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> the psychic damage I took from bad students. > the hoards of unappreciative and entitled students who have all the tools in the world to make your life hell.

> the psychic damage I took from bad students. > the hoards of unappreciative and entitled students who have all the tools in the world to make your life hell. Okay, now I'm more curious about your experiences here and need some details. What kind of school were you at? US based? R1? Ivy league? Were you teaching undergrad? Were you tenured? What kinds of classes exactly, undergrad, grad, upper division, etc? Full on 300+ person intro courses? Like, I've never heard of a teacher talking about students this way before. So, sorry for the peppering here.

VyseofArcadia 3y ago
R1 non-ivy engineering-focused university. I was teaching undergraduate math. Non-tenure track. I taught a lot during grad school[0], and then taught some more as an adjunct professor while I was looking for tenure track jobs. I taught everything from pre-calculus algebra and trigonometry up through undergraduate linear algebra. I taught a couple of 100+ student sections, but the majority of my classes were 20-30 people. This was a decade ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy, but talking about students this way was pretty common at my university. So much so that a committee was formed to investigate the underlying problems. The committee found a few. 1. The math placement exam was trivially easy to cheat. 2. Students were encouraged to cheat on the math placement exam because the college of engineering only accepted students who placed into calculus or higher in their first semester. 3. The university as a whole scored freakishly high on student entitlement metrics. E.g. lots of kids with wealthy parents who assumed paying for college (as opposed to scholarships or loans) implies they deserve to pass classes with minimal effort. To address the first two problems we switched to in-person math placement exams with ID checks and negotiated with the college of engineering to see to what degree they could budge on their policies. I suspect the third issue remains a problem. [0] My university was a bit unusual in that grad students actually taught classes, not just TA'd. Helped keep class sizes down when you had dozens of extra lecturers who worked for peanuts.

VyseofArcadia 3y ago

R1 non-ivy engineering-focused university. I was teaching undergraduate math. Non-tenure track. I taught a lot during grad school[0], and then taught some more as an adjunct professor while I was looking for tenure track jobs. I taught everything from pre-calculus algebra and trigonometry up through undergraduate linear algebra. I taught a couple of 100+ student sections, but the majority of my classes were 20-30 people. This was a decade ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy, but talking about students this way was pretty common at my university. So much so that a committee was formed to investigate the underlying problems. The committee found a few. 1. The math placement exam was trivially easy to cheat. 2. Students were encouraged to cheat on the math placement exam because the college of engineering only accepted students who placed into calculus or higher in their first semester. 3. The university as a whole scored freakishly high on student entitlement metrics. E.g. lots of kids with wealthy parents who assumed paying for college (as opposed to scholarships or loans) implies they deserve to pass classes with minimal effort. To address the first two problems we switched to in-person math placement exams with ID checks and negotiated with the college of engineering to see to what degree they could budge on their policies. I suspect the third issue remains a problem. [0] My university was a bit unusual in that grad students actually taught classes, not just TA'd. Helped keep class sizes down when you had dozens of extra lecturers who worked for peanuts.