I went to Rochester College, which, for most of the world, flies completely under the radar because it’s so tiny. It does, however, mean that as an education student I was under the repeated tutelage of Mr. Jim Dawson. Mr. Dawson was a pinnacle of professionalism, and for every teaching maxim he taught, he practiced what he preached. He had meticulous syllabi and rubrics, engaged the class in instruction, discussion, and application work, and gave useful feedback. Sure, sometimes it was frustrating when he would always take the whole time allotted, but he believed that he was responsible for modeling classroom behaviors, and in a classroom setting you can’t just end class when you are finished- he planned until “the bell”. Most importantly he was consistent and explicit with his expectations.
Fast forward a few years. Because of my Michigan education (and dual certification), my travel experience, and my propensity for thinking out of the norm, I have my dream teaching job in a random tiny town. Concurrently, this year I started taking grad classes at a branch of a well-respected state university. I have now encountered a lady I will dub “Dr. Evil” OR “The Anti-Dawson”.
Dr. Evil- How do I dislike thee? Let me count the ways.
1) Your syllabus. The whole point of a syllabus is to give clear detail of the expectations for the class and for major assignments. From the syllabus a student should be able to discern what the reading is for each week (without having to have a special class devoted simply to decoding which information is intended for which week in the schedule). Said student should also be able to look to the syllabus when sitting down to write major assignments and be able to put in an appropriate amount of work to achieve the intended grade. If a student decides to work ahead and not procrastinate, that student should not be surprised with added expectations or requirements a week before the paper is due.
2) Your asinine assignments in class: This is a graduate level class. We do not need to play games (and I mean this literally). You do not need to assign us an hour to go somewhere and talk about the reading before we come to class again. You are wasting our time here. Either a) assume we did the reading and be prepared enough for class to conduct your own discussion, or b) give us a question and 10 minutes to discuss it and we’re good to go. Here’s a hint: if you give us an hour to answer 5 questions, we’re going to get done in 15 minutes and use the other 45 minutes to commiserate on how our time is being wasted.
3) Your choice for use of valuable (and expensive) class time: In reference to uses of time mentioned in the last point, I am not going progressively more and more in debt AND paying $60 extra a month in gas to come to class to sit around and draw pictures of my classroom. I’ve got pictures of my classroom on my computer. And while we’re on the topic of my computer, everything your articles from the 80′s told me to do using computers is already irrelevant to the level of technology I use in my classroom. But I’ll get to that in point 8.
4) Your lack of rubrics: I would like to inform you that I bust my butt to make sure that I have a complete and specific rubric for every project before I assign it to my class. And that is around 10 projects a year. All I’m asking you to make is 1-3 rubrics, depending on the amount of major assignments you want to assign. Every teaching program in America will tell its teachers that it is imperative that students know exactly what the teacher’s expectations are for a successful completion of the assignment, and the clearest way to convey that is through a detailed rubric. You did not give us ANY rubrics ahead of time. When you did bust out with what you call a rubric ON THE DAY OF THE PRESENTATIONS, it was really just a little check sheet of random topics. It was NOT a rubric by any stretch of the imagination. Let’s go back to that computer I mentioned. I’ve got a whole stockpile of rubrics we can look at. In fact, I just made one for an analytical paper. I’d prefer you use it than whatever subjective system you are using to grade our papers.
5) Your tendency to randomly throw in elements of major assignments and then treat us as if we should have known even though it is not documented anywhere: The most clear debacle demonstrating this point has to do with our papers. Every single person in the class thought that she told us that we needed to turn in our rough draft, sources, and prospectus with the (busy work) portfolio on the last day of class. It makes sense to turn it in then- it’s a progressive demonstration of what we’ve done all year. Then randomly ON THE DAY THE PAPERS WERE DUE she insisted that she had told us that we needed to turn them in on that day with the papers. Some of us, myself included, just happened to have all of that stuff, but others were forced to come back on other days to turn in work we weren’t aware was due. Clearly there’s a communication gap here. It’s not like we’re irresponsible students that somehow accidentally found ourselves in grad school.
6) Your innocent and somewhat condescending demeanor: I knew from the time I approached her about an unavoidable absence and she attempted to mask snarkiness with sweetness that she rubbed me the wrong way. It has only gotten worse.
7) Your idea of appropriate grading and feedback: FYI, Anti-Dawson, “Check Plus Plus” is not a grade! It’s not even understandable. 2 checks is an A, but one check is a B? What?! Could you post your check mark to grade scale continuum somewhere so that we wouldn’t all be so completely confused as to whether our posts are even receiving a grade or not? That would be great, thanks. Also, there is a grade posting portion of Blackboard. We would probably all respect your grading system (and the assignments you make us do that then ultimately don’t end up being part of the grade) if you would post grades and make it look like you’re on top of your game. Guess what- my students can constantly see their grades in the gradebook online. Know what that leads me to do? Stay on top of my grading.
8 ) Your irrelevant course materials: The vast majority of our reading material has been from the 1980′s. Please don’t preach to me about incorporating relevant technology in my classroom when your example of relevant technology is Microsoft Word. If I have to log in through DOS, I’m not incorporating it in my classroom.
9) Your unwillingness to see the inconsistencies in your practice: You are NOT a model of “best practices” or “21st century skills”. We have harped over and over again about how our individual classes need to be relevant to the students’ everyday lives, but pretty much none of this course material is really applicable to our teaching lives. It’s all hypothetically going in circles around the same point. Again, I am so glad that I did my initial teacher training at Rochester, in Michigan, under the supervisors that I did. Randolph, L. Stewart, Dawson, Bentley- I appreciate you.
10) Short pants. This one is entirely petty. Cheap shot, Stew.
Rant Rubric:
-Grammar: 9/10 – What can I say? There were a few typos…
-Pet Peeves: 9/10 – For the repeated use of ALL CAPS for emphasis.
-Form: 18/20 – This post is clearly organized. The beginnings of each numbered item are consistent with each other (with the exception of the final item). Well done.
-Content: 40/40 – Your argument is clear. I find nothing in this rant with which I disagree. Each of your claims is warranted by sufficient evidence.
-Result: 20/20 – Your argument was successful. I am now similarly outraged.
Final Grade: 96 (Or, ✓+$!&@+, depending on the scale.)
I approve of your grading methodology and reasoning. Thanks for the “check plus money “hey!” and at plus”.