I am sure you are tired of seeing these but every quarter, every damn quarter, there is always one instructor/teacher/professor who is absolutley shit. I have not had luck with math teachers for 4 years now and here i am complaining about yet another math instructor. Hear me out, I am not bad at math and I understand the concepts to a great extent but I got a B- in this calc 1 class. Meanwhile, in my other classes including Philosophy: Ethics and my third chemistry class to complete the chemistry series, i have scored very high A's. In Phil, i even scored a 105.6% as my final grade and recieved a perfect score on my thesis paper.
So how is it that I am doing so well in other classes but scraped by in Calc 1?
I was reviewing my scores today of my quizzes and final exam when I noticed that my teacher had been marking me off and often times giving me no points even when I had the correct answer. I had work attached and she would leave cryptic feedback such as "this is not how I wanted you to solve this" or "your work does not make sense" even though she never specified how she wanted anything to be done.
Lets go back a little bit to the beginning when i actually first met this professor.... I am president of my college and two quarters ago, I was the Club Representative and had to sit committees to help disperse funding. One of these committees was the student tech fee committee where students and teachers would get together and determine where the student's money would go. That is where I met my math professor. She happened to be on the committee and had a large influence on where we put our funding in regards to mathmatics and the maths department, She said (and i wrote it down in my notes) that she believes instructors should teach and therefore our mathmatica subscription should not be renewed because there are better, free resources out there. I thought this was awesome like "wow there is a math professor who actually teaches."
Jump forward to about 10 weeks ago, her class is 100% online as are all of the other classes at my college because of covid. BUT we recieved no instruction, we had 5 days to do 90+ homework problems that could be long or short depending on the topic, we could only meet her 2 times a week (mondays and tuesdays) for a single hour where she crammed all of her other classes into those hours as well (she teaches all the way from algebra to calc 3 in any given quarter). it was not fun. she would often show up late to her own zoom office hours and there was really nothing we could do about it since she would also try to leave early.
There are countless other things she has done that are just frustrating and plain wrong. One of the main things being that i had written a small note on one of my quizzes since she had asked what students thought about the class. I had said that i was frustrated and exhausted with the class because no matter what I did, it was never good enough. she responded by saying that she would" hardly ever recommend anyone take an online math class".... like for real?? Is she kidding? I have never had such an awful experience with an instructor at the college in 10 weeks. ever.
that is why i have made it my mission next year to do two things.
1) Talk with the college over a past deal they made with student government regarding tutoring. the deal was that for the first year, student government would use student dollars to pay for tutoring but after that the institution would pay for it therefore making it free... the institution hasnt paid a dime and students are paying for it without knowing it through their tech fees.
and 2) I want to have a full reviews and evaluations on all instructors that have ever recieved more than 10 complaints in a single year. It is not fair to students or their families that they are paying thousands per quarter for classes where the instructors are lacking in so many areas and ways. On another committee, the professors were presented with all of the written complaints students had about each individual instructor as a group. after reading through the thousands of complaints, there was complete silence and the instructors began by saying that "...because of covid, it has been difficult..." when we are all very aware of how the college works and what the teachers are doing and when they have office hours or meetings. It has been rough on everyone but it is no excuse for any instructor to put less effort into ensuring the success of students.
Tutoring had to be expanded because of the number of students who need help because their instructors are lacking in so many areas. Some even lack in the area of communication where they will not respond to emails at all and there is no way to contact them other than via email. Some of those same instructors also take weeks to grade and do not grade a single assignment or offer feedback until the last 3 weeks of the quarter.
*takes a deep breath*
its just so frustrating. Its so simple to host office hours. its simple to have scheduled class times. its simple to grade papers early. its simple to offer better communication. yet these are all areas that countless instructors at my college need to work on.
Hurricane ! Follow Evacuation Routes.
