It would be nice if the paper had reprinted the entire email, but what she did was a dick move.
“Hope these suggestions help to make your experience in my class enjoyable and productive,” she wrote"
Oh yeah, she’s obviously trying to give the wicked witch of the west a run for her money and hoping to get the coveted Hitler teacher of the year award with an attitude like that.
No one is saying that. They’re saying she screwed up, took the lazy route, and in the bargain failed to properly accommodate a student with disabilities, so she’d better step her damn game up.
One stuttering question does not destroy all of the class time.
Precociousness suggests multiple unnecessary questions. Everybody has experienced this. This was a home-schooled kid who by default hasn’t logged a lot of class time and hasn’t been exposed to the social aspect of it. It fuels the conjecture of Special Snowflake Syndrome. Maybe he’s learned something from the experience and will go through the proper channels to address his grievances instead of posting it on the internet.
She told him to email her with his concerns. She offered to meet with him and the dean. She did not ‘shut him down and shut him out’ - she was offering to open the channels of communication. He just wanted to be able to do whatever he wanted to do, and I agree with **Magiver **that the problem likely went beyond his stuttering and into him dominating class time with incessant questions.
I still maintain that it doesn’t matter that he is 16 - if he’s not mature enough to deal with his own issues (in a situation where he was given multiple opportunities to do something proactive) then maybe he’s not mature enough for college. The prof shouldn’t have to cater to precocious high-schoolers - that’s really not part of her job.
So what do you think the obvious, ideal solution to the problem is? Is she just meant to let him talk as much as he wants, even for the whole class if he wants? Is she supposed to continually pursue discussing the issue with him even though he refuses to email her or talk to the dean? Is she supposed to suggest one of the other options mentioned in this thread (having another student read questions, texting comments to her phone)? What if he was equally offended by those suggestions?
And the reason she feels fearful for her safety is not because of him specifically, but because of “hateful, vile, vicious emails” she’s gotten from all manner of people since the first article appeared and vilified her. If I was getting those kinds of emails from possibly unbalanced people who know where I worked I probably would fear for my safety a bit too. Are you saying she should be okay with receiving numerous personal threats?
Why? Co-educational means that the school accepts both male and female students. So both types are co-eds.
Co-ed specifically references female students (in most cases, colleges that were single-gender and later integrated sexes were formerly all male). Sure, a few women’s colleges integrated men after their founding (i.e. Vassar), but they’re a sizable minority.
I research higher education and I’ve never heard the term used to reference male students. (To be honest, I haven’t heard the term, period, except in bawdy Playboy jokes from the 1960s.) It’s very archaic.
I still think the professor’s attempt to present options for the student was well intentioned. The fact that the student canceled meetings to discuss this, but found time to discuss it with the media make me raise an eyebrow. If the ultimate goal is to resolve an issue in communicating in the classroom, not taking a meeting suggests that the student wasn’t interested in a solution. And the random Internet Tough Guys harassing this professor is a fact of life any time incomplete, slanted stories emerge painting one party as the bully and the other as victim, even though the subsequent stories suggest it’s far more complex than that.
One of the outcomes of this thread, hopefully, could be taking the term “special snowflake” out back, and giving it the Ol’ Yeller treatment. It’s rapidly replacing “cow-orker” as my least favorite Internetism.
The part where you lose credibility is where you take cheap shots at her based on her adjunct status, accuse her of having a swollen head and an out-of-control ego, and say that you are “appalled” at the situation.
Appalled? Really? The kid wasn’t beaten, wasn’t humiliated in public, and on HIS OWN ADMISSION, failed to follow through with the arrangements that had been made WITH HIS PARTICIPATION to meet both with the Dean and the professor to resolve the matter. Instead, he chose to contact the New York Times with a grievance about what is ultimately a small matter of a mistake made by a long-time professor.
She made a mistake, he turned it into a martyr moment. So she didn’t handle it correctly. It’ll get fixed, and the student will be able to continue his participation in the educational process. This whole thing did NOT need to end up on page one of the New York fucking Times (with the follow-up article, with her story, in the “NY-Region” section).
But she DID accommodate him. Is it equal to a kid who can speak normally? No, but that is the nature of having a disability.
Braille doesn’t give blind people sight, but it is still considered a reasonable accommodation.
None of us know the true situation, but if I had to guess, this 16 year old who attends college still has to be the center of attention by speaking out in class. That and his actions in this case make him seem like a self-entitled little prick who was asking to get shot down somehow. The teacher took this opportunity to do it.
I’m with the others here as well. Wait until he gets in the workforce. Nobody will outright fire him for stuttering, but wait when he gets passed over for promotion because he demands “reasonable accommodation” in the form of co-workers kissing his ass. Coddling him at this stage does nothing to help.
I am sorry to bump this thread to the top. But, I have to speak up. I am a stutterer, and I find what the aforementioned stutterer girl/boy did very unreasonable. I never ask my questions during lectures; rather, I ask my questions either after the lecture or before the lecture. Moreover, she/he should be grateful that the lecturer didn’t rudely tell her/him not to ask his/her questions in front of her/his classmates since it would be very embarrassing and discouraging. And, it is very kind of the lecturer to send an e-mail her/him. I hardly know any lecturer who sends e-mails to his/her students.