When Students Grade the Teacher

I taught college English from the age of 24 until I was three times the age of my students. I estimate that in those 30 years, I taught about 5,000 students and graded at least 20,000 essays. So I assessed a lot of student work. But what I want to talk about today is student assessment of me.

I’m vain about my teaching ability and even had my big ego propped up by peer evaluations—so it’s not easy for me to admit that my student evaluations over the years were less than stellar, were, in fact, quite mixed. As one personnel committee report phrased it, I tended “to sharply polarize student opinion.”

My six years of teaching at Western Carolina University generated 27 reviews at ratemyprofessors.com, four times the typical number. Many of the evaluations I’ll quote from can be verified at this site, including this one: “hard grader, boring speaker, not clear in feedback, expects alot [sic], overall THE DEVIL.” This comment is one of my favorites because of the surprise twist at the end. Traditionally, “expects a lot” was considered a positive attribute for a teacher, so its placement right before “overall THE DEVIL” caught me off guard. I admire the comic misdirection.

Sometimes it’s hard to know how to interpret criticisms. Another teacher I know once received the feedback that he was “too helpful.” My stepson, who taught college physics, earned a similar complaint: “He won’t stop trying to help you until you completely understand how to solve the problem.” Yes, this comment was in the criticisms section and not intended as praise. One student assessment of me reported that I made “too much eye contact.” Translation: He tries to keep us involved, won’t let us daydream, text, or otherwise goof off. Two of my .com raters warned that I “never cancel class—ever.” Translation: He never canceled class—ever. That this should be considered worthy of a warning says something about our students, and about my colleagues, too, I suppose.

Students’ most persistent complaint about me was that my grading standards were too high. “High” is my word; their words were “harsh,” “strict,” and “unfair.” Consider these assessments:
“If you want to try hard and make nothing better than a C than [sic] this is your professor.”
“If you want to make nothing better than a C on every paper, then take his class.”
“As many of the other reviews have said here, if you want to work yourself to death and make a C, then this class is the one for you.”

Ignoring for the moment how these comments plagiarize each other, what we see is that the most common specific student lament was that they were earning only a “C” in my class. Those earning a “D” or an “F” were not the ones complaining. Many, many of my students seemed to regard the “C” grade as cruel and insulting, a punishment, a deliberate, calculated attempt to crush all their aspirations—this despite the fact that my written grading scale (available in hard copy and electronic formats and explained repeatedly at length in class) describes “C” as indicating a satisfactory (though average) performance. Apparently, “average” is a heinous assessment, worse even than “failing/unsatisfactory,” perhaps because an “F” at least would be indisputable evidence that the professor simply had it in for you.

Though students nearly unanimously conceded that I was very prepared for and organized in each class, there was a dissenting vote: “he is useless. he does nothing but rambles on about nothing at all.” My harshest critic wrote, “no body should ever take this guys [sic] class!!!!!!!!!!!! this guy went out of his way to be a COMPLETE jerk. He forced us to buy a textbook that had nothing to do with the class!” Lest you should get the wrong idea about me, let me assure you that as far as the textbook allegation, this student was confused. In this class I required only one book, and we used it every day. His only other allegation is that I went out of my way to be a jerk, and I believe I’ve quoted enough reviews already that you know being a jerk wasn’t at all “out of [my] way.” What most displeases me about this evaluation is not the questionable assertions but the punctuation: the missing apostrophe and the twelve-in-a-row exclamation points, an excess indicating a frustration with articulating one’s feelings in precise, satisfying language. It’s clear to me that I did indeed fail this student.

One of my more creative reviews was “You could turn in your finest work and it will get torn to shreds by this look-alike Hitler.” As for the “finest work” reference, why would you turn in anything else in a college-level English class when the professor is widely known as a hard, tough, strict, unlenient grader? The assumption implied here is that students shouldn’t have to do their best work. As for the “look-alike Hitler” description, I do confess I have a mustache, but it’s long and bushy. I think it makes me look more like Tom Selleck than like Hitler.

The most constructive criticism I received was this gem: “It is really frustrating to be in his class because I work my ass off and it does not pay off in the end. Also his breath does not smell too good in the morning.” The segue from ass-working to bad breath is a little tenuous, but I appreciated the information. A little Aquafresh, a box of Tic Tacs, and problem solved. I realized I had been eating Cheerios before that class. While I thought my breath was oaty, he obviously thought it was oaty-ous.

I admit that some of my evaluations were right on the money. One that nailed it: “His [sic] an OK professor, he’s boring, and crazy at times.” And this one: “The instructor made it clear throughout the course that he can never be wrong and that his [sic] is emperor to everyone else.” Translation: He was a clear communicator and has regal good looks.

If you check me out at ratemyprofessors.com, you’ll see that I received no chili peppers for “hotness” and that I scored a 1.8 out of 5 for “easiness” (indicating I was perceived as very hard) and a 3.0 out of 5 for “overall quality.” This 3.0 score is symbolized not by a green smiley face or a red frowny face but by a yellow face with a neutral expression. Karma’s a bitch: I worked my ass off for my students for thirty years, and they rated me “average.” They gave me the ultimate insult—a “C.”