WhyNot, I think it’s an excellent letter. I like that you gave details/examples of the disorganization, and that you told of the assignment regarding the ecosystem without going into the creationist aspect of it…I think you are right to tackle the issues regarding his shortfalls in teaching first. If he’s really struggling over teaching basic biology, by his own admission, then they need to deal with that. It can’t be that hard to organize…he could organize it the way they do in the text book, and he’d probably be in pretty good shape.
My only concern is what I said to you Saturday night…that I wouldn’t want your “complaint” to affect your success in the class, but after reading your letter, I am thinking now that something has to be done, or no one is going to learn anything. You probably have more knowledge of biology than anyone else in the class, so if you are getting confused, can you imagine how bewildered everyone else must be? Is there any chance you could get together with some folks, and see if they want to send it as a “joint” letter from all of you?
In my experience it would be much much better to send separate letters than one signed by multiple people. Those letters often sound like vendettas where a troublemaker tries to get as many people to sign on to their point of view. You have such reasonable complaints I would hate for your letter to be characterized that way.
HOwever, mulitple letters on the same talking points would be taken very seriously.
(nitpick-- WE call them Elder and Younger, so that we know which Pieter and which Jan we’re talking about. Same goes for the various Hans Holbeins, Lucas Cranachs, Pieter Visschers, etc)
I understand what you mean. I added that in after my first draft actually, to give some context to the girl who didn’t understand the connection between atomic structure (slide X) and Scientific Method (slide X+1) and was frustrated to tears about it as he reacted like it was all her fault for not understanding it. She wasn’t crazy or not yet clearly understanding something that became clear later - he really did jump topics like that. There was just this random assortment of slides, so we’d get 10 minutes on cellular structure, 8 minutes on categorization of cells (prokaryotes vs/ eukaryotes), 23 minutes on atoms and molecules, 4 minutes on Scientific Method, and then back for another 10 minutes on organelles. That, at least, settled down for the second class and he was more-or-less able to keep things within the realm of atomic and molecular structure as it relates to biology (except for the lab on weights and measures).
Good luck with this. I like the letter (it is a tad long). You might want to cut the bit about why you’re sending it. How about just a short statement about “I’d like to share my concerns with you.” Your reasons become very clear, very quickly!
I vote to leave it in. One thing I try to do as a professor is not make the mistakes my professors made. I took classes where certain lectures or series of lectures had an organization or theme that was apparent to the professor, but not communicated to the class. That is a failing of the professor. If a good student can’t see the organizing principle behind a lecture or presentation, then the professor isn’t doing his or her job, IMO.
One thing that I like about the letter, is that you are sending it early in the class. I think it will have more weight than a letter that is sent when the class is almost over.
I like it just as it is as well. There’s good examples, nothing that sounds like whining, and it’s respectful of both the reader and the professor you’re “concerned” about. I also like the previous suggestion about how each class is so much more important because this is an accelerated course. Since you and I both know that would be thrown at you with regard to any absence, excused or not, or if you were terribly disorganized, I think it bears mentioning that you’re aware of it too. And that this can go both ways.
Can we stop discussing the fabulousness of Whynot’s reasoned filled letter of concern to Dr. XXXX and get back to the Prog-Rock-Napoleon Dynamite-Painting?
Cause, I gots a question:
Is Eve giving Adam a hummer or a handjob in the background or what?
I have the sense that WhyNot would be able to handle the academics necessary for her nursing degree even if this specific course didn’t cover much biology at all; that this course is a means to an end, and the most important consideration is that it not be cancelled out from under her.
Am I totally off-base here, WhyNot, and is there any danger that if the teacher is removed, the course would be cancelled, leaving you at loose ends wrt your academic plans?
I agree about class organization- it should be apparent where a class is going.
I was trying to look at it from the chair’s perspective, which for some, is to find a reason to discount the student complaint. I don’t want the chair to think s/he can dismiss this concern “because obviously the student thinks she’s a better teacher than the prof yada yada yada”.
But as I said, leaving it in would work too; it’s a strong letter!
This is a very good point–especially if the teacher ends up giving you a bad grade because of ideological disagreements. Speaking again from experience inside the ivory tower, nothing will get your complaints discounted more quickly by the chair than if they are sent late in the semester by a student who is earning a bad grade. You need to nip this in the bud–not just if you want to get taken seriously, but to reduce your chances of getting a bad grade by laying out your complaints up front.
It’s tricky; if a student came to me as chair complaining that a class was badly organized and s/he couldn’t follow things, one thing that I would inevitably consider is whether the student was perhaps not very smart (and the failure to follow was attributable to that). I wouldn’t immediately assume the professor was at fault. But WhyNot’s letter is not the typical letter of complaint one receives from a student. It is very mature and articulate. You can tell a lot about a student from how they write, in my experience. I think I’ve gotten to the point that I can peg a student’s intelligence and aptitude by reading a random paragraph of any formal assignment the student has written–and I think this is a very common ability among profs.
Sorry if I missed something, but…the picky you’ve got posted on Flickr isn’t that painting, and I fear that it may come back to bite you in the ass if you complain specifically that Dr. McFuckington gave you that specific picture, because he didn’t. The Flickr cartoon is a Christian kitschified version of it, but it ain’t the same painting, not by a long shot.
Unless I missed something, in which case never mind.
