I Am Accused Of Being Racist

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I am pissed off right now, so pardon me if I ramble.
I just finished this quarter teaching various subjects at a college. One class was Expository English. About 2/3 of the class were born and raised here in the USA and 1/3 of the students learned English as a second language. Luckily for them, I taught ESL for over 14 years and did my best to teach the class for both levels of English.
The final exam came and I gave two students a “D” – both of them ESL students. To be honest, the “D” was quite generous in both cases. One student had perfect attendance, but never cracked a book. The other student showed up less than 50% of the time and turned in few assignments.

Now, because of their grades, both students got together and have claimed I am anti-Hispanic and treated them unfairly.
I have to meet with them, and the Dean of Students, on Monday.

I have copies of all of their work.
For example:
Together we completed a worksheet in class on irregular verbs.
Quiz one on irregular verbs - both failed.
Quiz two on irregular verbs - both failed again.
I told them to study those quizzes as they “might” show up on the final exam.
The final exam had the same exact questions as quiz one and two, and both failed again!

I also have essays from them. One has so many errors that I corrected it in blue ink so the student would not be embarrassed by a splash of red ink on her desk. The other did not have a single sentence in the essay that did not contain at least one error. Both also failed to turn in a few assignments along they way, despite my reminding them several times.

I had all the students write a simple essay during the first week. I then graded them based upon their ability when they started the class, and compared it to their ability when they finished the class. It was the only way I could determine a grade. It would have been unfair to grade them all equally due to the varied backgrounds of education. BTW, the other ESL-level students all got “C” or above for their final grade.

I know this accusation is bogus, as does the Dean of Students and anyone else who knows me. Still, it is like answering the question, “When did you stop beating your wife?” You can’t win.

2

I’d say, just show the dean all of the papers, point out all the mistakes, and say you were just doing your job and grading them properly. Be calm, level headed, polite. How could you lose this one? They’ve got no proof of you being racist.

3

How could he lose this one? Because in many large corporate and university settings, (I work for Duke University) the organization is terrified of public backlash if an affronted student decides to file suit, no matter how frivolous. It sometimes can be taken by the overly sensitive buereaucracy in the same manner as rape charges; By that, I mean that it is incumbent upon the accused to make a defense rather than the accuser to provide proof.

You definitely shouldn’t though, as long as you’ve dotted your 'i’s, crossed your ‘t’'s and done whatever it is you do to a “Q”. Looks like you have.

4

And no doubt this pair will blame every setback in their lives caused by their own laziness,stupidity and lack of self discipline on racism just as so many others do .
You have my heart felt sympathy.

Years ago I was reported to the Race Relations Board(I’m a Brit) by a bloke of West Indian descent for throwing him out (not physically)of a cinema for supposedly being Black .
I actually made him leave because he hadn’t actually bothered to buy a ticket and had sneaked in through a fire exit.

Luckily for me he actually owned up to not buying a ticket but I still had all the stress of waiting for the hearing ,possible criminal charges and the loss of my job until it was resolved
.
Ithink he only reported me out of habit ,nothing to lose everything to gain and probably forgot about it thirty seconds after the event but I had to tiptoe round every thug and dickhead who hadn’t bought a ticket for long afterwards because my name had attracted the attention of the R.R.B.

Over here in a racial situation you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent.

5

It looks to me like your case is pretty solid. If your dean is not a complete idiot, which I don’t take for granted, you have nothing to worry about.
Oh wait, unless you also have white students who performed the same as the hispanic students and who got better grades from you.

6

Too true. It’s unfortunate that places like Jena still exist to make it necesary.

7

Along with paedophilia, racism is the new witchcraft (or for more recent history, communism).

These witchhunts only serve to dilute the real examples.

Stating the obvious mode: OFF. Back to normal transmission.

8

I’ve had a few students like that in my classes. One is from a nebulous area of Africa (we all are pretty sure it’s Nigeria, based on her last name, but she’s elusive about where) and she has still managed to apply for and receive a full-boat scholarship from both the state and the college together. Now, mind you, this is the 4th class I’ve had with this woman. Her assignments are either never handed in or completely plagiarized, she is consistantly the lowest scorer on her tests and quizzes, but has managed to pull the race card at least twice that I know of. She will always go out of her way to get the white professors (no small feat in my school), which I’m sure is just her insurance policy. I wonder what will happen when she sits for the CPA exam.

9

Can the Dean, upon his assessment of the case, decide that the “D” mark was unfair and actually fail the students? I hope so.

10

So when did you stop beating your wife?

11

I have not stopped beating his wife.

12

Yeah, that’s a shitty situation, DMark and I feel for you. Know that there are some people out there [here, at least] that can see the situation clearly for what it truly is.

13

I am not nor have I ever been an English teacher, or any other kind of teacher. I do know, however, that in the schools here, English teachers are ordered to give passing grades. Flunking would be too much of a loss of face. If the student comes from an influential family, the grade had better be more than just passing.

I say that English teachers are ordered to do this, because they are foreigners; the Thais who are teaching the other subjects already know their students must pass and do not have to be ordered. It’s only the uppity foreigners with their new-fangled notions of failing grades who can be obstinate. Needless to say, this is one reason for all the goofy English over here. Then when they try to get into school abroad, the ones who never cracked a book are aghast that they can’t score well on the TOEFL exam. Go figure.

14

How so? How do places like Jena justify unsubstantiated accusations?

15

They can’t, which is why the Jena Six are front-page news. But that it happened at all is what attracted all the attention to begin with.

Robin

16

Nothing justifies false accusations. Such things are entirely counterproductive to racial equality. Places make Jena make it necessary to take even false accusations seriously, because in some parts of the country these things happen. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been on the receiving end of this type of behavior. Perhaps I’m suffering from my own version of “Stokholm Syndrome” in trying to justify it.

17

That sucks DMark. I’ve had to give poor grades in the past to students who did not have English as their first language (in my case, the students in question were from Taiwan and Korea), but i’ve never had any of them accuse me of racism.

See, in my classes, that would be the killer for the student. I make very clear on my syllabus that EVERY piece of written work needs to be submitted, or the student will receive a failing grade for the whole course. No exceptions. I also have a policy that missing more than 2 or 3 lessons (depending on the class) will result in failure. Your student would already have failed my class, without me even needing to look at his/her final test.

I’m not sure what type of college you teach at, or what their policies are for letting in students who have English as a second language, but in my experience a lot of the problems i encounter with teaching and grading ESL students is actually the fault of the college.

For the last few semesters, i’ve been teaching history courses at a local private art college. The college is a good, expensive private college, and has quite a few international students, mainly from southeast Asia. To get into the school, the students are required to pass a TOEFL (or some equivalent) test.

The problem is that the level of proficiency required by the college is really not high enough for college-level humanities classes. I get students who have passed the test, but who have lots of trouble contributing in class, and who can barely string together a coherent English sentence. This is exacerbated when we read difficult texts or write about complicated topics; at times, i literally cannot tell what the students are trying to say in their papers.

The problem here is that the college appears to be more interested in getting the fees from the international students than it is in ensuring that they will be able to cope with their classes. Of course, what then happens is that the burden of dealing with the issue is simply passed on to the teachers, who basically have two choices:

(1) we can give the international students the grades that their work deserves, which sometimes means an F. But this isn’t really fair to them, because the college has already told them that their level of English is good enough for the work they will be doing. We then turn around and say that’s it’s not.

or

(2) we can go easy on them and pass them even when they don’t deserve it. But this isn’t fair to the rest of the students, who are judged based on the quality of work they submit.

I really feel for some of these students, because many of them are trying really hard, but their English proficiency is simply not high enough to deal with a college-level history class. The college has accepted their 30 grand tuition money, and told them that their English is good enough, but then they fail a class because their English isn’t good enough. I offer to help them with their writing, but the fact is that i’m not trained as an ESL teacher, and i’m also not being paid to teach English in my class; i’m being paid to teach history, and spending class time on basic writing skills is unfair to the American students who don’t need such lessons.

18

Unsubstantiated, not false. And why should the burden of proof be on the accused?

19

In the same manner that racial slurs and offensive displays (or official underreaction to such) do not justify assault and battery, specific incidents of racism do not justify the stripping of rights of the accused.

20

Excellent advice. And if you can name brilliant, hardworking Latino students with excellent work who’ve passed your course, and moronic, lazyass Anglo students who’ve flunked, so much the better.