There was an evaluation of me, an instructor at a community college.
One of 17 students anonymously wrote that I spoke with accent, and I guess, based on that, my total grade was “satisfactory”.
Well, the choice of grades is very poor.
One has to choose Excellent, or Satisfactory, or Unsatisfactory.
How about if an instructor performs very well? It is wrong to call a good performance just “satisfactory”.
“Satisfactory” is also the grade that just slipped by one point, or a fracture of the point up from “Unsatisfactory”.
Should I be angry? Should I complain? Should I keep silent?
I have to admit that the class I teach now consists of people who are very fresh newcomers to the USA. When you ask them how long they have been in the country, you may hear “2 months” and “4 months”.
I would say if they do not like my accent, they 1) have a wide choice of other classes 2) can ask me to repeat the explanation – the suggestion I make quite a few times during any given class. Specifically from this class I have heard not very many questions. So, I guess, they are shy to ask a question, but they (just one particular person) was not shy to complain on an official paper.
People, people! Who brought you up? Did not they teach you ask for help before complaining? And this is what I do all my life – I help people. This is what my profession is about.
Of course, there were other students’ remarks, one of which said that I was the best teacher he (or she) had ever had, and that they liked my website very much.
The college processing chose 2 positive answers and one negative – out of 17. The Peer Observation Review was almost 100 percent for 5.0 grade. All other points were also higher than 4.0, many of them – quite higher.
And yet, the total grade is “Satisfactory”.
27 years of experience in USA and 5 years before USA. “Satisfactory” because I speak another language, and of course I speak with accent.
As a matter of fact, the class is 99 percent Spanish-speaking, and I know Spanish grammar and I can explain and compare English with Spanish grammar.
And the point of my article?
2 wishes that will remain just wishes, and that is OK, because we “cannot jump higher than our own heads” (with the analogues for this saying in other languages).
My 2 wishes:
I wish the student who became a reason for my low grade asked me questions first.
I wish the final grades were more developed than just PLUS, MINUS and one poor “Satisfactory” grade. An experienced instructor who loves her job deserves better than “Satisfactory”.
It makes me feel like that: “Ok, so I have worked all my life devoting myself to my teaching profession, and I am performing just “satisfactorily”.
That much for self-evaluation, self-identity, and self-satisfaction.
However, of course, there is just simple general truth about working with people: “One cannot ever be good to everybody”. There will be someone who will not like you.
In Russian culture we also have a proverb “A tiny spoon of machine oil will spoil a barrel of honey”.
My translation of the proverb is not perfect but readers will understand the sense of that perfectly.
Thank you, everybody, for reading me!
Zoia Eliseyeva
April 25 2024 California
PS
Maybe I should have mentioned that from my childhood I was schooled with the grades “5” for “excellent”, “4” for “good”, and “3” for “satisfactory” with the latter hardly keeping on the surface of the performance. And my regular grade was mostly 4, “good”: I had almost never reached for “excellent”, nor I had such aspirations. I do not think it is good or bad: it is just about how high aspirations each person has for achievements.
I have the other story to share just to the point, however I will tell it some other time, just to keep myself strictly to the topic of this particular standard college incident.
😀