Professor Bans College Students From Saying ‘Bless You’ In Class

[Nova]

I don't mean to drag this thread off-topic, but I think rate my professor is one of the best improvements in college education I've seen in the last generation....

I see your point, but do you work outside the home? Would you like your employee evaluations posted on line?

Confidential written evaluations are bad enough, since much of the time it's impossible to figure out what the student is saying. (I'm still haunted by some complaints that could have been resolved with a brief conversation.) But I understand the need for confidentiality.

But sites like ratemyprofessor only continue the tragic trend toward treating students as consumers in a market place and treating a college education as a commodity to be purchased.

(For the record, I was not tenured faculty. I kept my teaching job for 14 years ONLY because my student evaluations were so high. Since I left, I've received more than one call asking how I kept the freshmen so happy.)

 

[Nova]

My goodness...were these 2nd graders, or just students not emotionally mature enough for college?

Perhaps a rule, stated at the beginning of the year, "In the event someone sneezes, 3 separate utterances of "God Bless You," will be tolerated....

No, they were 18-year-olds and, like most teenagers, they found it very difficult to sit quietly for 90 minutes at a time. The best students spoke up and engaged me with regards to the topic (which they were always allowed to do). But for the merely above-average student, "Bless you" was a chance to finally talk.

As I said pages back, however, I handled the matter by simply saying, "That isn't necessary" the first time it happened. The kids got the point and I never deducted anybody's grade. If someone was disruptive in class--for any reason--I dealt with him or her directly; I didn't lower his/her grade. But, hey, I thought my job was to teach, not be my students' best friend. Amazingly, the kids respected that.

 

[JeannaT]

I see your point, but do you work outside the home? Would you like your employee evaluations posted on line?

Confidential written evaluations are bad enough, since much of the time it's impossible to figure out what the student is saying. (I'm still haunted by some complaints that could have been resolved with a brief conversation.) But I understand the need for confidentiality.

But sites like ratemyprofessor only continue the tragic trend toward treating students as consumers in a market place and treating a college education as a commodity to be purchased.

(For the record, I was not tenured faculty. I kept my teaching job for 14 years ONLY because my student evaluations were so high. Since I left, I've received more than one call asking how I kept the freshmen so happy.)

Students ARE consumers, and a college education IS a commodity to be purchased, IMHO.

I haven't had my performance reviews published publicly on-line, but I taught childbirth and parenting classes as a paid employee in a publicly funded agency, and then I've also taught CPR at work and as a volunteer I've taught and led programs within the public schools and private charity organizations. All these endeavors required an anonymous survey to be handed out at the end of the session where feedback was given. These weren't published online, but they were read by my co-workers and supervisors and actually anyone within the public who cared to request to see them. (No one from the public did). And yes, I sweated like a dog when I opened them up, one after another after finishing a program. It's scary to anticipate feed back when you've really tried to do well.

I never got a bad review, ever, after hundreds of reviews. I got some tepid ones, where i earned a 7 out of 10 points, or "adequate" was circled on a few. One childbirth class student wrote "She talked too much about contractions". I actually pinned that review to my bulletin board. ;D

I've read through who knows how many rate my professor responses (at least 100 professors, I'm sure) and my sister is a college professor who has lots of reviews on that site. I honestly don't think I've ever read one review that seemed needlessly cruel. My sister has a full green smily, although she's tough. Tough but fair. And at the age of 56, she's even been rated "hot" by several students. ???

I think with Rate My Professor, the days of woefully inadequate, lazy, and self-agrandizing professors are a thing of the past. People now have a way to avoid them. Quirky profs are expected, and even treasured in academia, but profs who are out to get you, or in other ways behave intolerably to a group of helpless students under their thumb are a day of the past. And thank goodness for progress. Shining a good strong light things usually helps.

 

[Linda7NJ]

All I wanted and expected from my teachers and professors was to be incredibly knowledgable and passionate about the subject they were teaching. I wanted them to enjoy teaching.
I've never had a single professor that didn't have what I was looking for.
Had a heroin addicted, money borrowing and begging for rides adjunct teacher once for what was supposed to be a six week summer course. After he hit up lots of my classmates he went missing two weeks in.

I requested my money back, the community college wanted to just "give me an "A" ...I refused and around and around we went.
I got my money back and never took another class at community!!!
Turned out he wasn't qualified to teach AT ALL. He fabricated his entire resume and no one checked a single thing on it!

Crazy huh?





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[JeannaT]

All I wanted and expected from my teachers and professors was to be incredibly knowledgable and passionate about the subject they were teaching. I wanted them to enjoy teaching.
I've never had a single professor that didn't have what I was looking for.
Had a heroin addicted, money borrowing and begging for rides adjunct teacher once for what was supposed to be a six week summer course. After he hit up lots of my classmates he went missing two weeks in.

I requested my money back, the community college wanted to just "give me an "A" ...I refused and around and around we went.
I got my money back and never took another class at community!!!
Turned out he wasn't qualified to teach AT ALL. He fabricated his entire resume and no one checked a single thing on it!

Crazy huh?





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Yeah, that IS crazy!

I had the same experience in college as you, except I had a chemistry teacher who couldn't be understood in English. I had to drop his class in the early drop period because I couldn't understand what was being said. That would have been good to read on a rate site. Actually, that should have been completely apparent in the hiring process. But I digress.

I was a liberal arts major in a very conservative major university, so my professors by and large adored us and nurtured us. They were grateful to have us and it showed.

My husband, on the other hand, was an engineering major with a stellar academic profile. He made a B in a class where he clearly earned an A, and when he went to his office to find out what happened, the professor said "I don't give As to students with beards". I'm not kidding. THAT would have been helpful on Rate.

 

[Linda7NJ]

I've found that if I really concentrate and try, in a few days my brain and ears adjust and I can understand perfectly even the thickest accents.
That doesn't bother me, I rather enjoy it! lol

I know, I'm strange!

First time ...I couldn't figure out if their English had improved drastically or I had adapted! It was me




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[Nova]

I've found that if I really concentrate and try, in a few days my brain and ears adjust and I can understand perfectly even the thickest accents.
That doesn't bother me, I rather enjoy it! lol

I know, I'm strange!

First time ...I couldn't figure out if their English had improved drastically or I had adapted! It was me




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One of the best teachers I had at any level was from Poland and, like most who emigrate as adults, she spoke heavily accented English. I was her TA one quarter and got nothing but complaints from students. I told them they should be honored to study under Professor Krajewska and that, if they would just relax for a class or two, they would find her command of English was perfect, it was only the accent that was problematic.

And if they missed anything, they need only come to me for clarification.

I found American undergrads terribly impatient with accents. But FWIW, Professor Krajewska is fluent in 6 or 7 modern and ancient languages. I took every class she taught.

 

[Nova]

Students ARE consumers, and a college education IS a commodity to be purchased, IMHO.

That is simply tragic.

***

I'm not opposed to confidential, written evaluations. And only the "merely adequate" ones are much help.

But that's very different from publishing evaluations on-line for the public to read. (I'm not suggesting the practice can be stopped; I'm just saying it is counterproductive and misguided.)

Among other problems, what makes a student in an introductory course qualified to judge whether he or she received the necessary foundation in the subject? Maybe s/he didn't like the material, but it will pay off the following term or year. How can a student be qualified to know this?

Written or on-line, such evaluations tend to become beauty pageants, and I say this as a perennial "winner".

***

Nowadays, a student who was told his grade had been deducted because of a beard would be at the dean's office in a heartbeat. And rightfully so.

But at least your husband got an answer. If he had merely written, "This prof can't calculate grades correctly" on an anonymous form or webpage, he would never have learned what the issue actually was.

In this way, evaluations actually drive a wedge between teachers and students, when the goal is to do the opposite.

 

[JeannaT]

Well, in this world of "consumer reviews", I think we are all getting savvy enough while reading them to separate the wheat from the chaff. Certainly, when you read hotel or restaurant reviews you can tell someone who's just odd slamming an establishment vs. someone with a clear and valid complaint. On the other hand, as I keep saying, I've seen very useless reviews of hotels and restaurants online, and rarely have I seen a useless one on Rate.

When students are spending a great deal of money on a college education and need to put together their schedule, and they have choices of times and professors, it's great to have this information.

It's not a "beauty pageant" IMHO, it's a competency pageant.

I guess we won't agree on this. I just think the more information you have, the better. I had some fantastic professors that I would have liked to have given stellar reviews to, if Rate was around when I was in college.

 

[Nova]

Well, in this world of "consumer reviews", I think we are all getting savvy enough while reading them to separate the wheat from the chaff. Certainly, when you read hotel or restaurant reviews you can tell someone who's just odd slamming an establishment vs. someone with a clear and valid complaint. On the other hand, as I keep saying, I've seen very useless reviews of hotels and restaurants online, and rarely have I seen a useless one on Rate.

When students are spending a great deal of money on a college education and need to put together their schedule, and they have choices of times and professors, it's great to have this information.

It's not a "beauty pageant" IMHO, it's a competency pageant.

I guess we won't agree on this. I just think the more information you have, the better. I had some fantastic professors that I would have liked to have given stellar reviews to, if Rate was around when I was in college.

Jeanna, as a rule I am all for more info rather than less. But in my experience, written evaluations often lack the context that would make the remarks helpful. (The written "essays" on the back were certainly more useful than the raw numbers, since students were given no guidelines on how to use the numbers. One person's "1" (highest) might be somebody else's ("3").)

And I ask again, how are students to gauge "competency"? Students HATED that I made them rewrite an entire Act of an Elizabethan play in modern speech. They thought it was busy work. BUT I HAD THE EXPERIENCE to know how much better students read difficult language when they have been forced to think it through.

Students HATED that I made them outline their textbook instead of just using a highlighter. BUT I knew from experience that students ended up highlighting everything whereas the outline made them think about the most important point in each paragraph. I was teaching them the art of active reading, something they were not taught in high school. (Yes, of course, I explained why I made the assignments I did, but you know how 18-year-olds know far more than us old-timers. LOL.)

You have more experience with ratemyprofessor than I and I believe you that writers with a grudge are easily identified.

But I see the potential for problems. One of my evaluations there (Do those things ever go away? ETA I checked and the statute of limitations has run out on me after 10 years--thank God!) cautions students to put their most important points first in an essay "because the professor doesn't read anything after the first few pages". Now, obviously that's not the worst thing I could be accused of and the evaluation was otherwise positive.

But what the writer neglected to mention was that I specifically instructed my students to omit the flowery intros and conclusions they learned in English classes, that I was only interested in the actual answer to the question. With 300+ essays to read in a couple of days, there was no time to waste on nonsense.

It wasn't that I didn't read entire essays; I did. I just didn't spend time commenting on unnecessary embellishments.

But there's no dialogue that would clear up confusion in the current system.