Student evaluations

Every year I have my students evaluate me after they have taken their finals.  Here are some of the most common responses this year.

1. Did you feel that I cared about you and your success?  Overwhelmingly, the answer was yes.  There were a very few students that hesitated or said that they weren't sure.

2. If yes, what did I do to show you that I cared?  If no, what could I have done? The answers on this were mainly: you let us know when we had a bad grade and let us turn stuff in late, you asked us about our weekends and seemed interested, you told us about your life.

3. What is the best thing I did in the classroom? This one had a ton of different answers.  But I got a lot of The Stories with Repetition, the Gestures to show when we needed help, The songs at the beginning of the hour...basically everything was said on someone's paper.

4. What is the worst thing I did in the class?  "pop" quizzes, not enough grammar, no vocab sheets.  I really don't know how to handle these because I don't really foresee me changing this next year.  Any thoughts?  I mean, I could poop out a vocab sheet and I have tried to flip the grammar for those students who want it, but it hasn't gone well...

5. What could I do next year to be a better teacher? More stories, teach grammar, more conversations, write words on the board in upper levels, units with specific vocab, more comprehension checks, more repetitions

And that's about it.  I did have like 3 semi-critical ones, but I think those had more to do with personality clashes than about actual pedagogy.  Overall, kids said that my classroom was a fun place where they didn't feel stressed out and they felt like, when they were feeling stressed out because of other classes, I gave them space to de-stress.

I did have one student who was the most complimentary.  This is a student who NEVER volunteered to speak and when she did speak, it was almost a whisper.  She wrote such wonderful things about how much she loved class, even if it didn't show on her face.  So remember, even the kids that you think are miserable could be loving what you're doing.  Don't count them out!

I really recommend doing this at the end of the year if your heart can handle it.  I'm not gonna lie, some of the responses hurt, but you'll never grow if you don't put yourself out there.  And every year, it's the most critical responses that I grow from.