What do you do when opinions are everywhere?

California was a blast and it went by quicker than it should have.  I'm fairly certain I'll have met my summer goal of at least three awesome pictures.  I am glad to be home though.

I don't want to talk about that trip today though.  I want to talk about the student evaluations that I saw Wednesday morning as I sat in the San Francisco airport, where it was nice and peaceful until a family with four kids came up and one of the kids promptly exclaimed in a loud voice, "Its so quiet in here!" and then proceeded to make it not so.

Overall, my evaluations were positive, but that's with a small sample size.  I only had a total of 17 students respond and only five left actual notes.  This is for two classes combined, mind you.  Of those five, four were very positive.  They included things like "Dr. VG was easy to talk to outside of class and made class interesting and used real life scenarios", "P.S., you're the bomb", "overall was a wonderful professor" and "is always nice to talk to or ask questions".  These were nice to hear and reminds me of why I do this.

The fifth one, however, was not so kind.  To quote, "This class was definitely my least favorite class I’ve taken in my college career. The only way I was able to succeed in this class was to memorize information rather than actually learning it. And when I did try to learn it I felt you were degrading and responded with an attitude of not wanting to help students succeed in your class. I felt like your ego got in the way of actually wanting to help students. I hope this improves for the next set of students you have." Like every good teacher, I'll take criticism to heart.  It sucks hearing bad evaluations, and if you have a valid point, I will take what you say and try to change in the future and I'm thankful you're making me a better professor.  This one, however, I have a harder time believing.  First, I should say, I am 99.9% sure I know who wrote this.  He's a really smart kid and for the most part, a good student, but here he's wrong and I want to defend myself.  I'm not looking to slag him because that doesn't get us anywhere, but evaluations like this need to be discussed.  I agree that memorization shouldn't be the primary method of learning, but in this class, a class covering logic and the basics of proof, memorization is necessary because it's what you will be using for future math.  Not wanting to memorize things in this class is like building a house but complaining that the foundation isn't movable.  Yes, I made them memorize definitions and theorems and then tested them on it for exams but I told them this would be there on the review days.  Had this student shown up on those days, he would realize how uninformed this complaint sounds.  You don't get to half-ass your work and get away with it in everything else and then blame me when you try it in this class and it doesn't work.

His comments on my attitude are what really got me though.  In my ten years of teaching, I've never been called degrading or anything similar.  I've been called a horrible teacher; I've had a student walk out in class in frustration; I've had students refuse to make eye contact with me outside of class; but never have I ever had anyone accuse me of not trying to be helpful.  I once had a student in one of my favorite classes tell me that I shouldn't use that "I can't believe you just asked that" face as much (his words, not mine), but the vast, vast majority of my students would tell you that I'm always there to help.  I will be on your side if you're willing to work and I will always want to do what I believe is best for you and hearing something so significantly different stings.  On to the ego comment.  Yes, I have an ego, I have pride.  I have talked about that on this very blog several times.  No, it does not transfer over to the classroom.  I joke frequently about getting my Ph.D. Survivor-style.  I joke about liking my job because I always get to be the smartest one in the room, but my ego has never brought me to the point that I talk down to a student.  If anything, it's about respect.  Show me basic respect and courtesy in the classroom and I will respect you as a student.  Heck, even if you don't give me that, i.e., everyone who is constantly texting or checking their email, and you'll still get respect from me because my job is to make help you learn.  I'm not there to make you do anything.  You're a college student.  How much you get out of this directly correlates to how much you put in.  Therefore, if you disrespect the class by constantly showing up late or frequently not at all, then yes, I may respond with a little frustration when you ask me what a symbol is when we've covered it several times in class.  That's not what I'm there for.  Check your notes (which you didn't take because you weren't there) or your book (which you didn't buy).  Ask your friends in class.  You want to complain about me, that's fine.  I've certainly warranted it on certain days or even certain full semesters, but please don't blame me when I try to expect more out of you and you're not willing to put forth the effort and then reap the consequences.