Monday, March 26, 2007

When You Know Students Don't Like You

Not all students, but every semester, there are those students who don't find one charming or brilliant or interesting or funny. After the first year on this job, I realized there would always be those students. I've come to accept it. I don't need them all to like me.

But.

That doesn't make it easier when you know the students who aren't into you. You know they will give you crap evaluations that bring down the numbers (something that does matter, which sucks, especially when one gets oodles of great comments and ratings from those who aren't haters)

I've identified two of the haters already this semester, if not a third. And I know there's nothing I can do to stop the carnage. It sucks so bad. So, so bad.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is random but you mentioned evals and we've discussed this before and I realized this semester that my university's form doesn't ask them to assess my level of knowledge.

MommyProf said...

I am trying asking, point blank, "Why are you not engaging with the class. What would make the class more meaningful for you?"

I'll let you know how it works.

Unknown said...

I totally feel you on this - sometimes the haters are less obvious than others - but they're there...

My husband once told me about 2 crazily low ratings in an otherwise glowing set of evals that "these are just statistical outliers - we always disregard these". Why can't English Depts. be like Economics Depts??