
posted by GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. at 3:05 AM
Congratulations. If everybody thought you were doing a good job, it would likely mean you were passably mediocre, but nice or colourful, like a Pixar film. Getting mixed reactions is probably a sign you're doing something worthwhile for your students.
Also, it would be sweet if some of your less grateful students came across your blog and read this entry. Imagine the poorly written complaint to your department head.
Thank you. It probably WAS a bit much to order hapless college students--non-English majors at that--to read Donald Barthelme, but fuck, this is College Writing II, and I wanted to challenge them a bit more than I do in CWI. The theory that faced with a challenge, students will rise to the occasion does not seem adequately proven, however. And it IS probably partially my fault that they were baffled--not that anything I could possibly do would get them ALL on board, but more experience would be useful.
I must disagree about the supposed mediocrity of Pixar films--WALL-E and Up, at least--however.
To be fair, I haven't seen a Pixar movie since Finding Nemo. For every one up to that point, people would tell me how great it was, and how, even if I hadn't liked the last, I would dig this one, because it was great. I have heard the same shtick for each since (with the exception of Cars). But after Nemo, I decided wasn't going to fall for that line again.
Though it's far from the only point of annoyance, it doesn't help that, as someone who draws a bit, I hate their character designs.
Well, for what it's worth, the only other Pixar films I've seen are Toy Story (too long ago to really remember) and Monsters Inc, which I found really underwhelming. I didn't expect to like the recent ones, but...I did. I thought they were orders of magnitude better.