I bit the bullet this week and asked my students to let me know how they were finding my teaching. I explained that I didn’t mean personal remarks just whether they felt I was helping them to learn, and what I might do better. I asked them to respond in particular to my 'comment only' marking on their last assignment. They duly took out a sheet of loose leaf -after we had discovered that ‘foolscap’ is not a term used in this part of the US.
I was worried they might be either too hard on me, or less helpfully, too nice. There were a few responses of the worryingly ambiguous type - 'I can't think of anything you could do to be a better teacher'. But they were also quite direct too –which was refreshing. The following is fairly typical of the responses I got.
‘Thank you for saying that you liked my introduction. I didn't think this one was any good. Why did you?'
'I agree that I need to work on my paragraphing. To be honest I don’t understand how paragraphs work. I never did them at my last school either.’
‘I rushed this homework because I wanted to go out to a movie with friends. That won’t happen again.’
‘I liked what you did with not giving us our grades right away. I would like if you wrote more comments.’
‘What is juxtaposition?’ (Er… my favourite word?)
‘You didn’t explain that we needed to have more than one example’ (I hadn’t either!)
and my personal favourite:
‘I like your accent. I wish I had one.’
I’ve found out what ‘Homecoming’ is. It’s the first home game of our school football team –and it takes place next week. We have been fundraising, voting for princesses and decorating our classroom doors all week. More about this soon.
