next »

[amyamy]

Owing to some misfortune I bumped into a student's blog while I was surfing the internet for some materials.  I found out some unfair statements which she made about my course and my teaching style (like describing my voice in a derogatory way, and my powerpoint materials as poorly designed).  While I shrug at her irresponsibility, I also marvel at how people react to the same stuff differently, because no one had ever criticized my voice before, and some students actually complimented on my use of powerpoints in the past. Even the class she's in, I have received a dozen of complimentary emails (which I doubt are entirely hypocritical) from her peers, which led me to (falsely) believe that everyone loved me (!)

Tell me your experience. Is it true that no matter how devoted you are, some students will never appreciate what you've done for them and act as if they have "decided" to hate you?

While the majority of the class are responsive, this particular student has never responded to my questions; she always sat with her own friends (2-3 people). Her work has been of rather low standard compared with the others'.

I found something rather funny: there is a very smart (and quite good-looking) male student in the class. This girl actually wrote about him in her blog, in a favourable way.  Yet as a female professor I have noticed something which I need not have noticed: since she has acted rather introvert, she never seized the chance to speak to this guy, who is quite friendly to most of other students, and very responsive in my class.

Is it possible that some students tend to turn their professors into scapegoat, on which they release all their frustration?

[yemaya]

Is it possible that some students tend to turn their professors into scapegoat, on which they release all their frustration?

From my experience, and that of colleagues, this is not at all uncommon.  There will always be a percentage of the population of the student body in general who have not learned to accept that their actions have consequences or any sense of personal responsibility.  I had one that I wrote about in another post (accused me of liberal bias when he'd utterly failed to follow directions - wrote a too-short paper on the wrong book, among other things).  I had another in that same class who just didn't do the work and chose to blame me for her poor grade.  The reality was that she was lazy, none to bright and obnoxious to boot.   

[dr_evil]

But, her poor grade couldn't possibly be her fault! 

Gee, I can't even type that with a straight face. 

Tell me your experience. Is it true that no matter how devoted you are, some students will never appreciate what you've done for them and act as if they have "decided" to hate you?

Yes, there are always some that feel the need to blame someone else for their problems.  In class, it's usually us. :(  I've had students claim that I need to "learn how things are done," that I expect them to be rocked scientists and, the best (or worst, depending on one's perspective) for out-right lying, that I am unavailable outside of class.

[cc_alan]

About a year ago I had a student who was doing poorly in my class.

I know, I know... that never happens to you, right?

Anyway, he was complaining to his lab instructor that he just didn't see how chemistry applied to agriculture and I wasn't doing anything in class to "make it real" for him.

When the lab instructor told me what he had said I started laughing. On the first day I specifically talked about how chemistry and agriculture relate.

"Maybe he wasn't there on the first day."

Well, in class we were working through a numerical agriculture problem about soluble fertilizers in class and why it was important. And this was the week he complained to his lab instructor.

Alan

[dogstar]

Tell me your experience. Is it true that no matter how devoted you are, some students will never appreciate what you've done for them and act as if they have "decided" to hate you?

  Yes. But at least she considers you important enough to complain to the world about! ;)

   One way to look at it is the Captain Jack Sparrow "Pirates of the Caribbean" way:

  British sailor: "You're the worst pirate I've ever heard of!"
  Jack Sparrow: "Ah! But you *have* heard of me!"

[zenprof]

Tell me your experience. Is it true that no matter how devoted you are, some students will never appreciate what you've done for them and act as if they have "decided" to hate you?

Yes, that's true; but you can't let thatsort of thing matter---don't do this for the thanks in it because there are so few! Or rather, if you do this hoping for student appreciation, you may or may not get what you want (and lots of times won't). But if you do this for its own sake, to make sure the material comes before another generation well and fully, then you can't fail to get what you want.  This idea and having tenure are two things that have helped me not care about student evals anymore. I just assume they can't possibly know enough to evaluate properly what I'm doing---all they can evaluate is their own experience of it, which is necessarily limited and partial. (A Plato's cave sort of idea.)  So it's fine---they can say or think whatever ridiculous stuff they want about me.  Used to bug me a lot more, though. When you stop thinking of it in terms of your devotion to them, your personal vibe with them, their liking of you, etc, and in a more general sense of simply concentrating on doing your own best work in the world regardless of who's there to appreciate it or not, then strangely, the evals zoom up.
z

[j_source]

After teaching for a quarter century, I know that some students bring baggage to class that we can't even guess at.  I've read thousands of student course evals over the years as an administrator and even the best teachers get occasional students who hate the class, hate the prof personally, hate the book, think the prof is picking on them, think the prof is playing favorites, or hate some other aspect of the class.  Who knows what their thinking or projecting on us?  Let it go.  You should start taking the comments seriously if the issue becomes a pattern in evals over several courses and several semesters.

[kecko]

Like others have said, I wouldn't worry too much. This past term, I had a class of 34 students. 33 of them gave me perfect, 5/5 teaching eval scores. One gave me the lowest possible. I can't even think who or why or what I'd done to upset one person, but I just figured 3% of students don't like my teaching style. Whatever. You will never, ever please everyone.

[rattusdomesticus]

On another note, in my first few years of teaching college, I found that I was often bothered by the few that didn't like me. Whether it was a colleague, student, or staff member, I often went over the circumstances in my head again and again. What could I have done to offend them? What could I do to earn their positive view? Finally I realized that this is draining and non-productive (as well as a reflection of low self-esteem gleaned from my bad upbringing). Now I focus on the ones that do respond, try to clean up my side of the street if I've offended, and forget the rest. Not everyone is going to like me. Some will. End of story.

Oh, and I read RMP very infrequently (about once a year) just to find out if I'm completely off track with students. More often and I get depressed. Besides, it is a terribly inaccurate tool; peer and student evals are probably more useful simply because those judging have to be accountable. And these can be included in an application packet whereas RMP is mostly ranting (and almost no raving) about instructors anyway.