Professors--especially white men--can get away with a lot. Students tends to assume that we know what we are talking about and that we are very busy. Despite the ever-rising costs of college, most hesitate to "bother" us. It's one of the reasons that being a professor can be a pretty soft job. We don't spend nearly as much time teaching as high school teachers do, and we are treated with a great deal of deference.
So it has been with a certain amount of fear and trembling that over the past few years I've instituted a system of ongoing feedback in my classes. In the fully online classes, I ask the students what they like and don't like. In my face-to-face classes, I have a forum in which students can state what they found most interesting and confusing about the last class meeting.
Although I don't always agree with what students say about my courses, I find most of their complaints or suggestions very helpful. Just as important, it reminds me that teaching, like the rest of life, is a work in progress, that it's always imperfect, in need of improvement, and that I must rely on others if I want to do my best.
Last night after my large history of the U.S. family course a student remarked that my teaching had improved dramatically during the term. She wondered if this was all part of a master plan, a sort of metaphor I was acting out to show everyone how to improve. Of course the answer to why I had improved as a teacher was much simpler than that: she and others had pointed out that the first two class meetings were too diffuse and confusing, so I adjusted. But I wouldn't have discovered that without help. In fact I had thought that the first two class meetings had been pretty good. There are many times when everything that comes out of my mouth strikes me as brilliant; I can only maintain that fantasy if I don't invite honest feedback.
Our capacity for excellence is directly correlated to our willingness to seek and listen to criticism.
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