I’m in college studying nursing. A teacher was mad at a student because the student wasn’t doing her assignment in clinicals fast enough and made the student clean toilets as punishment. Its my understanding she was having a bad day and took it out on the student (not uncommon in nursing school).
Naturally this isn’t a giant deal but if the teacher does that to me i want to punish her for it. is it academically illegal for a teacher to do that or does the professor have discresion? i always assumed it was considered wrong by the school & the state for a teacher to take their anger out on a student or to punish them for not doing their work quickly enough, esp. if the punishment had nothing whatsoever to do with the learning process. So if a professor did something like that to me (took their anger out on me, humiliated me or made me do something inappropriate) who would i report it to.
i wonder how hard i’ll get flamed for this. who cares, its just the internet.
Nursing is a pretty tough job to have as a “starter career.” But that’s an outsider’s opinion.
Unless you were the student who was sanctioned, it would be unprofessional and unwarranted for you to interfere. For one thing, you cannot know the motives of the teacher. What may look to you like the teacher’s bad mood may actually be a way of getting across an essential lesson to the pokey student. Someone’s life may someday depend on how quickly a nurse can perform tasks.
But even if your accessment is entirely right – the teacher took his or her bad mood out on a student working too slowly – why shouldn’t that student handle the problem himself or herself? The first step would be in talking to the teacher who doled out the punishment.
Is there a Dean of Students? Or a Director of Nursing? That would possibly be a next step.
Probably the person to complain to would be the dean of the department.
I am unsure as to nursing school protocol, but if one of my professors ever told me I had to clean toilets because I wasn’t working fast enough, I would consider it inappropriate, and either a) tell them no way
OR
b) if no wasn’t going to work, ask them where it says in the syllabus that punishment for not doing work quickly enough will result in cleaning toilets
and if that doesn’t work, then inform them that I would be inquiring to the dean as to wether that was according to protocal and then after the dean confirms that I have to do it, then I would do it.
If the dean says that I didn’t have to do it, I would say no way and if I noticed that my grade suffered because of it, I would be on record as inquiring about it, and be able to show that there might be a connection between my unfair grade and not cleaning toilets.
I’m with Zoe at least in the first half of her post. If cleaning toilets is so bad, then nursing is the wrong profession. In the armed services it is called latrine duty and the goof offs are often assigned the privilege.
kniz: But nursing students are, well, students. Not Marine PFCs or Army privates or Seamen Basic. A DI has far, far more authority to dish out creative punishment than a teacher, and for good reason: The purpose of Basic is to break someone’s will, the purpose of college is to instill knowledge and good habits.
Wow. And I thought I put up with a lot of crap from my instructors.
The dean of the nursing faculty would be the person to go to. We had an instructor fired last year because of this type of thing. Don’t know how it all went down but it started by complaining to the dean.
Oh my god. I hope you’re only in first year. Get out now while you still have your soul. It’s not worth going through the hell of school if it’s only a starter career.