Student Textbook Evaluation Form: Fill & Download for Free

I see teachers radically improving all the time, myself included.Here’s a secret: I’m still not a great teacher. I make a lot of mistakes. I have a lot of classroom problems. I have students who dislike my class or subject and I don’t get through to all of them.Including the various forms of assisting and student teaching I’ve done, I’ve been working at it for about 7 years now, a half-year of which I had full control of a classroom of my own. While I’m miles better than when I started, I’ve only barely scratched the surface to effective teaching.And several times a day, I recall my own experience with a first-time professor to remind myself that I can change.One semester, I had a brand new first-time professor who, God help her, was very intelligent but did not know how to teach.This was a lower division course that was mandatory for many students in different major fields. As such, it tended to be taught by a lot of different short-term adjuncts rather than full-time experienced faculty.(The freshly titled doctor’s “teaching sins” weren’t horrific or abusive, just pervasively bad and disheartening. Also, note that the following things may have been more normal at a large university lecture, but it was highly unusual for my small, discussion-centered class.)The professor used a PowerPoint that was literally just the textbook word-for-word, including the textbook illustrations. Then she read the PowerPoint to us, without pause, for the entirety of class. The lecture always ran over, so the students never found out what she wanted us to know from the second half of each textbook chapter. She didn’t give time for questions, and when someone managed to sneak one in, she often couldn’t answer it unless it was on the slides. Sometimes we’d have scheduled labs, and she wouldn’t have the necessary supplies or instructions on how to perform the lab. Grading happened inconsistently— after more than a month of waiting, if ever, and often to unpredictable standards.When we tried to talk to her after classes or during office hours, the professor’s attitude was that learning was our job outside of class, and it wasn’t her fault if we couldn’t learn directly from her lectures. After all that, a good portion of the class stopped showing up.Then… the mid-term new professor evaluations. (It was standard for all newly hired professors to be evaluated early and often, for precisely this reason.)I don’t know what the other students wrote on theirs, but the nicest thing I could say was that she clearly stuck with the assigned textbooks and was covering the material therein. Dozens of those evaluation forms, filled out in stark honesty and more than a little frustration, were sent to the professor’s supervisor.The next day, this poor newly minted professor walked in to the toughest faculty evaluation meeting of her life.She could have come out angry and retaliated against us. I knew plenty of professors who did.Instead, the professor started the next class off with a sincere apology accepting the blame for many of the classroom issues. More than what she said, I was struck by how she was clearly devestated that her teaching wasn’t effective, and yet eager to turn things around.Her next lecture was about half her previous zippy speed, and she answered our questions in addition to guiding discussions in the subject. Grades were up-to-date within a week, and all papers returned with feedback. The work was appropriately difficult for college and required concentrated effort to succeed in, but now we were capable of doing it.In a month, the class went from frustrating and impossible to achievable and thought-provoking. I learned 10x more about the subject in the second half of the course, and I picked up a lesson in teaching as well:Even the very best of intentions don’t instantly translate to polished knowledge.You may come in to the classroom with strong personal ideas of pedagogy and classroom management, all supported by the latest and greatest in education research, and that plan can utterly fail if you aren’t meeting your students where they are. There’s often a middle ground between being the person you are and being the teacher that they need, and it may take practice to find the right balance.Most teachers have bad moments. They only become bad teachers if they persistently refuse to accept at least some of the blame for their own bad behavior.Note: by “bad teachers”, of course I mean lazy, rude, disorganized, or otherwise ineffective teaching, NOT criminal, abusive, or cruel behavior. The latter type of “bad teacher” doesn’t deserve a second chance to do it right— they should not be teaching, period.

It’s possible that they are suffering from some form of severe anxiety, possibly exacerbated by a condition like dyslexia or ADHD, parental/social/financial pressure, or stressful events/circumstances unrelated to the class. In that case, I strongly encourage the student to seek an evaluation from trained professionals, and to look into obtaining a request for additional time, special environments, or other accommodations, from the campus office charged with making such requests on students’ behalf. And then if they obtain such a request, I honor it.It’s also possible that they don’t know the material as well as they think they do. “Understanding” is a subtle and dangerous trap. It’s very easy to read the textbook, read old homework solutions, sit through lecture, nod, and say “Yep, uh-huh”, because everything seems clear and comfortable and familiar. It’s quite another thing to be able to successfully apply that knowledge, faced with a problem and a blank sheet of paper. And that dissonance can be quite jarring.I do not have the training or expertise to distinguish between these two possibilities, or to respond appropriately to the first possibility. Which is why I strongly recommend an evaluation by mental-health professionals who do.

The question is “Has poetry been sullied?” – sullied how? When?Poetry is an art form. Producing poor art doesn’t sully great art.Testing the boundaries of an art form – creating works that might not even quite be poetry… is perfectly fine, and it’s a part of how the world progresses.The end evaluation must not be “how close is this to the poetry that my student textbooks listed as the best?” but something more like “how much power does this work have to move people, to enlighten them, to teach them, to affect them, to awe them?”If it has power, it doesn’t matter if it’s “poetry” or not. That’s just playing with categories; art with power and connection can endure and have an effect on the world.Poor art won’t sully that; even if it makes some noise, or shocks people, it’ll still just be forgotten after the fuss is over.