Much to my surprise, when I came onto campus this morning I found my student evaluations from last fall waiting in my mailbox. As I wrote back in November when the evaluations were distributed, in the past professors don’t get the evals until May. Things have been sped up — perhaps because unlike in the past, no one bothered to type up the written comments. I was simply given all of the evaluations in a manila envelope.
Continue reading ‘Grade inflation works both ways: on professor evaluations’
Archive for the 'Ratemyprofessors' Category
Emma sends a link to this article from today’s Guardian: Who’s the Hottest Teacher in the US? (Hint: it’s not me, darn it all.)
The piece is a very English reflection on Ratemyprofessors, a site about which I’ve had a bit to say in the past. (See the archive here, and my NPR interview here.) As I’ve said, my faith in RMP as a useful evaluation tool vanished after it became clear that anyone could rate themselves or their colleagues or their worst enemy or their parents. Being an enrolled student was not a requirement to rate, and that makes the whole site largely useless (which is why I haven’t followed it as eagerly as I once did.)
In any event, the Guardian piece makes a very good point, of the sort that might cheer those of us laboring in intellectual backwaters like my own Pasadena City College:
Obviously, as a conventional register of quality - whether of staff, scholarship, or courses - the MTV/RMP poll is less reliable than weather forecasting with seaweed. No statistician would see it as anything other than a joke. Sneering aside though, it does furnish food for thought. And uncomfortable thought.
What it reveals to me is that the level of student satisfaction is higher the lower you go down the prestige scale. That is, undergraduates at, say, Rhode Island College, or Stephen F. Austin University, feel they are getting a better deal than Yalies, Caltechers or Princetonians.
It could be the students in those less classy places are less demanding, or humbler. It could be the fees aren’t so vexatiously high in these less famous places, giving a better sense of value for money.
But the real reason, I suspect, is that those students are indeed getting a better classroom experience.
Bold emphasis mine.
Taking a brief vacation break (before we eventually get on a plane) to note that the NPR “Rate my Professors” story did run today. I’m interviewed near the end of a four-minute piece. Here’s the link to the audio.
Merry Merry to all.
In return for my union dues, I get many benefits. I get, for example, the semi-annual publication of the NEA: Thought and Action. The current issue has an article by Paul C. Price (only available in PDF): Are You as Good a Teacher as You Think? It begins:
A survey of professors at the University of Nebraska a number of years ago showed that 94 percent of them thought they were better than average teachers at
their own institution. Assuming a reality that puts the true value at somewhere
near 50 percent, this survey suggests a rather stunning lack of self-insight among
the professoriate.
That opening made me chuckle. This phenomenon is not limited to the Cornhusker nation; anecdotally, I’m fairly certain that close to 94% of my colleagues at Pasadena City College would consider themselves to be “better than average.” Having participated in the evaluation process many times, and having read the “self-evaluations” that my colleagues are required to produce every few years, it seems that we too have a generous and optimistic sense of our own capabilities.
Of course, “ratemyprofessors” aside, students here at PCC seem to think most of us are above average too. On the old evaluation forms that we used back when I was tenure-track, students were asked if their teachers were “Outstanding/Excellent”, “Above Average”, or “Average.” College-wide, about 65% of the faculty were ranked “above average”, indicating that grade inflation seems to flow both ways!
When it comes to evaluating my own teaching, I think about it on several different levels. I would certainly say I’m an above average lecturer. I haven’t used notes in, oh, at least a decade. I can tell stories well, and structure a compelling narrative. If part of being a good teacher is being a good raconteur, then I’m certainly a talented teacher. But I know full well that I can still learn some new techniques, and that I have miles to go in terms of developing my patience.
But thinking about this abundant, no doubt deserved high self-esteem among the American professoriate, I find myself thinking about the only vaguely related question of how we evaluate our own attractiveness. I’m not just thinking about professors, of course, but of people in general. I remember, back in my freshman year of college, staying up late in a dorm room conversation — and being floored by one brave young woman, who insisted that each of us answer the question “Do you think you’re good looking? Why or why not?”
It was a tough question. But she asked it because she wanted to have a frank conversation in which we could all take the risk to be honest. We had been raised in an adolescent culture where self-praise invited a smack down; saying that you thought you were attractive was an open invitation to criticism, while claiming that you hated how you looked was seen as a none-too-subtle attempt at “fishing for compliments.” My friend in the dorm room challenged us to move past that dynamic, and, lubricated by beer and wine coolers and hash, we did so. There were perhaps eight of us in this triple room in Norton Hall, an equal number of boys and girls of varying degrees of socially acceptable attractiveness. And we listened respectfully and without judgment as each person shared how they “rated” themselves. It was revelatory.
I write about this because my feeling is that we live in a culture where we are expected and encouraged to “toot on our own horns” professionally. Whether or not we are actually over-flowing with self-confidence, the culture of resumes and college essays and self-evaluations invites us, indeed forces us, to insist on our own uniqueness, our own exceptionalism, our own “above-averageness.” But while trumpeting (and often exaggerating) our professional and academic qualifications is de rigueur, to talk frankly and honestly about how we see our looks is something very different. It’s a fascinating question to ask people, even now:
“When it comes to your physical attractiveness, how do you think you compare to your peer group?”
Of course, I don’t run around demanding answers to this awkward query. But as someone who has written endless self-evaluations focusing on my intellectual and pedagogical accomplishments and shortcomings, I’m intrigued by the disconnect between our contemporary willingness to celebrate our professional abilities while remaining mute about our own self-appraisal of our looks.
Thinking about my own life trajectory, I can say this much with confidence: As I age, my looks are fading. But as I age, I also grow spiritually and professionally. My ability in the classroom continues to grow. It grows not merely as a function of time, mind you; not all teachers automatically become better with experience. It grows — and there is still room for much more — because I am eager to find ways to be more effective, to be more relevant, to be more compassionate. I am happy to say that I see that same commitment in most of my colleagues.
I’ll post on this topic again soon. In my second post, I’ll muse on the question of whether or not a high degree of self-confidence does correlate well with teaching competence.
Yesterday at lunch time, I trundled over to the KPCC radio studio here on campus to do an interview with NPR. They’re doing a story on Ratemyprofessors, and they got my name from this InsideHigherEd article. The piece will eventually air on either Morning Edition or All Things Considered, but probably not for a week or two. If I get more details on when it’ll be on, I’ll post them. I really, really like radio. I make no secret of my own desire to have a part-time gig as a talk-show host.
Our six chinchillas are well and happy. I’ve opened up a new "Flickr" account, and now must simply edit and upload the many photos we’ve taken of Chihiro, Ninotchka, Gabriella, Joonko, Dudley, and Racheli. They have captured the hearts of the team of workmen who are redoing our air-conditioning system at home. Tony, the owner of the company installing the new ducts and compressor/condenser thing, said "I’m amazed that people are willing to spend so much for these little guys." He’s considering a chinchilla for his kids; we figure that an AC repair guy is the right man to adopt one. He’ll know how to keep these intensely heat-sensitive animals nice and cool.
And I have an odd confession to make: though it may seem strange for a liberal evangelical metrosexual college gender studies professor to say so, I am now and have been for decades a huge Bobby Knight fan. The former Indiana and current Texas Tech coach is in the news again; once again, he is accused of "crossing the line" with one of his players. (He apparently struck the boy gently under the chin to reprimand him.) For some thirty years, Knight has made himself famous for many things: his remarkable coaching and motivational skills, his famous flashes of anger, his willingness to cross verbal and physical boundaries with his players — boundaries that no other modern coach would dare cross. He is feared and hated by many, loved by others. His epic tirades are balanced by a reputation for extraordinary, quiet kindnesses. Few other figures in sports have had as many passionate admirers and detractors debating his behavior, his meaning, his role, and his legacy for so long.
I can’t say for sure, but I suspect that Knight wouldn’t think much of the likes of me. Men who teach critical analyses of gender in contemporary American life probably don’t rate high on his scale. And as someone who is committed to envisioning, embodying, and bringing about a gentler, kinder, more emotionally attuned masculine ideal, I ought to be repulsed by Bobby Knight. He ought to represent everything I dislike and struggle against. His overbearing swagger, his overgrown adolescent refusal to play by the rules, his penchant for abusive tirades (and the occasional slap or punch); this man is the very sort of rage-aholic we progressive feminists ought to find repulsive and horrifying. And yet Knight is one of a handful of coaches whom I, a devoted fan of almost every non-motorized sport, truly admire. (You haven’t heard of most of the rest of them: Vivian Stringer, Anson Dorrance, Joe Ehrmann, John McDonnell, Sue Enquist.)
What I like about Knight is not his inchoate rage. What I like about him is something I don’t know that everyone else sees. When I watch him on the court (and I always try and watch when his teams are playing), I see what I aspire to be: a master teacher. For me, Knight’s greatness lies in his absolute, unswerving, nearly mad commitment to the personal, intellectual, and physical growth of his student-athletes. When I watch him coach, I see a man for whom winning isn’t nearly as important as transformation; his great obsession is to be the catalyst for his players to grow. His famous temper seems primarily directed less towards those who challenge him and more towards those who show some reluctance to grow, change, relentlessly push themselves to become better and better still.
I’m regularly accused on this blog of setting too high a standard, particularly for men. Whether the issue is pornography, or relationships with younger women, or making and keeping commitments, or accepting responsibility for developing an emotional vocabulary, I push men hard. I push them harder than I push women not because I think women are weak, but because I am a man who knows first-hand that transformation is possible. There are plenty of folks out there pushing women to change themselves (not always in healthy ways); there are fewer voices pushing men as hard. I don’t rage like Knight does, and of course, I would never, ever, ever put anything other than an affectionate hand on a student or youth group kid. But Coach Knight inspires me more than do any of his peers because I sense in him a kindred spirit; I see in him a man committed to never surrendering to the notion that we cannot become all that our truest selves long to be.
Even now, in the twilight of his career, he is barking and raging against laziness, against incompetence, and above all, against the notion that we cannot radically transform ourselves. Coach wants to build great teams of unselfish, committed young men. In a very different and significant way, that’s what I want to do too.
Let’s go Red Raiders; fight on, Texas Tech.
Scott Jaschik, the editor of the splendid Inside Higher Ed, called me up yesterday to chat about the latest Ratemyprofessors wrinkle: photos. His article appears this morning, and begins:
There’s a new reason to worry about students with cell phones in your classes. RateMyProfessors.com, the Web site whose popularity with students is matched by the grief it gives professors, has launched a new feature, encouraging students to shoot photographs of their faculty members and to post them along with the anonymous ratings of professors.
Think RateMyProfessors is going to ask your permission to post a photograph that you may not even know was taken (camera phones are being recommended to students)? Of course not, although RateMyProfessor asserts that it has other quality control mechanisms in place.
In the 48 hours since RateMyProfessors posted information about this new service on its site, it has received more than 1,200 photographs of professors and it is in the process of reviewing and uploading them.
Well, my students know that using their cell phone in class to take pictures, text-message, or talk to friends will result in their names being stricken from the Lamb’s Book of Life. I have connections, you know! Still, I am sure someone could snap my pic surreptitiously. I do note that someone has already uploaded a picture for me on RMP — they simply took the photo from this blog, which I don’t mind. But some of my pictures need to be seen in a certain context!
Jaschik kindly quotes me at length:
Hugo Schwyzer might seem like just the kind of professor who would like RateMyProfessors. A historian at Pasadena City College, he’s on the hottest list, has great ratings on RateMyProfessors, and has no hesitation about sharing life details or photographs — along with his philosophy and ruminations — online, at his blog.
Indeed Schwyzer said that he had high hopes for RateMyProfessors and thought it might provide a good source of anonymous feedback for him so he could improve his teaching. But he said that by asking students to send in photographs of professors, without a system to check first on whether the photos were taken with permission, it was clear that “the primary function is to humiliate.”
Schwyzer said he’s seen “the speciousness of the whole system” in recent weeks. He offended some men’s rights activists on his blog, and they responded by posting numerous critical comments on RateMyProfessors to bring down his scores. While some of those comments have been removed, Schwyzer said he witnessed “a remarkably detailed discussion of my appearance.”
To the extent RateMyProfessors could have served a valuable purpose, he said, it would have been about teaching and classroom performance. The non-scientific approach to those subjects and the increasing emphasis on physical appearance take away that potential, he added. By going with the photo feature, Schwyzer said, RateMyProfessors “loses whatever shreds of legitimacy it had.”
I posted yesterday that the MRAs are "attacking" my Ratemyprofessors site to drive down my overall rating. A student just emailed me this gem:
Schwyzer is the devil incarnate. He is cruel, vindictive, deeply unattractive, manipulative, uncaring. His lectures are boring beyond words,he drones on about irrelevancies in a flat monotone. He wears awful clothes. He looks fat. Avoid him at all costs!
And with that, I promise to stop linking to the humourously nasty things said about me in other corners of cyberspace.
The rest of it I get, but a monotone? Really?
It’s a chaotic Monday morning with far too much to do and too little time to do it. I’ve got a post on the decline of military history percolating in my brain, but that will likely have to wait until tomorrow. Thanks to all for the comments below the various posts below — this has been my highest week of "hits" (15027 as of 9:00AM) in all of 2006, and for that I am grateful.
Reject the Koolaid has an interview this morning with Steve Joordens, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto. He’s in 1st place on the 50 Hottest Professors in North America list, and he’s a humble, funny dude who loves his wife and plays in a campus rock band. Clearly, his nearest competition on the list can’t compete on grounds of humility, humor, looks, or musical skills — though word on the street has it #2 loves his wife very much as well. Anyhow, read all about Steve. Whether the RTK will conduct an interview with the (rapidly fading) runner-up remains to be seen.
UPDATE: A reader kindly tells me that this post seems to have led those who love me less than they ought to put fictitious ratings up at RMP in an effort to rob me of my hard-earned chili peppers. Their perfidy is revealed by the fact that they don’t know what classes I teach, and list me as teaching psych and sociology. Folks, if you want to slam me on RMP, at least have the sense to list the right classes so that it will appear that you are an actual student: I teach History 1A, History 1B, History 25B, and Humanities 1. It”ll look more authentic that way. Sheesh.
UPDATE to the UPDATE: They’ve caught on. I’ve lost seven chili peppers since this morning. Keep at it, lads, and you’ll have me off the top fifty by Thursday.
A rare fourth post of the day, simply to make a new policy.
I’ve been getting quite a few comments lately that are flirtatious, complimentary, and vaguely sexual in nature. (Here, here, here, here.)
At first they were mildly flattering, now they’re getting annoying, and I have heard they annoy some of my readers too (thanks, folks, for writing in). Future such comments will all get deleted and the posters will be banned. I’m putting the annoyingly flirtatious in the same category as pesky MRAs.
UPDATE: In thinking more about this, I realize that I have been very ambivalent about the whole "hot professor" thing that’s come down since the advent of Rate my Professors. If I ignore it, others bring it up. If I bring it up — for example, in discussing how perceived hotness and student crushes work together, I’m accused of preening conceit. Or someone writes in to say "you’re not that hot at all, get over yourself." It’s exhausting.
Like most human beings, I like compliments, but tire quickly of what seems insincere or vulgar. And I’ve been very candid on this blog about many things. But for now, I’m declaring a moratorium — in my posts and in the comments section — about my real or imagined attractiveness. Comments and/or insults about my appearance can be directed to various rating sites or to the heavens above, but they don’t belong here.
Note: I will continue to discuss shoe purchases. That element of vanity is not being purged from the blog!
I got an email from a reader this morning pointing me to this post at Reject the Koolaid. It’s got a new twist on how those of us in the academy can respond to the ratemyprofessors phenomenon:
Just over a year ago when Tearfree’s daughter and a friend were discovering the wonders of Google and the Internet, they decided to look up their mothers on ratemyprofessors.com, a site they’d heard the adults heatedly discussing on more than one occasion.
Tearfree’s then 10-year-old daughter was, to say the least, distressed to discover some of the not-so-nice things written about her Mom there, and, like the loyal daughter she is, she took it upon herself to set the ratemyprofessors.com record straight. “I would love to have this prof as my BFF,” she gushed online as if she were at a slumber party. Tearfree’s daughter’s friend also added some equally kind words about her own mother.
The girls were so proud of the instant results of their handiwork that the next time they got together, they decided to boost their Moms’ ratings yet again. But this time their flattering postings were removed from the site. The girls had been unmasked as users making multiple posts about the same professor from the same IP address. They’d encountered just about the only barrier ratemyprofessors.com has.
We are not told, alas, where Tearfree teaches, or what her real name is. But it certainly puts a new spin on how some of us may be getting our ratings. It gets more intriguing:
Tearfree decided earlier this year that enough was enough.
She did not take the route of more diplomatic colleagues who have appealed successfully to the managers of ratemyprofessors.com to take the worst stuff down. Nor did she follow the example of valiant professors from the social sciences who have performed complex statistical analyses of ratemyprofessors.com’s data and drawn all sorts of conclusions, including the highly obvious one that students are inclined to give top ratings to attractive easy markers. No, instead Tearfree decided she was going to go up against ratemyprofessors.com using their own dubious tactics. Thus, since the beginning of 2006, whenever she finds herself with a free moment while sitting in front of someone else’s computer – be it at the library or at her aunt’s place of employment or at the gym – Tearfree just writes herself a glowing ratemyprofessors.com review and posts it.
The only unsuccessful part of this strategy is that for some reason all the chili peppers she’s given herself, to indicate a scalding hotness rating, have failed to show up. Yet despite that small flaw, Tearfree now has one of the best ratemyprofessors.com ratings in the entire university, making herself an off-the-charts statistical anomaly and a possible footnote in that study that concluded hot easy markers almost always come out on top.
Love it! I think my project for the rest of the day will be rating all of my colleagues, giving all of them chili peppers for hotness. I will give them plaudits merited or unmerited, praising their pedagogy and their personal style to the highest heavens. Then I shall rate myself as well. If those pesky MRAs who have figured out how to disguise their IP addresses will show me how to do it, then I can do it every dang day. I’m fairly certain a small number of people have given me most of my ratings anyway, so why not add to their number with glee?
By the time I’m done, the social sciences division of Pasadena City College will have nothing but hot, brilliant, kind, helpful, erudite, inspiring faculty.
UPDATE: I may think better of my Tearfree-inspired plan. If there are students out there who have found RMP to be genuinely useful, and would rather that I not conduct a campaign of insidious civil disobedience to boost the self-esteem of my deserving and undeserving colleagues alike, let me know.
After reading this morning’s nice piece at Inside Higher Ed on my colleague Yves, I did some catching up on old articles on the site. I found this post from a month ago: Hotness and Quality, another essay about the Rate my Professors (RMP) phenomenon:
If you’re not sexy, you might want to be easy.
At least if you’re a professor concerned about your rating on RateMyProfessors.com. James Felton, a professor of finance and law at Central Michigan University, and colleagues looked at ratings for nearly 7,000 faculty members from 370 institutions in the United States and Canada, and his verdict is: the hotter and easier professors are, the more likely they’ll get rated as a good teacher.
As far as students — or whoever is rating professors on the open Rate My Professor site — are concerned, nothing predicts a quality instructor like hotness.
Felton found a positive correlation of 0.64 (0.00 means there is no correlaton whatsoever, and 1.0 describes a perfectly linear relationship) between the “hotness” and “quality” — quality is a composite of “helpfulness” and “clarity” — ratings on the site. “Hotness” is determined by evaluators choosing “hot” or “not hot,” with each click counting as either +1 or -1. “Quality” is on a simple 1-5 scale. (Felton may be an exception on the correlation — while he doesn’t get any hotness points from RateMyProfessors, he does well on quality.)
Well, that’s moderately interesting. It’s clear that the ratings are hardly reliable, particularly considering that anyone — including other faculty members with an axe to grind — can rate professors. There doesn’t seem to be any reliable way of preventing the system from being totally abused.
Here’s what’s more disturbing: the article suggests that RMP could be used by hiring committees to check up on applicants. Suppose someone who is an adjunct prof at one or more colleges is applying for a full-time position. Isn’t it quite possible that a member of the hiring committee might let what he or she reads at RMP influence his or her feelings towards the applicant? I don’t know what percentage of the profs rated at RMP are adjuncts, but I would suspect that at least a healthy percentage are not full-time employees — and that many of those would someday like full-time posts.
I haven’t sat on a hiring committee in a few years. The last time was in 2000, before the advent of RMP. Applicants with teaching experience were allowed to submit sample evaluations from their classes if they chose; most did so. Obviously, these were on paper rather than on the ‘net, and the applicant controlled which evaluations the hiring committee got to see. Naturally, they excluded hostile or unpleasant or irrelevant comments. I can tell you that while they weren’t a decisive factor, these evaluations played a small part in our decision-making.
I’ll probably be on a couple of hiring committees next year. I suspect I will be able to resist the temptation to "check up" on the ratings of those adjuncts who will inevitably apply for tenure-track positions. But I wonder if my colleagues will be similarly restrained. This prospect genuinely concerns me. Perhaps hiring committees will have to take oaths similar to those taken by jurors — the sort where jurors are charged not to do any independent investigations while they are impaneled.
There was an interesting piece in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times: Student, you’re lazy! Professor, you’re a zero! A professor and a student, both from Elon University in North Carolina, share a rather spirited e-mail exchange on the subject of students rating professors (a phenomenon that has exploded on-line) and, now professors rating students.
Though I’ve known for a while about Ratemyprofessors.com, this was the first I’d heard of the Rate Your Students blog. RYS is a forum for frustrated college profs to vent (anonymously) about the lazy, the uninterested, the unprepared, the rude, the dim, and the grade-grubbing. It’s an entertaining site, with some excellent suggestions to go along with the griping. One professor writes:
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…
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. Ratemyprofessors.com is proof of that. It’s also proof that some people are vindictive and vengeful and spoiled. What, really, is new? Vent away.
I’ll be the first to admit I vent about the lazy and the unprepared and the impolite. Like professors everywhere, my colleagues and I swap war stories. We sometimes play the game of "worst student ever", and trade hilarious (and often, sad or scary) anecdotes from our classes. That’s necessary and normal behavior; we who teach are human beings, after all, and as liable as other folks to get exasperated at work. Few among us have vast reservoirs of patience, and even those of us who do are unlikely to squander our reserves on the unimaginative and the dishonest!
Unlike most folks, I never had any illusions about college professors. I grew up with a father who was a philosophy prof at the University of California, and a mother who taught philosophy and humanities full-time at a community college. The adults whom I saw regularly were my parents’ colleagues. Teaching at a college or a university was what virtually every grown-up I knew as a child did, and so I never had the profession on much of a pedestal.
But despite this familiarity with those who teach, in my own college experience, I found myself idolizing a number of professors. Now, twenty years on, I remember that the profs who captivated me the most were not the easiest or the funniest, but the ones who were most passionate and most certain. I liked best the professors who brought their personalities and idiosyncrasies into the classroom, even when those idiosyncrasies included odd biases and beliefs. I especially admired the professors with whom I intensely disagreed, because so often, they forced me to do more work to try and prove them wrong. And, like many students, I responded best to those who could craft their delivery well — even if the content of what they were delivering was facile or redundant. Students, of every generation, like a show!
My own teaching style comes from many different sources. I grew up hearing both my parents give lectures, and so part of my delivery is patterned upon theirs. As a child, I took drama classes from age seven until I graduated from high school, and so my ability to lecture without ever using notes (after the first time I teach a class) came from the years of being trained to memorize. And along my way through Berkeley and UCLA, I picked up little habits and tricks from a dozen different professors. Even now, while lecturing, I’ll think to myself "Hugo, you sound just like professor X", or "You’re trying too hard to imitate old professor Y". I’ve been full-time for a dozen years, tenured since 1998, and I still am aware of how much of my lecture style is derived from those in whose classes I was an engaged student. If there is anything unique about my teaching, it is only the manner in which I have blended the various styles of the many men and women (starting with my parents) who taught me.
I have "good" classes (talkative, filled with energy) and "bad" classes. (I wrote about this in December ‘04.) I of course prefer the good classes, and I love the students who want to come and talk to me about ideas and how they intersect with their own lives. But I don’t expect most of my students to be active and engaged. I remember how self-absorbed and distracted I was as an undergraduate — and I went to school full-time without having a job or dependents. Most of my students work, many have children or spouses or other demands that occupy them. I don’t grade them any easier because of their burdens, of course — that would be patronizing. But I don’t expect them all to be fascinated by me and my material, either.
I pray for my students quite often. Sometimes, these prayers are prayers of frustration: "Oh Lord, why must they lie so often?" "Father, please help them to remember that a sentence has a subject, an object, and a verb!" Other times, my prayers are for their inspiration. For those who seem lifeless or lost, I often pray "Lord, grant them inspiration. Grant them passion for something beyond the immediately pleasurable. And if it be your will, Father, help me to be a catalyst in their lives." And still other times, my prayers are very simple indeed: "Lord, grant me the strength to refrain from strangling Johnny in the back row, who persists in believing that I can’t see him text-messaging his friends while I’m lecturing."
But in the end, to be very honest, my self-esteem as a teacher doesn’t hinge on the individual performance of my students. I’m not important enough in the lives of most to play a truly memorable role. I’m delighted when I do form a connection with a particular student, and I’m moved and gratified when they tell me that I’ve had a positive impact upon them. But though my students are important to me, I don’t just teach to them. When I lecture, pacing around the classroom, I’m conscious of another audience — an internalized "cloud of witnesses", made up of all of those who have passed on to me the craft of teaching and the love of history. How I measure up to their collective standard is of greater concern to me than the successes or failures of any one student sitting before me.
This doesn’t mean I don’t care about "my kids" — I do, very much. I just don’t tie my sense of competence and professionalism to their individual performance, or their judgments about me. If you visit the RMP site, you’ll notice that I’ve been rated more often than any other professor at Pasadena City College. I’m by no means the highest rated, mind you — nor the lowest. I do read the comments from time to time (and am convinced that some of my friends, enemies, and blog readers are rating me as well as my students). But while some of the praise is pleasant to read, and some of the criticism is hurtful (and the comments about my clothing bizarre), I’ve learned not to attach too much importance to what is said there — or in the more closely monitored in-class evaluations.
Though I won’t lie and say it isn’t nice to be liked, the real group I’m trying to please isn’t made up merely of those who listen to me lecture and whose papers I grade. Somewhere, deep inside of me, is an omnipresent awareness that I’m serving something bigger. That something is partly the institution of the college; partly Clio, the muse of history; partly all of those who worked so hard to teach me; and, ultimately, God himself. It’s difficult for me to be more precise than that. All I know is that I’m almost always aware that my teaching is a form of service, and not merely to my students themselves.
Lots of folks out there are addressing the "UCLA Profs" controversy first reported earlier this week. Jill discusses the issue here, while UCLA conservatives Eugene Volokh and Stephen Bainbridge weigh in as well.
The actual site designed to track "radical left" professors is here.
I have more than a passing interest in the subject. I spent my graduate school years in the UCLA history department, earning my MA and Ph.D. Though the UCLAProfs site tracks professors from many disciplines, they have clearly singled out the highly-ranked history department for special censure. Only the graduate law school has more "radicals" listed.
The professors who were on my doctoral dissertation committee and with whom I worked most closely aren’t on the list, largely because with one splendid exception, they are all dead or retired or lost to administrative duties. (Yikes, that makes me feel old.) But I do know a few of those mentioned, particularly the splendid Ellen DuBois, whose textbook I assign in my women’s studies class. The UCLAProfs summary of Dubois (whose name they can’t even get right) is nasty and puerile:
Feminist history professor Ellen DuBois is in every way the modern female academic: militant, impatient, accusatory, and radical – very radical.
What, boys? Did you forget that she and her most loyal grad students conduct ritual bra-burnings on the roof of Bunche Hall every Wednesday at 4:00? Why not just call her an "angry hairy dyke" and leave us in no doubt as to your misogyny? It’s telling that the comments about DuBois are, on the whole, more consistently condemnatory and unpleasant than those about her male colleagues.
On one hand, I’m angered to see academics whom I know maligned and attacked. Their work is quoted out of context by folks who give no evidence of actually having enrolled in the courses these faculty members teach. And though most of those named on UCLAProfs are tenured, I worry about the effect that this site may have on more easily intimidated junior faculty. I’m also worried about this site being copied at other universities. UCLA is a progressive public institution, where being identified as a lefty is unlikely to have many repercussions. But suppose a similar site sprang up at, say, Baylor? Or Furman? Or the University of Nebraska? Professors at public institutions in red states, and private institutions with religious affiliations, are obviously more at risk. Suppose angry right-wing alumni of Wheaton College began a site designed to identify those professors who strayed too far from the path of what these self-appointed watchdogs considered to be true Protestant orthodoxy? That’s a much more frightening prospect.
On the other hand, I’m also inclined to suggest that those named on the site embrace the criticism as a badge of honor. After all, there’s little chance that this site will affect the professional prospects of any of the tenured professors named. Indeed, in the generally progressive world of higher ed, I can imagine that some teachers might be eager to have their names included as those most worthy of the opprobrium of the far right! I can already think of a couple of UCLA profs I know who are likely indignant at not yet having been "named and shamed" by the earnest young conservative alumni who created this site!
Though we have the silly "rate my professors" site for Pasadena City College faculty, we don’t yet have any public forum for commenting on the political leanings of our teaching staff. Were such a site to appear, I would only be miffed if I were excluded. Of course, given that I hold a number of seemingly contradictory views that span the political spectrum, I would be rather difficult to classify. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t expect the hard-working busybody types who create these sorts of websites to at least give it a try.
Some random notes:
I. Despite the terrible conditions of local trails, it looks like we’ll be running the San Gabriel Mountains 50K again this year; it’s now scheduled for June 18th. I’ll be running it two weeks after the San Diego Rock n’ Roll marathon, and my hope is that it won’t finish the way it did last year, with Hugo dry-heaving on the pavement and needing an IV. I’m also going to try and do this new race in August.
II. This morning, I overheard a bunch of my colleagues discussing the merits of the Rate my Professors website. One suggested that the college ought to officially discourage our students from using it; another suggested the opposite, that professors ought to ask their students to go on line — anonymously — and rate them. That might, it was suggested, provide a broader base of valuable and instant feedback to instructors. Clearly, these sites remain divisive.
I remain conflicted about such sites. Now that I’m tenured, I only get evaluated every third year. That’s a privilege of tenure, of course, but it means I miss out on what might be valuable responses to my teaching. When I was first teaching, before I was tenured in 1998, I relied heavily on written evaluations to shape my teaching. The praise was precious and validating, but the criticisms were often immensely helpful as well. No question, it made me a better teacher. Though I think there’s a lot of silliness and bile associated with Rate my Professors, I often wish I were evaluated more often. I guess I miss both the plaudits and the brickbats. (Of course, I could make up my own anonymous evaluation forms and ask my students to use them.) And I’ll continue to ponder the wisdom of openly asking students to give us honest and anonymous feedback on our teaching on RMP.
III. I’ve submitted my course description for my fall special topics course. For the first time in three years, I’ll be teaching my Introduction to Lesbian and Gay American History class. Much has happened since I last taught it in the fall of 2002: Lawrence v. Texas; Massachusetts; Gavin Newsom; the elections of 2004; Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. All that needs to be covered, as do the older stories of Henry Gerber, Harry Hay, Elaine Nobel, Harvey Milk,Anita Bryant, Magnus Hirschfeld, the Daughters of Bilitis, the origins of butch-femme culture in 1940s bars, Urningism and inversion, bears and twinks, and the Mattachine Society.
For folks who want to sign up, it will be taught as History 24F: Special Topics in United States History, and it will be offered on Mondays and Wednesdays from 1:35-3:10PM.
Just loved this exchange:
THE ONLY PROB WITH HIS CLASS, IS THAT HE PREF TAKING ABOUT EVERY STUDENTS PROBLEMS/INSTEAD OF LEC…I MEAN HOW BORING TO HEAR OTHERS PROB…EVEN HAD A BORING JOURNAL! NO LEC ON HISTORY WHAT SO EVER!!! HE NEEDS TO GET OFF HIS HIGH HOURSE….
To which another student issued this fine reply:
To the person below. Maybe if you knew how to spell “Horse” correctly you would have gotten a better grade.
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