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[penguin]

Hi everyone,
      I just finished up teaching my first semester as a TA. Since I've been a coach for 10 years or so and a math tutor on and off for a similar amount of time, I felt like even though there would always be room for improvement, things were going well. Students who came to my office hours and tutoring hours always expressed that their questions were being answered and there were many repeat customers. I thought that it sounded positive -- I certainly wouldn't return if a tutor was not helpful since there are many tutor choices in this particular calculus course.

Anyways, please forgive the lack of brevity :) Evaluations were way more negative than I expected. I read everything on this site about past topics and I now know how to improve things in the future. (Mid-semester evaluations etc.) The ideas were very good. But I'm still having a hard time knowing what the consequences of the bad evaluations are.

80% of the comments were not relevant to me. They were things about the test design, which I don't have any authority over. (The class is coordinated by a faculty member and many TAs teach individual lectures.) About 5 comments (out of 70) were positive things about being helpful and or just "teacher was good" and one extremely positive one about being helpful and essential to his success in the class. About 7 were very negative. One guy went on a rant about how I couldn't work a fraction correctly so how could I teach calculus. There was a small error because of the myopic view and trying to copy down the multiplication of a fraction which was corrected and didn't require more than 60 seconds to fix in one of the first lectures.

Other responses were : "incompetent", "didn't know what she was doing and it showed", "wish I had someone else".

I value accuracy in my professors and strive to avoid little errors as much as possible. In my upper level graduate classes the professors have these little errors too and no one seems worked up over it. They correct it and we move on. But it seems that just a few errors (3-4 small notational errors at most out of 48 hrs of lectures) has really opened the floodgates of negativity. Face to face, I have received about 15 students complimenting my clarity and how I broke down things step by step.)

These were business students trying to get through a required calculus class they hated. I understood that. I also had no influence over the curve or the exams so I couldn't perform any grade inflation and 20% are expected to fail according to the course coordinator. I fear that the tendency for students to be negative about a course they weren't well suited for may interfere with my opportunities to teach in the future. I love teaching and genuinely enjoy helping students understand and think about strategies to approach problems. I believe in what I do and I know that I can help students succeed, but I know that I can't please everyone. I just don't know how to deal with the fact that I can't seem to help but really piss off people.

Can anyone help? Your input would be so incredibly appreciated. Sorry this is so long. This is really eating me up inside. Thank you so much for reading.

Jenna

[daniel_von_flanagan]

There's not much you can do about a badly-written evaluation form that does not carefully separate questions about the class overall from questions about the TA.

As for the coments that are on your teaching...you have discovered that working one-on-one with students in a tutoring framework does not teach you how to get up in front of a room full of students and communicate how to work these problems.  Nobody expects you to know how to teach as a new student (hence the "A" in "TA"), this is one of the skills you need to learn in your program.

To that end, someone from your department, either the graduate coordinator or the professor for whom you are a TA, should be willing to sit in on your class, give you some suggestions, and see whether you are making any obvious tactical errors. Similarly, experienced/popular older TAs might let you sit in on their sections (I found this quite useful as a student).

One thing I have found my TAs doing when I observe them is getting nervous and defensive over small mistakes they make, either trying to hide them or getting obviously flustered.  I think that undergraduates react badly to this reaction.  Try to roll with such mistakes, use them as an example of how to catch errors in work and of how apparently-minor algebra glitches can render easy problems difficult, make jokes about the more stupid of the mistake, and so on.  This will get easier as you teach more, since you will get to know more of the kind of errors students often make and become better at using your own solutions as ways to point out such traps. - DvF

[penguin]

Thanks for your input Daniel. Those sound like very good ideas that I will certainly continue to expand upon. When a mistake was made I tried to keep it casual, quickly apologized and just continued to move on. Sometimes I would joke that being sleep deprived is not good for doing math. Thanks for the suggestions.

Sadly, the semester and course is over so there is no room to rectify any of the comments. As candidly as I can self evaluate, I feel that I'm not as bad/unclear as the negative comments make me out to be. One student of mine brought his friend who was enrolled in another section because he felt my lectures were helpful. He later told me his friend commented that he thought I was a good teacher. I don't want to come off as arrogant either though, and will constantly seek to improve. I still am worried that the bad comments will outweight the good and I won't be given another opportunity to teach.

Thanks for letting me know observing other teachers was helpful to you. I've been timid about asking to watch a lecturer who gets great feedback, but will go do it now.

[gaeta]

Remember, Penguin, that many students that respond negatively in their evaluations make the mistake of conflating their views about the coordination of the class (or their hatred of math, or their own low test scores, etc.), with their views about your teaching.

If there are legitimate complaints about the textbook, the coordinator should look into the issue a bit more.

I would only be concerned if there were specific negative comments about your teaching that repeatedly referenced the same thing (for example, your syllabus is disorganized, you don't get things corrected quickly enough, etc.).

All that being said, I agree with Daniel that you should talk to a mentor about ways you can improve. Although you will never be able to get rid of all negative evaluations, there is much you can do to get more positive ones.

And by all means, visit other people's classes once in awhile, particularly those who you know are considered to be very good teachers. You will pick up many, many new ideas.

Good luck!

[grasshopper]

But I'm still having a hard time knowing what the consequences of the bad evaluations are.

Most likely, nothing. Honestly. Unless you're applying for tt jobs next year, and these are the only evals you'll have, they'll be garbage fodder before you know it.

I know it sucks to have bad evals, but don't let it eat you up inside. So much of it has nothing to do with you. Honestly. Chances are that you're not making people pissy; calculus is making people pissy. And why wouldn't it? It is calculus, after all.

One thing I'd suggest thinking about is the difference between teaching to majors and teaching to people who aren't in the discipline. I haven't quite figured that one out yet, myself, so I don't have any helpful tips for you. But I know that there is a difference, and I know that there are tricks to making it work. We just have to find them.

[profesoracr]

A few things I've found that have helped (for future classes):

1.)  Before you hand them the evaluation form, ask for specific feedback regarding your teaching:  things they found helpful, things they didn't find helpful, etc.

2.)  Most of the classes I taught as a grad student were coordinated, so I didn't have any control over anything.  When I noticed that I was getting a lot of negative feedback about things I couldn't change, I mentioned when I handed out evals that they were welcome to comment on any aspect of the course and that I would address their concerns (if appropriate) with the course coordinator, but that I most valued their feedback about my teaching.  This seemed to help keep the comments more constructive and also get the feedback I wanted.

3.)  If you teach the class again, you'll know the quirks.  Use this knowledge to your advantage: tell students what past students found difficult so they know that it will be difficult (and will be pleasantly surprised if it's easier).  Now you can anticipate their complaints (in future classes) and be proactive about resolving them before they occur.  They may or may not take your advice, but they'll remember that you warned them (in other words, they won't blame you if you they do poorly on an exam or in the class).

Regarding the math stuff, I've never been in a class where a professor or TA didn't make little mistakes for one reason or another, and for some reason, it seems that students really harp on this.  I'm not a math person, but it might help to take a proactive approach from the first day and let them know that even the most brilliant number-crunchers occasionally copy a number wrong (or something to that effect), so if they notice that you're not caffeinated enough, to please let you know.  But math people might have different thoughts on this. 

Again, I'm not really familiar with your field, but I think most disciplines wouldn't write someone off after one semester of teaching. 

If you have nice e-mails or evals from students thanking you for being helpful, reread them, and maybe print one or two and put it on a bulletin board.    When I get bad evals, I tend to focus on the negative, and that just makes me feel worse.  It helps to balance that out by focusing on things that you know you do well, and then addressing constructive comments from the evals later, when it doesn't sting so much.

For what it's worth, I just finished my first semester teaching at a new place; I have quite a bit of teaching experience and have been rated an excellent teacher by students almost every semester for the last 4 years, but I still got bashed this semester (including one student who said that I sucked as a teacher, which I've never heard before...not even my first semester teaching w/no experience whatsoever).  I'm taking it with a grain of salt, using the strategies I mentioned, and hoping this semester will be better.  Hang in there: the more experience you get, the better you get, and you also develop thicker skin so nasty and unhelpful comments don't bother you as much. 

[bamabound]

I consider myself an "inexperienced" teacher so I don't have many tips, but I suggest keeping a "kudos" file and reading it when you read your evals.  Keep in this file other evals and emails that are positive.

Also, if the evaluation form is misleading or evaluates things beyond your control, perhaps you could attach an addendum which more accurately rates areas that are important to you.  If your evaluations are unchangable (like ours, which are online) perhaps you could hand out another evaluation mid-semester. 

Someone else gave me this tip:  I offer 5 extra credit points for a completed eval. (Ours are optional.)  This skews the results toward students who care about their grades enough to go online to complete the evaluations.  (The evals are still "blind" but the students are able to prove to me that they went into the survey.) 

I also agree with profesoracr suggestion to ask for specific, constructive feedback.

Hang in there.  My first evals were scary-awful, but my most recent set were great!

[penguin]

Thank you for all of the input! This is the first time the school has used online evals. But in the future I want to do mid semester evals just to collect and address feedback for myself. I'm trying to understand that my lack of power in a class coordinated by someone else and the dept demands (business majors are so furious over having to learn integrals) does play a part. But I'm ready to take responsibility to improving things as well.

Profesacr's idea (in addition of the other good suggestions) about addressing the inevitability of a chalkboard "typo" sounds really helpful. Thanks!

I'm meeting with the coordinator tommorow to schedule something unrelated, but I asked him if I could get his input. It's a little intimidating because he gets ridiculously great evaluations considering the nature of the course (business major weeder class). Crossing my fingers its not as scary as I imagine...

[grasshopper]

Would you rather get advice from someone who gets bad evals? heh.

[englitprof]

One thing that was useful for me as a grad student was that my dept. provided comparative, anonymous statistics of evaluation scores for certain items (those that pertained directed to us as teachers).  My own individual section would be indicated with an arrow or asterisk or something, and I could see where I fell in relation to everyone else who was teaching that course (or similar courses) that semester.

This may not work in your case, but it might be worthwhile to ask the coordinator, if he knows, what "typical" evaluations look like for this course.