Third Time NOT the Charm

During Winter Quarter I taught a class in Human Genetics for non-science major Honor’s undergraduate students. This was my third time teaching the class. For me, I felt that this time the class went better than either of the previous times. I felt like the students learned what I had hoped by the end of the quarter & that I was becoming better at conveying the information to them. On the plus side, I had a student call me at home to tell me that I was “the best teacher she’d had in her life ever.” My husband and I laughed over this as teaching is something I struggle with and it was a sad statement if that was true for her.

Today, student assessments were posted. I can only say “ouch.”

On the plus side, as a group, the  students agree that I am both well prepared and knowledgeable about the subject matter. Also most of them find the course to be challenging. And, yes, they generally admit that I do grade fairly.

For every other metric (enthusiasm, communication skills, overall effectiveness, overall course quality, lab experience) I’m between “agree more than disagree” and “disagree more than agree”. Yuck. It looks like there was a single student who found me to be outstanding across every metric–likely the one who called me. The rest either liked me or did not, strongly.