There is an air of nihilism in the office this week, as there are contract reviews tomorrow. It seems I was incorrect in the knowledge you start from zero and have to prove your case about working. The decision is already made before you walk into that office. You just find out if you are leaving in two month’s time, or can remain. It’s entirely out of your hands, other than doing the best you can in class and hoping that it gets back to the people when they make their decisions. The key to getting feedback is the forms the students have been filling out this week.
Some teachers take this criticism in stride and just accept that whatever the students say, good or bad, is going to generally average out. Some people will like your class, others will think it was average, and others will just not like how you teach. You can’t please everybody, If you can accept that, nothing else matters, because as long as you try hard and aren’t rude to your students and you generally try to help them out, there won’t be momentum to push you out. As long as you can come across as helpful and prepared, that’s all you can do. The rest is up to them.
Other teachers don’t want to know how their students have reviewed them on the forms. Anything they see will taint their opinions of the students, and they’ll start to second guess themselves. There is manner in which you project the air of confidence towards students that they pick up on. If students that dislike your class for some reason fill out an evaluation, they can leave devastating comments that can undermine your confidence and weaken your teaching. I thought that I’d be able to build of the criticism despite the blows to my confidence, so I could improve more rapidly.
I let students evaluate me before class today with the official form, and then put the notes in an envelope. After class I peeked in and looked at the scores. I had mostly positive scores. More students said they liked my class than disliked it. Most students gave me marks above the middle. I didn’t record them all, or make a note of what the average might have been, but I was happy enough with the scores that I was feeling pretty good. Then I found one student that had given me average marks with one outlying score on the low end. I had to know what that meant. I made a copy of the anonymous evaluation so that I could have the results translated. I returned every review to the office, negative one included. I didn’t feel it was fair to eliminate someone’s opinion of my class just because it was slightly unfavorable towards me. They had the right to pass on their opinion just like everyone else.
I wasn’t looking to identify the person, but I wanted to know why I had gotten the score. That’s why I took home a copy of an evaluation sheet to see what each question was asking about. My Korean isn’t good enough to completely translate everything. I wanted to use the knowledge gained from their feedback to aid my classes in the future. It turns out that they had a little bit of an issue about how I teach. While the rest of their scores were positive, I totally agreed with their comments for my evaluations. I have a tendency to bather on when I feel nervous. I hate that awkward silence of a class with no one talking, so I go to great lengths, at times, to fill it. I know it’s bad. I am always trying to facilitate communication and encourage learning with everything I do, but if I hear crickets after a question, I get spooked.
I think this stems from teaching young children exclusively for such a long time. Back when I got silence from a class, I would assume they wouldn’t have understood me, then modeled the dialog myself and then asked them to try to follow me in constructing what they wanted to say. Now with adults I get even MORE nervous, because I know I’m talking too much, but get no response, then panic. In my head, I’m thinking, “They understand me, but they still aren’t talking! Oh no! What have I done? What will I do? What will fill the rest of the time in the class? AHHHHHH!”
I walk out of classes knowing that if I had modeled my classes differently, or presented material in a slightly different manner, my lesson would have ended up better. It’s usually a “Do’h! Why’d I do it that way? The solution was right in front of me the whole time!” sort of thing. The daily routine, and the constant classwork means it is very hard to stay ahead of the classes. Since I was new, working to catch up as well as master everything else, I was having a really hard time with my daily classes. The work was overwhelming, as it is the first time I’ve taught the books, and I need to invent everything on the fly as I go. I have a few months with less classes to prepare a long syllabus, as long as I can be sure that my classroom materials will remain the same.
My elementary school lessons were honed to a razor’s edge over eight years, and I’ve had to toss everything and start over for my classes at this university in the middle of a semester. It’s been rough adapting, I won’t deny it. Every time I receive a critique of my skills I find it devastating because I know I have so much work ahead of me just to pull even with everyone else. Even if improve my skills as fast as possible, I still don’t have the sweet lessons all the other teachers have been working on for years. I need to discover all new lessons to teach again. The excuse, “It was my first time, sorry, maybe next time” doesn’t work for paying adults. They vote with their feet.
Of course, MOST of my students did like my class, but that is all lost on me at the moment. That one negative score has eaten me up, even though I know it is irrational, because I know I can improve, I agree that I need to work harder, and I can do nothing to change what I did in their classes at the moment.
