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[02rguy72]

First, I’d like to extend my most sincere apologies for posting here as a student. I’m just very upset about a situation which happened in class today and I am hoping to get some helpful insight from others on this board.

I am a nontraditional student (35 years old) attending a local community college. I am taking an eight week history course this summer to finish my general ed requirements and happily, I will start my electives this fall.

The professor teaching this particular course is a small, older woman in her 70s. She is very knowledgeable and I find her lectures fascinating. She always has a technical issue with any audio/visual equipment she uses and I help her resolve them whenever she asks me to. She cannot speak very loudly so it becomes difficult at times to hear what she is saying so I try to sit up front if there is a seat available. I feel badly for her because she cannot even stand long enough to teach the class so she lectures while sitting behind her desk.

Unfortunately, she has absolutely no control over the class. Students continue to talk and socialize even when she has started lecturing.  About half the class are ten to fifteen minutes late every class meeting. People walk in and out throughout the class period even though she gives us a ten minute break.

I find this all distracting, rude and disrespectful to both the professor and the other students in the class who actually want to learn something. Maybe I’m being overly hyper about it, but I am paying for school myself and have made a lot of sacrifices to (finally!) go back and finish my degree.

So, today the professor took some time to go over material which will be covered on the exam next week. I was trying to listen and take notes, but two girls sitting behind me decided that they were going to discuss what they planned on doing after class. They weren't even trying to whisper or be reasonably quiet. This continued until I finally turned around and asked if they wouldn't mind keeping it down so I could hear what was going on.

You would have thought I dropped a bomb! The girl became belligerent and loud. She told me that I had no right to tell HER what to do and that I needed to "get out (her) face!" Whatever! I turned around and tried to concentrate on the lecture, but the girl wouldn't let up and continued to insult me. I finally lost my cool by turning around and saying, loudly, “Excuse ME!”

I had had enough! I packed up my stuff, slapped my assignment on the professor’s desk and told the professor that she needs to control the class. She said that there isn't anything she can really do about it. I think she said something else but I was already out of the classroom by then.

I feel awful. I really feel that I treated the professor poorly in front of everybody by telling her that she needs to get control of the class. I feel guilty that I lost my cool and high-tailed out of there in a huff.

Should I call this professor and apologize? I want to let her know that I am sorry but I also want her to get some kind of control over the class out of fairness to those who want to be there and do well. I want to send her an email but she has already said that she really doesn’t “do email” and prefers to talk to student by phone or office hours. I hate to call her at home over this (she has her home number on the syllabus) but I am embarrassed to go face to face with her.

Sorry about my writing on this. I’m just upset now and not thinking clearly. Thank you for any valued input and for reading my ramble.

[notaprof]

Yes, actually you should apologize to the teacher and it sounds as if half the class should apologize as well but I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.  I don't know what to tell you about a class that is so out of control but if the teacher says she cannot do anything about all the disruptive students, well I hope other wise folks have a suggestion for you.  I have never seen a disruptive class managed by a student so I don't know what to tell you but if you could get your professor to post a question here, there will be lots of advice for her.  She has to manage the class.  Good luck though.

[bamabound]

I agree that you should apologize and it's obvious to you too, I'd imagine.  It's too bad you've been put into this position.

After that, you have three choices, as I see it:
1) Go back to class and hope your example shames the other students into submission.  If there are other like-minded students, perhaps you could band together. 
2) Complain to your advisor, counselor or other person at the U who you think might be amenable to your situation and give you advice and/or ideas on what could be done
3) Complain to the dean and hope the dean isn't too hard on the professor, whose job it is to control the class

Other members might have better ideas.  Good luck!

[conjugate]

Can you sit further from the two gossiphounds?  That might be the most efficient strategy.  Another possibility is to talk to another faculty member and see if that faculty member might not talk quietly to your professor about the situation in an effort to prevent you from having to take your complaint about a suitable learning environment to the dean.  That sounds like a threat, but really you are paying tuition for the opportunity to learn and the school is obligated to provide you with that opportunity. 

Front row center seat; if not, talk to another faculty member; if not either of those, you must take your complaint elsewhere.  I hope, for your teacher's sake, it does not come back to haunt her, but somehow you must see that the classroom becomes a place conducive to learning.

[voxprincipalis]

I feel awful. I really feel that I treated the professor poorly in front of everybody by telling her that she needs to get control of the class. I feel guilty that I lost my cool and high-tailed out of there in a huff.

Should I call this professor and apologize?

Yes. Are you sure you know what you are apologizing for? In saying this to her, you treated her with the same disrespect that the other students did. Yours just looks different.

I want to let her know that I am sorry but I also want her to get some kind of control over the class out of fairness to those who want to be there and do well. I want to send her an email but she has already said that she really doesn’t “do email” and prefers to talk to student by phone or office hours. I hate to call her at home over this (she has her home number on the syllabus) but I am embarrassed to go face to face with her.

She deserves an in-person apology. Your embarrassment is sort of the price you pay.

As for the issue of controlling the class, the professor's public admission of "there's not much I can do" is probably the single worst thing she could have said publicly, because now the troublemakers know that she can't/won't do anything to stop their behavior. I don't know what your institutional culture is like, but there are many schools at which students are treated like paying customers and so profs are actively discouraged from disciplining them or doing anything that will cause the customers to become upset. So when she says there's not much she can do, she may in fact just be saying that the institutional culture is out of her control. I don't know that, I'm just providing one possible explanation. You don't see things from her view and you don't know what she may already have dealt with in regards to the class. Additionally, yes, young people in their late teens and twenties can absolutely be very belligerent and I can imagine that as a woman in her 70s, your professor has neither the inclination nor the energy to engage in shouting matches with this kind of highly aggressive and attitude-laden student. In other words, you may wish she would do something, but it doesn't look likely that she will choose to or (more importantly) that it will work.

Regardless, solving this problem is not your concern. Your job is to manage your own educational experience. This translates to: Do all you can to get the most out of that class, including following the suggestions of other posters here about in-class options for seating. I'd also plan to meet regularly with the professor in her office hours to go over material you may not have processed fully in class. And if none of those work, then your responsibility to yourself is to remove yourself from the class. You can only control your own actions -- you cannot control your fellow classmates, and it is not your job to try to control the professor.

VP

[02rguy72]

Yes, VP. I know exactly why I should apologize to the prof. I am aware of the fact that I treated her poorly and disrespectfully in front of the class and that was wrong of me to do. My only lame excuse is that I was over tired from studying and working a lot lately.  My father was a high school principal turned college prof. ONCE I was disrespectful to a teacher in the seventh grade. She called home that night and there was hell to pay!

I had thought about calling my father about this situation but I am afraid he will rip me up one side and down the other for being disrespectful. I am hoping you folks will be nicer. (Grin.)

Yes, changing my seat will absolutely be in order for the rest of the class.

I want to resolve this with her without involving deans/advisors/other faculty members, etc. I don’t want her to deal with the hassle from me. I suspect that yes, the overall culture of the school is one of “the customer is always right.” Tuition just went up again, thanks to budget cuts. I have decided that I will give it one more semester before I look for other alternatives.

I will probably follow through with VP’s advice about meeting the prof during her office hours to get any materials I may have missed. However, I feel resentful having to do that because she cannot control the class. I am there, on time, every class meeting. I turn in all my assignments, and my grade so far is a solid A. Why should I have to take time out of my already busy schedule to get material that was already presented in class? Clarification for something that is not understood is one thing. Having to go to office hours because the class is unruly is another. Well, never mind. I will do what I have to do.

Thanks again for the advice. I found this board by accident and confess to being a lurker. I think it has actually made me a better student. 

[new_bus_prof]

Apologize to the instructor in person.

Go to the office to get what you may have missed.

Inform the instructor that she needs to do something about the constant talking/disruptions. Control of the classroom is a reasonable expectation. You are a paying customer too, so ask if someone is willing to sit in on the class (admin, dean, dept. chair, academic affairs) to notice the behavior in question. In several instances, having another authority figure in the room is enough to quiet the class down, but it does have its limitations.

[maybe]

Hello:

Don't be so hard on yourself.  You sound like a very thoughtful person and student, and it is really unfortunate that you are in this situation.  You are getting screwed, and it's not fair to you.  But remember:  the semester will soon end, so push on through and do whatever you need to get the most of this experience, and to get the best grade possible.  Really good students are able to learn even from really bad professors. 

Perhaps a lesson to take from this is to not sign up for a class unless you know something in advance about the professor who is teaching the course.  I always tell this to students:  don't sign up for a course without knowing something about the person who is teaching it.  Ask other students about the professor, or go and see this person to learn about their class and how they teach. 

I of course don't know your school, but I can say with some confidence that I am certain that there will be some thoughtful, hardworking teachers there who can control their classes.  Find out who they are before you enroll for your next semester. 

Advocate for yourself as much as possible. 

Good luck.

[asteria]

Allow me to take a different position:

OP, you been bullied. This professor (for whatever reason) has let her classroom become the middle school playground and you have been bullied by Miss 'Tude. It must have been terrible. But instead of confronting this girl/woman, you bullied the professor back. How nice.

Now I don't want you to be hard on yourself either, but let's face facts:

The girl who got in your face knew (or should have--I don't know which is worse) that the prof was doing exam review. She proceeds to talk loudly to her friend during this. This is 'look at me' behavior. When you told her to shut it, that was just the opportunity she was looking for to turn the classroom into the Miss 'Tude show. And you took it from her. And then instead of standing up for yourself, you railed against the professor.

Maybe you could have taken it from her and just slumped down in your seat for the rest of the semester. Hmm. Nahh.

Maybe you could have yelled back at her and become just as belligerent. But then you could have gotten in trouble.

Maybe you could have, grown man that you are, taken one for the team and yourself and let this girl threaten you, or throw something at you, or do something else to report her on, gotten her removed from the classroom yourself, and that would have improved everybody's experience. I would have egged her on, hoping she'd do something stupid. And she probably would have, or she would have shut up.

I guarantee a good deal of the classroom antics stems from this person, or her group.

Sure, the prof should be able to control the classroom. Sure, she could have done something to stop it. Of course it's not your responsibility to police the room. But coulda shoulda woulda won't get you anywhere. I think the real question is this: Why, when it becomes absolutely crystal clear that the professor isn't going to take care of the situation, why do students just shut down hopelessly. My question is, why did you take this sh*t from this girl?

[ideagirl]

Yes, apologize, but make sure when you do so you say what you said here:

She is very knowledgeable and I find her lectures fascinating....

Make sure she knows that you're really interested in the class, and that that's why it bothers you so much not to be able to hear. And then apologize profusely.

I also wonder if this prof could get a microphone. Is the class set up for that, i.e. does it have speakers? This might be something to discuss with an advisor--a la, "this class is fascinating but it's very hard to hear, so can we get Professor Fascinating a microphone?"

And finally, if she can't make people shut up during class, could she at least make a rule that those who aren't going to shut up need to sit further back than such-and-such row?

I do think she should be penalizing the talkers and the ones who arrive late or walk in and out of class--she should dock their grades for that--but that of course is not something you can control.

I also agree with the poster who asked, "why did you take this sh*t from this girl?" The person to "take it out on" was the girl--"take it out on" is in quotes because obviously I'm not saying you should've gotten into a fight. The best response, both from a likelihood of success standpoint and from a cover your own ass standpoint, probably would've been to speak clearly and perhaps loudly to this girl (but not yelling), saying something to the effect of, "I am paying to take this class. We're all paying to take this class. And some of us are trying to learn something here. If you don't want to learn, then go talk outside--don't impose your own bad attitude on the rest of us."

You probably would've won over a lot of students to your side, and perhaps Miss 'Tude would've flipped out and gotten herself in trouble (i.e., thrown something or otherwise been so grossly inappropriate that you and the new allies you'd just won could easily report her to the dean and get her ass taken care of).

[grasshopper]

Apologize to the instructor in person.

Go to the office to get what you may have missed.

Inform the instructor that she needs to do something about the constant talking/disruptions. Control of the classroom is a reasonable expectation. You are a paying customer too, so ask if someone is willing to sit in on the class (admin, dean, dept. chair, academic affairs) to notice the behavior in question.

What the... ?

"Inform the instructor"? You make it sounds like he's her boss, because he pays her salary.

"You are a paying customer too"? Do you have any idea what you're talking about? You're advising the OP to march up and bully the professor. Does any of this sound reasonable to you?

I'm shocked to hear someone who isn't 18 and wearing sweatpants with "Juicy" written across the butt make a statement like this. Education is not some product that the OP is buying. There are diploma mills for that.


OP, Ideagirl is right about the bullying. And if there are a lot of students who talk through the prof's lecture's, she's probably not the only one. The prof is not going to control the class, so you've got three choices: deal with the noise level as is (make us of office hours, sit away from the loud talkers, etc), control the noise level yourself (maybe find others who are annoyed by the talkers to support you when you ask them to shut the hell up), or drop the course.

[maybe]

Maybe you could have, grown man that you are, taken one for the team and yourself and let this girl threaten you, or throw something at you, or do something else to report her on, gotten her removed from the classroom yourself, and that would have improved everybody's experience. I would have egged her on, hoping she'd do something stupid. And she probably would have, or she would have shut up.


Sure, the prof should be able to control the classroom. Sure, she could have done something to stop it. Of course it's not your responsibility to police the room. But coulda shoulda woulda won't get you anywhere. I think the real question is this: Why, when it becomes absolutely crystal clear that the professor isn't going to take care of the situation, why do students just shut down hopelessly. My question is, why did you take this sh*t from this girl?

I disagree that this is "the real question."  And I don't think the student should be reprimanded for not taking "sh*t from the girl."

Why, when it becomes absolutely crystal clear that the professor isn't going to take care of the situation, why do students just shut down hopelessly.

Some answers: 
     1) Because they do not feel comfortable behaving authoritatively.
     2) Because they do not feel as if they should have to reprimand other students. 
    3) Because they do not feel safe.
    4) Because the authority figure in the room, who has abandoned them, is not setting any kind fo example for the student to follow. 
   5) Because students don't go to COLLEGE to police classrooms. 
   6) Because the student has no experience, interest in, or training in controlling classrooms....

Ok, so the OP should have handled the situation in the spur of the moment differently. Fine (but does anyone think that the student should not have told the teacher to control the classrom?).  The OP should never have been put in this situation.  The student, here, in my opinion, is not obliged to either control the classroom or to defend him/herself or the other students.

The real question, to me, is:  why doesn't the teacher control the classroom?

For the OP, the question, to me, is:  now that I'm stuck in a crappy class, how am I going to make the best of it? 

For whatever reasons:  the teacher is not respecting her students enough to provide them with a suitable and safe environment.  It's not the student's job to do this for her.

Finally, I am a bit perplexed by what seems like a lack of sympathy for the student.

[dr_dre]

Fine (but does anyone think that the student should not have told the teacher to control the classrom?).   

Are you kidding? A student should not "tell" a professor to do anything. Ever. He might have tried suggesting something during office hours, at his discretion. But to attempt to reprimand a professor in front of the class? Inexcusable.

The professor sounds ineffective in that classroom, from the student's report. That's unfortunate. But two wrongs still do not make a right.

[grasshopper]

Fine (but does anyone think that the student should not have told the teacher to control the classrom?).   

Are you kidding? A student should not "tell" a professor to do anything. Ever. He might have tried suggesting something during office hours, at his discretion. But to attempt to reprimand a professor in front of the class? Inexcusable.

Yes, and another example of bullying.

The real question, to me, is:  why doesn't the teacher control the classroom?

Pondering that question is not going change the student's situation. Getting the yackers to shut up will.

[kedves]

OP, you seem to have a problem controlling your temper.  Because this has been a problem for you in this class, it might be a problem beyond this class.  If so, I'm going to suggest a couple of things:

*  Watch a few episodes of "The Dog Whisperer."  That might sound like strange advice, but it can help you learn how to create a mood and change an interpersonal dynamic with your body and voice.  Cesar Milan's mantra of "calm, assertive energy" is powerful.
*  Recognize the boundaries between your role and other people's. 
*  Think about who you want to be.  You want to be a mature, considerate individual; that's why you feel remorse now.  In situations where you have been or feel you have been wronged, remember to stop and think:  Do I want to be a person who X or a person who Y?   
*  Learn to recognize your own moods.  Write some things inside your notebook cover to read when you feel yourself becoming flustered, anxious, or angry--to keep you from getting to your personal edge.

Good luck to you.