Feedback on being a better professor (ridiculously long) (Read 327 times)

    You think you’ve got it rough? ....

     

    Any help is appreciated.

     

    Now, this is some funny stuff!

     

    Thanks for the laugh!!


    Queen of 3rd Place

      To people commenting about the inappropriateness of my posting here, you have a point. I could have paraphrased the email correspondence.

      Ex runner

        You think you’ve got it rough? My son is 7. He is totally awesome at math. Brother can add, subtract, and has been known to rock his low number multiplication tables. I mean, we are talking total genius. He has gotten a 100 percent on every single math test this year. And yet, the teacher gave him a ‘3’ (proficient) instead of a ‘4’ (mastery). We were shocked. We got in our actual helicopter and flew to the school. This is where it gets nutty…there was no place to land the damn thing – so we’re hovering for a while, and eventually put her down near the train tracks. Well, let me tell you, we marched over to the school (uphill from the tracks, so my Achilles was bothering me – should I ice it after I do heel drops?), and confronted the teacher. She said he got a 3 because his handwriting is bad. Even though there’s a separate grade for handwriting. Can you believe that? She wouldn’t change the grade. I offered to race her around the building and whoever won would get the grade they wanted. But she’s like 8.5 months pregnant and refused to race me. Anyway, we go back down to our huey only to find a damn ticket on the windshield. There were no signs indicating we couldn’t park there or anything. Total bs. And there was a fine written on the bottom of the ticket, but I couldn’t read it because it was all scrawled in that carbon paper scratch and I’m not sure if it read “1000” or “100.0” dollars. Do I need a lawyer?

         

        Any help is appreciated.

         

        Here is my suggestion: Forget about the teacher and the grade. Hire a bunch of teachers and have your son's own private school. If they don't give him a 4, fire them and hire new ones.

         

        Oops, you are asking about a lawyer or not. Get a legally blonde!

        5k - 20:56 (09/12), 7k - 28:40 (11/12), 10k trial - 43:08  (03/13), 42:05 (05/13), FM - 3:09:28 (05/13), HM - 1:28:20 (05/14), Failed 10K trial - 6:10/mi for 4mi (08/14), FM - 3:03 (09/14)

          You think you’ve got it rough? My son is 7. He is totally awesome at math. Brother can add, subtract, and has been known to rock his low number multiplication tables. I mean, we are talking total genius. He has gotten a 100 percent on every single math test this year. And yet, the teacher gave him a ‘3’ (proficient) instead of a ‘4’ (mastery). We were shocked. We got in our actual helicopter and flew to the school. This is where it gets nutty…there was no place to land the damn thing – so we’re hovering for a while, and eventually put her down near the train tracks. Well, let me tell you, we marched over to the school (uphill from the tracks, so my Achilles was bothering me – should I ice it after I do heel drops?), and confronted the teacher. She said he got a 3 because his handwriting is bad. Even though there’s a separate grade for handwriting. Can you believe that? She wouldn’t change the grade. I offered to race her around the building and whoever won would get the grade they wanted. But she’s like 8.5 months pregnant and refused to race me. Anyway, we go back down to our huey only to find a damn ticket on the windshield. There were no signs indicating we couldn’t park there or anything. Total bs. And there was a fine written on the bottom of the ticket, but I couldn’t read it because it was all scrawled in that carbon paper scratch and I’m not sure if it read “1000” or “100.0” dollars. Do I need a lawyer?

          Did you surrender your pilot's license?  If not, you're golden.

          "I want you to pray as if everything depends on it, but I want you to prepare yourself as if everything depends on you."

          -- Dick LeBeau

          cmb4314


            I don't think I ever got a 90% in any serious class in all 4 years of college....and I graduated with a 3.75 GPA, so I got a whole heck of a lot more A's than B's.  Professors *aimed* for averages between 65-75 on tests, because it spread out the class more and made it easier to assign grades at the end of the semester.  Usually the average ended up being curved to a B or a B-.  I wouldn't have even known where to start calculating my grades to see what score I had to get on my finals, because I had not the slightest clue where the grade cutoff would be.  It was totally up to the professor and never discussed up front.  

             

            About the only time I was positive I was going to get an A was in a stupid easy history of architecture course (which all the engineers took for an easy A) in which I was rocking a 104% at the end of the semester.  If they had somehow curved that effer down to a B, I think I would have just lost my mind.

             

            I had one professor who outright told us that he looked at the body of work of the person with the highest average in the class, and decided what grade that person "deserved", and graded everyone else down from there.  If that person got a B, then no one in the class got an A.  I also took a class from a guy who gave tests where the means were usually hovering around 25%, so I'm pretty sure no one in the class had an overall average above 50%, even with homework/lab reports added in.

             

            I suppose this is why my school lists the median grade for your particular instance of a class right on the transcript next to the grade you got.  It's like "yeah, this grade sucks, but LOOK, everyone else's grade sucked too!"

            My wildly inconsistent PRs:

            5k: 24:36 (10/20/12)  

            10k: 52:01 (4/28/12)  

            HM: 1:50:09 (10/27/12)

            Marathon: 4:19:11 (10/2/2011) 


            A Saucy Wench

              I don't think I ever got a 90% in any serious class in all 4 years of college....and I graduated with a 3.75 GPA, so I got a whole heck of a lot more A's than B's.  Professors *aimed* for averages between 65-75 on tests, because it spread out the class more and made it easier to assign grades at the end of the semester.  Usually the average ended up being curved to a B or a B-.  I wouldn't have even known where to start calculating my grades to see what score I had to get on my finals, because I had not the slightest clue where the grade cutoff would be.  It was totally up to the professor and never discussed up front.  

               

              About the only time I was positive I was going to get an A was in a stupid easy history of architecture course (which all the engineers took for an easy A) in which I was rocking a 104% at the end of the semester.  If they had somehow curved that effer down to a B, I think I would have just lost my mind.

               

              I had one professor who outright told us that he looked at the body of work of the person with the highest average in the class, and decided what grade that person "deserved", and graded everyone else down from there.  If that person got a B, then no one in the class got an A.  I also took a class from a guy who gave tests where the means were usually hovering around 25%, so I'm pretty sure no one in the class had an overall average above 50%, even with homework/lab reports added in.

               

              I suppose this is why my school lists the median grade for your particular instance of a class right on the transcript next to the grade you got.  It's like "yeah, this grade sucks, but LOOK, everyone else's grade sucked too!"

              engineering school was like this a lot.   I remember one test where the average was 23%  I believe my rocking 41% was the highest grade. 

              Every professor managed the curve differently and only a few would talk about it.  In my department (ChemE) there was a strong statistical correlation that the only thing you needed to do was to beat "Donna"  Donna was tall and blonde and had no qualms about playing the helpless/hapless female to the professors and somehow in 85% of the classes managed to be the lowest cutoff for any particular grade.  (It wasnt always an A, unfortunately)

              Unfortunately, as a ChemE we often shared classes with pre-med students.  Nothing freaked out both groups more .

               

              mta:  It cracked me up that Donna never once figured out how we knew which grade was hers.  It was a relatively small department and grades were posted (back then) on bulletin boards using the last 4 digits of your SSN.  Sometimes in grade order but most often the list would be sorted by last name and then they just cut the name column off before posting.

              I have become Death, the destroyer of electronic gadgets

               

              "When I got too tired to run anymore I just pretended I wasnt tired and kept running anyway" - dd, age 7

              spinach


                I don't think I ever got a 90% in any serious class in all 4 years of college....and I graduated with a 3.75 GPA, so I got a whole heck of a lot more A's than B's.  Professors *aimed* for averages between 65-75 on tests, because it spread out the class more and made it easier to assign grades at the end of the semester.

                 

                I used to do this, having a greater spread does allow us to separate the scores and get a better way to distinguish between the individual students.  however, i noticed it also had the effect of discouraging students to become mathematics majors.  Mathematics has the reputation of being a difficult major and one with lower grades and some top students would come in and get an A with a 84% on a test and become discouraged by the "low" percentage.  So for the last ten years or so I have made up my tests with the intention that an A is 93%, an AB is 88%, a B is 83%, and so on.  This is the school's standard distribution for  the grades and the students seem a lot happier with it than they were with an A at 78%, and AB at 74%, a B at 67% and so on.   We need to sell the discipline and so putting some easy "give away" points on the tests seems to make satisfy the students.