Thursday, February 21, 2008

In Which I Take Down Last Night's Post about Teaching

Because I hated its tone of complaint. I'll write a real post about teaching and gender at some point in which I can describe in a less bitchy way what my experience has been, but for now I'm taking what I wrote last night down because while I suppose it's fine, it's not really how I want to talk about this issue.

9 comments:

zombieswan said...

Well, I usually fret over a few posts, but I don't have your readership so I leave them down. And since it HAS happened that something you've written has been taken as though you mean it to be The Gospel According To and argued "straw man" style about how Crazy you really are, I can understand your reluctance to let something not exactly what you want to stay up. :)

Me, I tend to just feel bad that no one is reading me, ever, at the same time that I don't actually want the attention, too. Me: the schizo conflicted blogger. :)

New Kid on the Hallway said...

I thought it was an interesting post, though I can understand changing your mind about it (not that you were bitchy or anything!). I think I read someone else recently talking about the same thing, and it's an important issue. I think I've been an equal opportunity offender, mostly, but at Former College I did run into a little bit of what you're talking about. It wasn't quite the same - I usually get told I'm a really nice person but suck as a teacher - but I found that some of the women students really wanted me to be an authoritative man telling them what to think, and they considered my emphasis on class discussion a failure of my teaching, that I made them "teach each other" instead of "doing my job." Not the same dynamic you were describing, exactly, but definitely gendered.

Rokeya said...

Piggy-backing on NK's comment, I also do a lot of small group discussion/student discussion leader type activities. I recall one student writing on an eval that the "teacher should teach more," and this was a male student (could tell who he was by his handwriting). Interesting how that works. He seemed like a pretty orthodox type guy, though--like he wanted his English classes to be a cross between Dead Poet's Society and a Shakespearean drama class. Whatever. :)

life_of_a_fool said...

I agree with the others -- I think it was an interesting and important post, but I can understand -particularly with some of the responses you've gotten in the past -- why you'd want to take it down. I look forward to a new post, in a tone with which you're satisfied.

Dr. Curmudgeon said...

Sorry I missed it. Sounds like an interesting topic. I've been thinking a lot about gender/ethnicity questions in terms of hiring, so it would've been good, I think, to have seen thoughts on a related but different subject.

Sisyphus said...

I hope you didn't get some attacking comments again, Dr. Crazy!

I have had similar experiences with the gendering of my eval comments --- and the additional problem (similar to rokeya's) that when I do the more "student-centered" or group-work oriented activities that all the pedagogical research claims are more effective for teaching, I get slammed with comments about it being too "high school." Grumph.

helenesch said...

I'm sorry I missed it, too! And I'm teaching a course that might be similar to yours in terms of topic (though I'm approaching it from a different discipline).

Dr. Crazy said...

I didn't get any crazy comments about it or anything.... I just realized it wasn't really what I wanted to write and so took it down. Or it was *kind of* what I wanted to write but it wasn't quite there. It's rare that I take posts down, but when I read it this morning, I just wasn't into it.

But never fear! A different post about the same issues will be forthcoming in the coming days!

Thanks for the comments, everybody :)

The_Myth said...

Aw...I thought you hit on some important issues!

I hope your reformulation fits better with what you really intend to say!

You know, in retrospect, it almost felt like it needed 2 separate posts. The things you talked about truly are some of the "hot button" issues academics face semester after semester. The same questions, the same things that make us go "Hmm..."