And Yet, I Still Miss Teaching

A slightly redacted version of my favorite student complaint ever:

My Teacher,

I appreciate you taking your inconvenience to instruct us but I really had some problems in your class and I would like to explain them to you now.  Every day I wanted to discuss with you about the way you grade my papers and the way you teach the class, but I could not because the things you say in class and your words disturb me so much I can not.  You make me completely uncomfortable with the little things you say in the class like how you talk about television or how you talk about when you are grading our papers and trying to be fair.  You do not seem to care about our grades only that they are up to your too high standards and I can not talk to you because you make me completely uncomfortable.  For example, you say you will talk to us about our grades but you really will not because of how uncomfortable you make me feel with your words and what you say.

I will plan to contest the grade you have given me in this class when I get it because I know it will be much higher with any other teacher.  I am a very religious man and you are not a bad person but you do not choose your words with enough care like a teacher should.  You try to be objective and the very attempt becomes your flaw because you try so hard to grade fairly and comment wisely that you become biased to your own ideas.  You criticize our writings because we are college students and young but do not realize that you offend most of us when you do this.  I am always offended when I go to your class and have been on many occasions but I never tell you of my offense because you make me completely uncomfortable so I never say a word.

You like to lead discussions and that is bad because it is the entire means by which we learn but we do not know what you want from us on our papers.   I have honestly no idea what I learned from you in this class because so much time was spent discussing the tiny details in the passages in the book and so if I learned anything it is how to read things in too much detail.  I could have read books in too much detail on my own but that is not what I came to college to do because I already know how to read and I would have told you this but you make me completely uncomfortable with your words so I never said a word.

By doing this you give us no guidance on our papers.  I thought it was lame that you decided to show a movie and a cop out because you chose not to give us any instruction.  I know that it was a movie based on the story in the play we read but it was not teaching to show it to us when you could have been teaching us to write what you wanted us to write on our papers instead.  The movie was completely racist and very offensive because it contained cultural stereotypes that are often used in disrespectful jokes about people who have their feelings hurt all the time.  I was offended by this racism and in the movie and had my feelings hurt by it.  If that was supposed to teach me something about the class I completely do not understand.

After this quarter I am hurt and tired and feel like talking to you now will do me no good.  I wanted to go to your office hours but I could not find the time or make myself because of your words.  I feel like my paper was written to the best of my ability in reference to your teaching skills in the discussions.  You grade my papers poorly but do not realize that you do so because they reflect your teaching skills.  Other people may have done well with your skills but I did not and would have talked to you but what you said about grading fairly made me uncomfortable.  I take my responsibilities as a man and I have never complained about my grades but this one I will because I did not need you to teach me how to read or to write.  I have made very high grades in all my other writing classes and even though I had many disputes with those instructors we always settled them to my happiness.  Now for the first time I can not talk to you to settle my grades because I am uncomfortable to talk or even write to you.  I should have stayed strong and like a man no matter how much your words and what you said offended me.  I do not blame you because when there is error there are two to blame, the perceiver and the target.  I do not know what this email does but I have to get my feelings off of my chest.  Thank you for reading this and I am sorry if what I feel has shown you disrespect but these are my feelings and I feel by your words you did not respect them.  I love everyone and believe you to possibly be a great person but with your words you have treated me completely unfairly.

I am a very religious man and I love every one but I will forward this letter to the head of your department so he can see that I am a serious student who does not deserve the grade you will give him because I write so very well.

First, a Reply to Some Criticisms.

Second, Other Teacher/Student Interactions You Might Enjoy:

• jimy666izstoned@gmail.com: an Epistolary Romance
• A Lexigraphical Lament about Probationer Prosody

Finally, check out the "Best of Acephalous" for more things that make you uncomfortable with their words and what they say.

Comments

[Tenured Radical]

THis is just incredible.

TR

[jackd]

Ahcuah, Nicole Twn - applause!

[bloix]

Yes, how superior we are to an 18-year old non-native English speaker, the first to go to college in his family, who finds his teacher bewildering and incomprehensible. Let's all guffaw as he flunks out and finds himself burdened with $30,000 in student debt that he can't possibly repay and shames his immigrant parents who were so proud of him.

Any genuine teacher with an ounce of compassion in his bones would have searched this kid out to find out what was going on and to see if he could be put back on track.

But it's funnier to laugh at people in pain, isn't it? After all, that's why people like you went into teaching, isn't it?

[Will Von Wizzlepig]

ow, man. people like this don't get invited back next time, but I guess these are classes and not cocktail parties.

Someone once said that the source of all human conflicts are our own individual misguided feelings of specialness.

This guy seems to have specialness issues in spades.

[zhanae]

bloix, did you not read scott's comments that this kid is a middle-class, white, native english speaker?

[ukko]

Um, BLOIX, you missed the comment above that clarified that this student was a 100% homegrown (no doubt monolingual) native english speaker. He also was apparently of the privileged class here in the good 'ol U.S. of A.

[Professor Zero]

One of mine has informed me that the reason she is in school is that she cannot study on her own. That includes studying for classes while actually enrolled in school.

[JMo]

Nicole Twin--your sestina was hilarious!! I've read it several times and each time it makes me laugh. Keep up the good work.

[bitchphd]

CR, that's awesome. The mom who enters text messages into her laptop to produce the kid's papers--what student in his right mind would think that would constitute an excuse for anything other than hanging?

[tina]

first of all colin farrell is on great actor look at phone booth and tigerland and the recruit with al pacino. so in three years became on the a-list of actors and colin is in demand now, now he is shooting alexander the great with angelina jolie. and he also worked with samuel jackson on swat which was great by the way. and bruce willis in harts war. so he worked with alot of great big actors. and was great in minority report with tom cruise. and daredevil and the villian bullseye with ben affleck. and colin was the best thing in the movie and the critics agree. so colin is a way better actor then ben affleck. im responding to the post from alex about at least ben affleck got some credit under his belt but colin is hotter and a better actor and he is getting alot more movies then ben. so please did you see bens last movie with jay-lo called gigli. need i say more the movie sucked as hell and even the critics said the worst movie of the century. it only made 20 million in the theatres now thats sad.

[eyelessgame]

It's weird - I find myself thinking of my son, who (while he has zero sense of entitlement and actually has far too low an evaluation of his own abilities; he would never in a million years blame a teacher for a bad grade) writes a little like this, often has trouble understanding the main points of a book without prompting, is often extremely anxious about approaching someone to complain or request help, doesn't like to write, often fixates on idiosyncratic details, takes a lot of words to get to a point, sees each sentence as kind of an individual statement with only elementary connection to other sentences.

My son, however, isn't quite like your student. My son is eleven years old, and has Asperger's syndrome/high-functioning autism.

[Lunza]

What struck me about this note was that he kept referring to himself as a "very religious person," as if that meant something. I'm sick of people thinking that by being religious they've got an "in" with $deity, and that $deity will protect them from all inconvenience.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Well, a very religious hypocrite at any rate.

"I am a very religious man and I love every one but I will forward this letter to the head of your department so he can see that I am a serious student who does not deserve the grade you will give him because I write so very well."

I'm assuming that the writer isn't a religious Satanist, or something, because of his proclaimed extreme sensitivity to discomfort. Most other religions would have certain problems with the whole concept of trying to get the TA in trouble with the department as step 1. The writer gets it, of course, with that "but", but goes ahead anyway.

[Elatia Harris]

I'm no teacher and I got to this thread by accident. Love it. What I need to know is -- why has no one taught this young man that he need not be comfortable in order to learn when the importance of the material should override his mood and ambience? And, why has no one taught him that disputes settled not quite to his happiness are nonetheless disputes settled? You say he is 18? Then he is old enough to master the material at hand despite a little discomfort with the instructor and his way of wording things, to exit unbegrudgingly an argument he has not won, and to accept an unflattering grade. Sorry, but I see some real failures of pedagogy here.

[dead polar bear]

2 more points.

a. The student recognizes he's being a whiner, hence all the effort to say he's not. It's a text with a lot of internal stress, not to say distress.

b. The student's main subject is why he has not talked to the instructor and cannot, and let's take a moment to sympathize and extract the rational content of Bloix's post: instructors are generally more adept at language than most folks (this goes double for someone as smart as Scott); by contrast this student possibly wields a smaller vocabulary and set of rhetorical tools than the median student. Students *do*, especially weak students, often find it extremely intimidating and distressing to talk to instructors. When we say things to them that they don't understand, a lot of them, probably most of them, aren't bold enough to say "what does that mean?" -- instead they just think they're stupid.

To pick up on Elatia's point, the only way I've found to begin getting around this is to have a week at some early point in the term when they *all* have to come and visit you individually during office hours (which can be a big commitment of time). Then you work hard in that meeting to ask them about themselves and praise them for what's good in their work and generally get them comfortable talking to you. Even then, despite your efforts, a few of them will just look trapped and say "OK" a lot and ask if they can please go now.

Different students experience the same classroom in radically different ways.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

What is it with all the polar bears around here? If someone had told me three years ago that I'd be ... you catch my drift.

That said, the dead polar bear makes an excellent point: mandatory office hours early in the quarter -- I prefer to do mine before the first paper -- open up avenues of communication that would otherwise remain closed. This is especially true when they're told they need to come brainstorm with you, so that they see you work with them to develop an idea. Collaboration in that first set of office hours helps subtend the vibe I like to create in my classrooms: loose and groovy ... but with no question as to who the ultimate authority is. For the most part, I've been successful in this; but some students -- especially those who are frequently absent, or who don't follow the course-blog and thus can't follow the discussion when it touches on matters discussed there -- some students simply refuse to take responsibility for their own lack of effort. (That these are the same students who constantly talk about their sense of responsibility is the dullest of ironies.)

As to how different students experience the same classroom, well, that's one reason I started using course-blogs. Those brilliant, articulate students afraid to jump into the conversation gradually gain the confidence they need to speak by interacting with their peers online. That kid in the corner with the brilliant ideas befriends the loudmouth, feels comfortable enough to disagree, finds the nerve to speak up and all of the sudden that conversation from outside the class spills into it. Beautiful thing, that is.

[jacob]

Another good thing about mandatory office hours is that it forces you (that is, the instructor) to learn people's names. That's one of the hardest things for me to do as a TA, especially for the quiet ones, and getting them to come in early, individually, would really help with that.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Jacob, I drive my students nuts the first few days of class -- Liz, if you're still here, back me up on this -- by (1) circling the classroom, (2) repeating everyone's name the second anyone walks in the door and (3) demanding they sit in the same place all quarter. If they don't accede to (3), and they often don't, I insist on calling them the name of the person who sat where they're sitting ... which actually helps me to learn two names at once. My method of memorization comes from Giordano Bruno, via John Crowley: I imagine the students circled around me are a familiar room in my house, and I assign each of them an object, and then I know their names and become their favorite professor ever for understanding them as the individuals they earnestly believe themselves to be. (Or something.) But I do, in fact, use medieval mnemonics to ingratiate myself, and it works. (I should -- and will, shortly -- write a post about this, as it's much easier than Wikipedia's description makes it out to be. Believe you me, if an idiot like Y.T. can work it, so can you.)

[Liz Y.]

I'll concur on the driving your students nuts part. But I wouldn't say it actually stops after the first few days of class.

[Midwest Product]

The six paragraphs that comprise the message contain a grand total of three commas. That's got to be some sort of record, especially given that the first paragraph has two of the three.

I've been wondering, though, what became of the student's promise to forward the message to the head of the department? Was this promise/threat acted upon, and if so, what was the official response?