Five things to do with your evaluations...

How I wish that were the title of a borderline profane YouTube video, but alas, it is merely advice from the Chronicle of Higher Education. If we take evaluations seriously, how do we incorporate the actionable suggestions into our next round of teaching? The main suggestion I gleaned from my evaluations is that I need to teach this class a few more times, which the Lord and my college's administration willing, I will. Ta-daahh!

Inspiration

In response to my Facebook post about my recent teaching evaluations, my dear friend James McKenna shared these thoughts:

"After many years of teaching, however frustrating, for some odd reason (maybe for our own good) it's not the students who love you that seem to matter, but rather its the one that doesn't, that seems to matter most. And while over time you gain some pitiful abstract, intellectual understanding ... suggesting that it may well be their, and not your problem..somehow, it STILL really hurts. But you know, it's just a wonderful reflection of how seriously we all take our privileged positions..to try however unlikely to be perfectly and equally relevant and 'on point' to meet the intellectual and psychological needs of every, single student we teach. A true sign of eventual maturity for which I continue to aspire in this domain comes when you can still feel very proud, indeed, more than satisfied if not joyous for the overwhelming number of your students you have touched and who have touched you, and when you realize just how much you actually did for them which, as it turns out, is what all of your most treasured and wonderful professors did for you. It proves to be a kind of realization that is life sustaining, and life fulfilling."

Jim McKenna: anthropologist, teacher, role model

Dear Professor, you suck.

I received my first student evaluations at my new job. Overall I'm pleased and relieved and will be completely comfortable having my department chair see them, but there was that ONE evaluation that really sticks in my craw. I'm sure you are familiar with the phenomenon: the outliers that can drown out all the rest. What is it about that ONE apple that spoils the batch of what are generally some pretty nice apples?

Again, I turn to a Chronicle of Higher Education forum to lighten the mood: Let's play "What's the Nastiest Evaluation Comment this Semester?" Will you be a contender?