RateMyProfessors.com

I have been pwned by many disgruntled students at RateMyProfessors.com

This teacher is the most boring teacher i ever taken he only gives u 5 essays to do. however he grades hard so make sure ur essay is good. i wont ever take him again too too boring all we did was read at home and go to class and talked about the story we read i don't recommend him at all.

Maybe I need to wear more flair. I am sarcastic (see previous sentence), professional, cruel, easy-going, too hard, easy, I return papers slowly, and I return papers quickly. I have a zero rating on my Hotness Total.

My online students are particularly peeved, and have more to complain about. I got into the Distance Ed thing after other profs had established turf rights to the regular semester fiction (2342)sections, so I teach what's called second start. It begins six weeks later than the regular semester, so students don't get their first grades back until close to the "drop" deadine. I teach three of these sections, which means I begin with 96 students in just those three classes. My other three classes (1301 comp/1302 rhetoric) are face-to-face and begin during the regular start date. I usually have about 60-70 students in those at first. I spend about 20-30 minutes grading each essay (which is slow), so I am slow to get essays back. The online students are justified in being frustrated. The only ways I could get them back more quickly would be to pull all-nighters (not going to happen) or to grade each essay more quickly (not going to happen). Online enrollment numbers, for me, drop substantially after a few weeks.

The hand written EOI's (evaluation of instruction) I get routed back to me from my f-t-f students are, oddly, all positive. Every single one of them. I think my department chair must be weeding out the bad ones to boost my self-esteem.

George Will on Education

"Where Paternalism Makes the Grade"

Paternalism is the restriction of freedom for the good of the person restricted.
. . . . . . .
Unfortunately, powerful factions fiercely oppose the flourishing. Among them are education schools with their romantic progressivism -- teachers should be mere "enablers" of group learning; self-esteem is a prerequisite for accomplishment, not a consequence thereof. Other opponents are the teachers unions and their handmaiden, the Democratic Party. Today's liberals favor paternalism -- you cannot eat trans fats; you must buy health insurance -- for everyone except children. Odd.

All we need to do, you see, is to apply this administration's philosophy of the unitary executive (greater empowerment of a benign and protecting leader at the expense of civil liberties) to the classroom. This authoritarian model will make up for what Will sees as an epidemic lack of qualified teachers in the country. In his example, he suggests mandatory uniforms, the prohibitions against jewelry, makeup, slouching, holidays, etc., are responsible for student success, and casually notes that the teachers at this school are from places like "Harvard, Dartmouth, Oberlin, Columbia, Berkeley, Brown and Wesleyan."

I've been in the dysfunctional high schools of inner-city Houston, especially those in the low-income northeast side, and the campuses look like prisons. The kids wear uniforms. There are plenty of security gaurds, assistant principals walk around with bull horns, and the teachers' main priority is discipline. The teachers are not from Harvard and Dartmouth. Just maybe, more capable teachers than those we have could be drawn into education by paying them salaries comparable to those of other valued professions.

Most educators, even while they quarrel among themselves, will agree that a genuine commitment to any one of a number of different solutions could help enormously. Most agree that although money can't by itself solve problems, without money few problems can be solved. Money also can't win wars or put men in space, but it is the crucial facilitator. It is also how America has traditionally announced, We are serious about this!

If we were serious, we would raise teachers' salaries to levels that would attract the best young professionals in our society: starting lawyers get from $70,000 to $80,000 [in 1993]-why don't starting kindergarten teachers get the same? Is their role in vouchsafing our future less significant? And although there is evidence suggesting that an increase in general educational expenditures doesn't translate automatically into better schools, there is also evidence that an increase aimed specifically at instructional services does. Can we really take in earnest the chattering devotion to excellence of a country so wedded in practice to mediocrity, a nation so ready to relegate teachers--conservators of our common future--to the professional backwaters?

George Will is not serious. Barber's essay is a classic, and worth a read.

Molly Ivors on Distance Ed

"I've Got My Notebooks And I'm Going Back". Her husband, Thers, teaches English, like me. He and his wife share that Whisky Fire blog. He's hilarious, and you should check him out.

Anyhow, I teach DE for half my classes.

Lawsuit Claim: Students' Lecture Notes Infringe on Professor's Copyright

Interesting. I used these types of notes a few times when I went to UT Austin. I felt mildly unethical about it, but it sure opened up my schedule. The notes were cheap and much better than if I had taken them myself. I am a lousy note-taker, and usually rely more on memory. I do annotate a fair amount when I read something closely.

As a teacher, I understand the desire to have students in class. My classes are small: 32 students or less at the beginning of semester, and smaller after the first few weeks. There is no market for notes for small classes. But even in a large class, discussion can be dynamic, and a teacher has a right to expect a student's attendance.

The related problem the article brings up is summaries. Instead of reading an assigned novel or story, the student goes online to Sparknotes, Cliffsnotes, enotes, or some other site that breaks the work down systematically. Or, they go to one of a million essay sites and download an essay. The summaries seem to be under the gun in this lawsuit, which I am happy to hear. It would be a good thing if more students read a novel or two before they graduated from college.