what's a poor teacher to do?
I’m fairly unusual among academics — at least among academics my age — in not holding to a decline-and-fall narrative about my students. Many professors (and other teachers, I suppose) tend to believe that there was some time in the past when students in general were, if not all they should have been, at least a hell of a lot smarter or better-prepared or more respectful or more disciplined (or all of the above) than they are now. That hasn't been my experience, though I believe I have discerned certain cycles: I think you sometimes get, especially within a particular major, a kind of critical mass of smart and serious students, which has the result of bringing others to a higher level than they would have reached in another environment.
Be that as it may, the cycle that I find myself in right now puzzles me. The briefest way I can put it is this: I’m having trouble getting my students to do anything I don't lay out explicit penalties for not doing. (And remember, this is at a highly selective liberal arts college.) So, for example, during the first couple of class meetings I ask them to stop by my office for a chat, just so we can get to know each other (and so I can remember their names, something I have trouble doing just from class time). Maybe a quarter of them do this.
Similarly, I ask them to give me, a week before their essays are due, proposals describing their topic, the sources they are likely to draw on, and the chief questions they want to pursue. I tell them that I want to make sure they’re on the right track, and that if we do some work together before the essays are due we can dramatically improve the chances that the final product is good work. I make it clear that this is an assignment, not a suggestion — but I do not lay down penalties for a failure to comply, nor do I offer a grade. It’s just part of the process of writing an essay for me. Compliance? One-third do the assignment, one-third send me a useless sentence or two, one-third blow it off altogether. (Oh, and guess which group’s members are more likely to complain when they get a bad grade?)
I could of course ensure much more success with all such assignments and requests by offering to give points for compliance or withhold them for noncompliance — but I just hate being that pedantically contractual. Just come on in and say Hi, for crying out loud, without my having to record your presence or absence on my spreadsheet. And if I’m willing to take the trouble to look at your work in advance to make sure you’re not digging your own grade, take me up on that. Out of sheer self-interest.
So, dear readers, what should I do? Become, at this late stage in life, the pedantically contractual person I have always dreaded becoming? Or just let them take their lumps and hope that they learn from the experience? Or is there another option I’m missing?
You know, on the other hand, I recognize a lot of useless “advice” from my professors:
“Come in and see me if you don’t understand this in class.” If you couldn’t explain it in a lecture, trying to explain it to me in person probably isn’t going to work. My time is better suited hitting the textbook, hitting internet guides, hitting up grad student tutors and friends who took the class last year.
And, for the most part – I don’t want you to know my name, or anything about me except my academic record in your class, because when I invariably disappoint you I won’t have to listen to yet another paternalistic lecture about how I’m not “living up to my potential.” You’ll simply see my B-grade work and say “well, that’s about what I expected from Chet.” For some incomprehensible reason, though, people who talk to me in person get this crazy idea that I’m some kind of straight-A genius.
And, yes, I’m aware that you don’t get that impression over the internet. (I find that relieving.) Nonetheless it’s a lot better for my well-being not to hear what a disappointment I’ve been to all my professors, and the way I preserve that silence is by a very careful and considered lowering of expectations.
— Chet · Apr 24, 05:17 PM · #
Not sure it will help, but since I was the blow-it-off student par excellence, I’ll give you my highly idiosyncratic take on it.
The suggested meeting has value for you, but no value for the student. Many students don’t care about building relationships with professors; to them, professors are single serving acquaintances, with no long-term value. Whether that’s right or not doesn’t matter. That’s what they think, and that’s how they act. To get them to meet with you, they need to see value in it. That goes double for students forced into your class by the LibArt curriculum requirements.
re: why a student doesn’t take the lifeline. For me, I never thought I needed it. Or I didn’t care enough about inflating my grade to use it. And I have a tremendous aversion to beginning large projects, so I push off doing any work until absolutely necessary. And I was deeply involved in partying, hooking up with girls, playing basketball, and sleeping — in that order. In fact, most of what I know I had to “relearn” after college. Alas.
— Sargent · Apr 24, 05:25 PM · #
is “digging your own grade” a play on words or a type-o? I can’t tell.
— Phil · Apr 24, 05:32 PM · #
When I was a student I had most of the attitudes you guys mention, Chet and Sargent. I was an In-n-Out student, and the quicker I got off-campus the happier I was. But I also attended large public universities that lent themselves to that kind of thing. The liberal arts college vibe is different,and people have historically chosen such places because they want a more connected kind of college experience. But maybe that’s what’s changing. If so, my life could be getting easier. . . .
(Also, I hope someone — besides Matt Frost on Twitter — notices the “digging your own grade” line. That was totally intentional. I mean it.)
— Alan Jacobs · Apr 24, 05:35 PM · #
Phil, I posted my comment before yours showed up.
— Alan Jacobs · Apr 24, 05:39 PM · #
I think that what Wheaton really needs to do, Alan, is to follow Berkeley’s lead and institute a nice “Pass/No Pass” option (note that this is not the same as the traditional “Pass/Fail” – see below), which students can use for several required courses during the course of their stay, including a maximum of two courses that are required for their majors. That way, you’ll have students who won’t do what you tell them even if there are consequences, since they know fully well that (1) they’ll probably pass anyway, thanks to rampant grade inflation and general lack of guts; and (2) even if they don’t pass, it still won’t go on their transcripts as a failing grade, because enrolling as P/NP takes that off the table (no, really). Trust me, it works great.
— John Schwenkler · Apr 24, 05:42 PM · #
I don’t quite follow this post as elucidated by Prof. Jacobs’ subsequent comments. Clearly he can’t be saying that students are more standoffish or more prone to avoid extra work than when he was a student. Is the suggestion that the students at Wheaton have changed?
If the students at Wheaton have changed (this is total speculation, but so what), maybe it’s because it used to draw from an ethnically and religiously homogenous group of Midwest residents, but now it draws from a national evangelical pool, so the students are less collegial (with each other and with their professors).
— y81 · Apr 24, 05:50 PM · #
“The liberal arts college vibe is different,and people have historically chosen such places because they want a more connected kind of college experience.”
By this I take it to mean you think your students have selected to be on your campus on the basis of of the sort of academic experience they want to have; both now and in the past. I’ll hazard if you dig a little deeper on this assumption you might find (at least part of) the answer to your question.
My experience in life is that it’s pass/fail; with 87.5% being the passing mark, and very little tangible reward beyond that unless you can get up into the 98-99% range. Whether or not it would be desirable to implement grading policies that would mimic this I don’t know. I think it would work in mathematics, but there would be a lot of crying.
Johh, why do you call it a lack of guts? It seems like it’s born a similar calculus as my critical care doctor acquaintance. I wouldn’t call him gutless.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 24, 05:53 PM · #
I might blame it on socialization. People need to be taught how to talk to and build relationships with professors. I (when I was at Wheaton) did have relationships with a few profs. I had a few other profs blow me off when I tried to build relationship and I had a few I never wanted to see again after having their class. But I think in a twitter age, the face to face meeting is something that needs to be taught. It is not something that many students had experience with in high school I am sure.
On the other side, my wife is a grade school teacher and she meets in small groups (4 or 5) based on skill level for the majority of her teaching. She will meet with every student at least twice a day. She also uses individual meetings a lot for writing consultations. (Basically the same thing you were asking your students to do.) This is becoming a preferred method in many grades schools so maybe you won’t have to teach it to students in about 10 years.
— Adam S · Apr 24, 05:58 PM · #
I have to admit I’m a little befuddled by your reluctance to assign any sort of points or other clear benefit to these assignments… it would clearly encourage participation, benefit both you and your students, and the only downside is that it would put a crack in your self-image of being, well, not a pedantically contractual person. Maybe your students are shy, or reluctant to face even helpful criticism, or just procrastinators. Or they don’t think your suggestions will be very helpful. Or maybe they don’t like you personally. But if it’s clear that a minor change in assigning points would increase student participation, and thus improve the effectiveness of your teaching, it seems absurd, and slightly egocentric, to get hung up on what that means to your own sense of self. And I say this as a former liberal arts student who procrastinated terribly and avoided talking to professors one on one as much as possible. I actually liked profs who were, as you call it, more “pedantically contractual” because I really needed, and actually wanted, that push to take the extra step.
— Sara · Apr 24, 06:10 PM · #
“I have to admit I’m a little befuddled by your reluctance to assign any sort of points or other clear benefit to these assignments… it would clearly encourage participation, benefit both you and your students, and the only downside is that it would put a crack in your self-image of being, well, not a pedantically contractual person.”
I completely understand Alan’s reluctance. How you get to the top of the pitch offers at least as much satisfaction as reaching the top of the pitch. This goes for Alan’s students just as much as it goes for Alan. The difference is that Alan understands this, but many of his student do not.
“[I]f it’s clear that a minor change in assigning points would increase student participation, and thus improve the effectiveness of your teaching, it seems absurd, and slightly egocentric, to get hung up on what that means to your own sense of self.”
It seems to me that you are confused about what it is that Alan is trying to teach.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 24, 06:25 PM · #
Stay the course, Professor Jacobs!
This particular group of students sounds totally disinterested, but there is something special about teacher-student interaction at a small liberal arts college, and I’d hate for you to try and force things like participation that should develop naturally in a collegiate environment.
In my experience, classroom discussion becomes artificial and sterile when professors throw their hands up and start badgering students with ticky-tack grades. Some semesters are bound to disappoint, but your overall approach sounds really appealing.
— Will · Apr 24, 06:32 PM · #
Why be pedantically contractual? Penalize students for failing to complete assignments whether you’ve explicitly told them they’ll be penalized or not. Experience is a dear school but an excellent teacher.
— Adam Greenwood · Apr 24, 06:55 PM · #
re: small(ish) liberal arts college with academic reputation
That’s probably true. I went to the A&S school at Vanderbilt, and I was an outlier. My sister went to UT, where such behavior is the rule.
— Sargent · Apr 24, 07:01 PM · #
Alan, as one of your former students—the goody-two-shoes kind who is only now (!) realizing that not everyone did the come-in-and-chat visits—I have to say that I think both assignments you discuss here are fair, but I understand why students sometimes decline to participate (and not necessarily out of sheer laziness). I myself didn’t think your suggestion that students get to know you out of the classroom was unfair or onerous and welcomed the opportunity. At the same time, some of my other profs at Wheaton took the friendly environment for granted and became very heavy-handed and overly involved, doling out the sorts of exhortations Chet mentioned above. Your new students might not know that you won’t do that sort of thing or might simply want to keep more distance between academics and their personal lives.
As for the mini-proposal assignment, I vote you let the students take their lumps. If you wanted to, you might mention (briefly) that the assignment isn’t required but you’ve found most students do better when they think about their papers early. After that, well, they’re adults and can (or should) deal with whatever grades they get. (I do feel sorry for you having to read all the sloppy papers, though.)
Also, y81, I can attest that Wheaton is still an extremely collegial school: there’s still lots of out-of-class academic interaction between students (and sometimes between students and profs!), as well as more general chumminess among all parties than I’ve observed at the several other schools I’ve attended before and since my time at Wheaton. I think this atmosphere is mostly positive but can be occasionally negative, as I mentioned above.
— KP · Apr 24, 07:02 PM · #
Sara, you think just maybe my reluctance to be relentlessly contractual could have something to do with my educational values, or what I think is best for my students, rather than raging egotism? No? Yeah, well, I thought not.
— Alan Jacobs · Apr 24, 07:28 PM · #
“ If you couldn’t explain it in a lecture, trying to explain it to me in person probably isn’t going to work”
Chet, this isn’t necessarily the case. In lecture, your instructor may have to cover a certain amount of material in a certain amount of time. They may have 20 other ways (well, probably not 20, but more than one) to explain a particular point, but they only had time to explain it in one way before they had to move on to something else. Usually, we would pick the way that we feel has worked the best for other students in the past. But it may not be the way that clicks for you in particular.
That being said, some of your instructors do seem to have been a bit personal in their comments about you. If a student comes into a professor’s office to ask for help with the material, it is probably best if we confine ourselves to trying to help the student with the material, rather than making the student feel inadequate.
My peeve along these lines: when I ask if there are any questions, this is not in order to use up 5 seconds of class time. I am, in fact, asking if there are any questions.
— Gavin Weaire · Apr 24, 09:28 PM · #
Are some of them there becasue they have to be to graduate? If so, don’t assume the students should automatically be interested in the class and so would want to do what they might see as extra-ciricular enhancments. Accept that there are naturally different levels of interest and if you want more participation, strive to make the class interesting to a wider array of students. Maybe you could have specific classes for students not normally interested in books. You would have to find different ways to engage these students.
— cw · Apr 25, 02:48 AM · #
I’m just the kind of person that, at some point as people get to know me, they say to themselves “there goes a bright young man who’s not living up to his potential; maybe he just needs me to take an interest in his life.” I really don’t, thank you; and if hiding in the anonymous middle shields me from the dreaded interest, then its well worth it. It’s a hell of a lot easier, too!
— Chet · Apr 25, 03:02 AM · #
I vote lumps. Not being pedantically contractual should be the liberal arts stronghold. Of course I want to live in the world where people move on when they are ready rather than because the schedule says so…
— Ryan Yates · Apr 25, 03:13 AM · #
Having an offer spurned, one made in good faith, of social interaction or the chance to make a small human connection (one which you believe will benefit your students) is hurtful, and I guess that can make you feel like your extra efforts are unappreciated.
Praise the behaviour you want – “I’ve really enjoyed meeting some of you… looking forward to catching up with more of you…”
“Just come on in and say Hi, for crying out loud, without my having to record your presence or absence on my spreadsheet. And if I’m willing to take the trouble to look at your work in advance to make sure you’re not digging your own grade, take me up on that. Out of sheer self-interest.”
Tell them how you feel.
PS My copy editor eye fell on “digging your own grade” and thought it was tremendously droll.
— ell · Apr 25, 04:04 AM · #
ell, the idea that I might ask students to come to my office because I want social interaction and am hurt when I dont get it will have all my friends ROTFL. cw also misunderstands when he assumes that this is a case of bored students in a required class who don’t like books — none of the above is true. The puzzle is why high-performing students in a class they have chosen won’t do what they’re asked to do unless there are highly specific rewards and penalties in place.
— Alan Jacobs · Apr 25, 04:30 AM · #
Alan, Assuming these students are generally strong students, and assuming they’re in your class because they want to be rather than because of a gen. ed requirement, I’d guess it has something to do with the fact that their success is due to them being fairly adept at manipulating clearly marked systems. Pull lever A, get this reward (or grade). Pull lever B, get this reward. Pull levers A,B,C,D, and E in sequence three times a week, finish the course with an A. This is a grade and assignment-based understanding of college success, and it works for a lot of people. And, depending on where you end up after school, it can work in one’s career as well. Students who follow this approach don’t see success as being a function of relationships or guidance/mentoring, just a matter of completing specific necessary tasks. You’ve not labeled office visits as necessary; therefore, they won’t comply.
— Peter Suderman · Apr 25, 07:38 AM · #
Yes, I can see how hilarity might ensue, however I wasn’t actually suggesting that you were seeking out the companionship of your students – you just sounded peeved and mystified at their apparent lack of interest in your invitation. I think Mr Suderman has probably summed up the situation in his comment.
— ell · Apr 25, 09:43 AM · #
I think what Ell is suggesting, Alan, is that you’ve offered your student an aspect of your professional expertise that is difficult to assign value to within the task/performance metrics of assignments and grades, and indeed the value of this expertise may by eroded to some degree by offering it in a “pedantically contractual” form; that this aspect of your professional expertise is probably more “quintessentially Alan” than most other facets of your teaching; and that there are some hurt feelings on your part.
I’ll leave the bold assertions of other people’s feeling to Ell, but I will note:
1) Institutions are generally better at creating environments that favor conformity over individuality, and procedure over innovation; and it’s not uncommon for people to find themselves chafing in these environments. I think this is especially so for professions such as doctoring or teaching.
2) Pride is one of those funny words, like hope. I certainly don’t want to live without hope, but some the greatest anguish I have suffered has been on account of hope. The same goes for pride. When to let go of my pride and when to cling to it fiercely is something for which I’ve not yet formulated a workable algorithm.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 25, 12:54 PM · #
I think Tony and Peter are right — and are essentially restating, probably with more clarity, the point of my post. My students will generally fulfill the terms of a contract (usually as expressed in a syllabus), and that’s a good thing. A lot of people (students and workers alike) don’t do that. But people also need to learn how to take advantage of resources and other good things that aren’t explicitly identified in a contract and reinforced with an articulated system of operant conditioning. Another way to put this is to say that people need to learn to act in their own self-interest even when there’s not someone saying “If you don’t act in your own self-interest I will punish you.”
— Alan Jacobs · Apr 25, 02:12 PM · #
“Another way to put this is to say that people need to learn to act in their own self-interest even when there’s not someone saying “If you don’t act in your own self-interest I will punish you.””
I am reminded of an experiment my boat-building mentor related to me:
A group of people were given a self-assessment survey. Buried in the survey was the opportunity for the subjects to assign to themselves the attribute of “luckiness”.
Some time later this same group of people were asked to come through a section of newspaper for the occurrences of a common word; something like “police” or “spokesman”.
Unbeknownst to the subjects, the section of newspaper was custom-made for each subject, and contained a reasonably large display ad that addressed the subject directly, telling them that they could stop looking for the assigned word.
The results of the experiment showed a high correlation between people who self-identified as lucky, and those who noticed the display ad.
And just now I remember another friend of mine telling me that Napoleon was very concerned with whether or not officers were perceived of as “lucky” by their colleagues, which in relationship to the above experiment I take to mean that “lucky” officers had the capacity to perceive opportunities where others did not. Amidst the chaos of the battlefield, I can see how this would be a desirable trait.
Also this and this.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 25, 02:46 PM · #
For what it’s worth, Alan, I had a professor who did something similar with both papers for the class. On the day he handed out grades for the first paper, he explained that he’d requested we all come see him, that lots of people didn’t, and that the people who did pay a visit fared much, much better on their papers. I was one of the folks who didn’t bother to talk to him on the first paper (although I got an A or A- on it, as I recall), but, given how nervous I was about the final paper, I definitely took him up on the offer the second time around (and in the subsequent class I took with him). I also made an effort, whenever possible, to stay after class and talk to all of my professors, which, I found, was in many cases a much better place to find out what they really wanted than in the classroom.
— Peter Suderman · Apr 25, 06:36 PM · #
Solzhenitsyn described it in another context as the drummed-in understanding that IT IS ONLY THE RESULT THAT COUNTS … a result which inevitably must be QUANTIFIED.
— James · Apr 25, 11:57 PM · #
#
“Solzhenitsyn described it in another context as the drummed-in understanding that IT IS ONLY THE RESULT THAT COUNTS … a result which inevitably must be QUANTIFIED.”
— James · Apr 25, 07:57 PM · #
College as a Gulag? ;)
— ell · Apr 26, 05:05 AM · #
“ IT IS ONLY THE RESULT THAT COUNTS … a result which inevitably must be QUANTIFIED.”
My same friend who told me about Napoleon and his lucky generals also told me about Chinese peasant melting down their farm implements to meet steel production quotas.
I think results are important, but sometimes it’s hard to know how far it is to the finish line, or even what direction it is.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 26, 12:46 PM · #
I went to a college that (sort of) doesn’t give grades (St. John’s College, www.sjca.edu). Feedback is given orally at the end of the semester. For transcript purposes a grade is recorded, but students are encouraged not to even look at them.
The effects of this are interesting. For me it was a great blessing, because it put the emphasis so much more on intellectual development. In a traditional class with points for everything I have always been a bit of a grade-grubber, doing exactly what I needed to but no more. At St.John’s however it was all about really trying to understand things. There was an active tradition of out-of-class study groups, for instance groups on logic or to read books outside the program, or while reading Kant a group of friends and I formed a group to go further in our study of him than our class was going. Now obviously just not giving grades is not going to create this climate automatically, but I think it was an essential part of the atmosphere, that there was no system to game.
How to capture any part of this as an individual professor I don’t know; it’s an institutional and cultural problem. Giving in to points-ism would seem sad though.
— Erika · May 3, 08:50 PM · #