Monday, August 11, 2008

Do you hold your breath?

When you get ready to read your course evaluations? I do. Even if I think a class went well and am happy with my students' overall performance, I'm still oddly affected by even one harsh or cruel comment--like a punch in the stomach. I don't get them often (and usually have a good guess as to which student made the comment, especially if they make the same grammatical errors that I've seen all term in their papers), but they still are like a right hook out of left field. (How's that for mixing metaphors?)

Anyway, just read my comments from summer school, and there were no sour grapes or right hooks. Instead, I got:

Great teacher. I really enjoyed the structure of class. Being able to discussed what we read was a big help in understanding the material. I think that I also learned more critical reading skills in understanding complex material.

and

Professor Dion was an amazingly effective teacher and really helped explain complex material that I never would have understood on my own. I felt like I was really learning beneficial and pertinent material in this class that would help me in the ''real world.'' This course was challenging but also very rewarding!

and

I felt like I learned a lot in the course without the addition of unnecessary stress. In other words, though the material was challenging and the reading was time consuming, it seemed very proportional to what I was actually getting out of the class.

That just goes to show that students sometimes do want to learn and like to be challenged, at least at Tech anyway.

I'm just relieved because these will be my last set of course eval scores to be added to my tenure packet.

posted by Michelle @ 9:59 AM,

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