Yesterday, my wife and I were having lunch in a restaurant when someone suddenly shouted, "Alex Ruskell!" The shout wasn't directed at me or anyone else. I noticed a group of law students sitting a few tables away, and I assumed they were the source.
I had no idea what the shout meant. My wife thought the shout's tone sounded a lot like Adventure Time's James Baxter, the horse who repeatedly says his name while balancing on a beachball to make people happy. In case you haven't seen it:
I'd like to think my students think of me as a horse who repeatedly says his name while balancing on a beachball to make people happy, but I started worrying that maybe it was somthing negative.
My wife and I spent the majority of the rest of lunch trying to decide what the shout meant. Was it good? (my wife). Was it bad? (me). Was it what ladies say when they envision the perfect man? (my wife). Were they saying I owed them money? (me). Were they just being weird and wanted to see if I would hear them, because people get totally weird in law school? (my wife). Were they planning who they would eat first if they were stranded on a deserted island? (me). Was it what students say when they need help? (my wife). Was it a reference to the fact I didn't introduce myself at my last student presentation until I'd already finished it? (me). Clearly, I could've walked over and asked them, but that probably would have been pretty creepy.
The whole experience got me thinking about student evaluations. I do student evaluations for my tutors, and although they are 99 percent fantastic, there is always some crank with an axe to grind. This year, one of my female tutors was called a couple names in an evaluation, apparently from a student who was mad she wouldn't give him handouts without his attendance in tutoring (which I tell my tutors to do). She wasn't upset exactly, but she was worried it had lowered my opinion of her tutoring.
In my experience, people spend a lot more time worrying about a negative (or seemingly negative) evaluation than they do feeling good about the good evaluations. But how much value does a negative evaluation really have, and how much weight should be put into them? Is a "negative" evaluation always negative? For example, a student called one of my colleagues "feisty" once — was that an actual bad evaluation, some kind of weird praise, or was it just sexist (we spent some time together trying to figure out that one)? Are the negative evaluations somehow more "true," while the positive evaluations are merely students being nice? Are negative evaluations ever about the teaching? For women, are "negative" evaluations more likely (as recent studies suggest they are)? For schools that advertise themselves as "student-centered," is this really the best way to decide what the students actually need? Are evaluations basically a popularity contest?
When someone asks me who my favorite teacher of all time was, I always say one of my junior high teachers — mainly because he taught us how to do "The Bird" for the Valentine's Dance and referred to me as his "number one jellyhead." I can't really say whether I learned anything, but I do remember how often he threw me out of class, his sartorial choices, and his claims that certain STDs could be cured with hefty wallops from a rubber hammer. That kind of stuff is what made him my favorite. It also led my wife to believe I had made the guy up until she met someone else that had gone to my junior high.
I am sure I didn't like or praise many worthy teachers because they didn't know who Morris Day and the Time were or demonstrated how things would go with the rubber hammer if I wasn't careful.
I am also sure that my tutor did a great job and that whatever mental real estate she had ceded over to that one poor evaluation was wasted.
But, unfortunately, that seems to be how the mind works, whether justified or not.
(Alex Ruskell)
