Let the stuttering student go outside of class and ask their questions. People are too entitled.
If this was my class, and I felt that the stuttering was affecting my ability to teach and the other students’ ability to learn, I would bring in the counseling center/disabilities office to help facilitate a meeting between myself and the student. I’ve found that many classroom problems, while new to me or new to the student, often have been seen before and a range of solutions worked out. Our ADA office counselor is terrific- a strong advocate for the students but in the best sense of the word- she wants the students to learn what they need with academic support but also prepared for teh realities of what it takes to be successful when held to professional standards.
I’ve used her before and it’s always been successful- student feels they have an advocate and aren’t in an unequal power play and I have someone who will be honest and straight with student based on her knowledge of disability rights and lots of her own experience.
Judging from a quick google search they are female porn-stars who heavily drink and may/may not be located in a town near you.
Please. Do you really think that a stutterer is going to go out of his way to speak in class unnecessarily? It is my experience that they try to minimize speaking. I know someone who stutters and he relayed to me that he very often would lie and say he did not know the answer to a question when he was called upon, as to avoid the embarrassment. He is a bright guy, but shared with me that he even dropped a college class once because they had to go around the room introducing themselves. He related that he said he was in the wrong class and left, knowing that saying “William” or “Bill” was going to hang him up.
I think that it’s safe to say that the kid is not asking questions or offering commentary gratuitously.
In my experience, magellan01 has the right on this one. Most stutterers try to avoid having to speak and I have not (yet) met one who was the sort who would deliberately ask “gotcha” questions in a classroom. I have met a number of students who asked off track questions because they just did not “get it” and a couple of them have also stuttered, but an interview in the linked story strongly suggests that that is not the case, here:
I don’t think the teacher should be run out on a rail, but she needs to reconsider her actions. I also note that her initial actions were not designed to publicly humiliate the student, so she does not seem to display any overt hostility. (I wonder if her 30 years of teaching middle school prior to teaching at a college, has left her with some practices that need to be reshaped for a new environment?)
That certainly wasn’t the best way to go about it. Every university has a Disability Services office, and the professor should have consulted there, first. At the very least, then he wouldn’t be on the hook for how he handled it.
That said, teaching is all about timing, and if something is making the timing off, teachers sometimes go in “fix-it” mode and just do what it takes to get things right again. I don’t blame the teacher too much for making what seemed like a quick solution to a problem. No need to fire him, but a reprimand is probably not out of line.
I think there’s probably some missing details in the story. As mhendo stated, sometimes, when questioning goes off track or delays the amount of time needed for lecture, you have to find an elegant way to move on. That’s hard to do with any student, especially one that is engaged in the material.
I would have done what even sven suggested - talk to the disability services offices about ways to approach the issue.
There’s also a subtext to this story - the student has been mostly home schooled, and has limited experience in larger classroom settings. Maybe there’s a timing issue regarding when and how he asks questions? While I don’t ever recall having a home schooled student in any of my classes (I teach mostly grad students anyway), I have had a number of international students tell me that it is difficult to figure out how to engage in class discussions because the US system differs from their home country. For instance, I have a student who is terrific from Eastern Europe who tends to make very opinionated, almost combative statements in class discussion. That’s not really his personality; it’s how he was schooled. Conversely, I have students from South Korea who say very little - because “opinions,” no matter how informed, are not solicited in classes (from their experiences, they tell me). So maybe his questioning and timing is a little off, as well.
The hand raised for the entire class is kind of weird. Sometimes, I will tell students that I need to get through X number of slides, or this particular point, and I’ll take questions later. Or I can remember being in a class taught by Derek Bok, the legal scholar, who of course utilized the Socratic method. A raised hand isn’t getting recognized in that context.
It does sound like the prof could have probably used a few things I do - having the class work together to create ground rules for discussion. Peers are often much more critical of how to engage in class, and I’ve gotten feedback from students who were upset because certain class members were dominating conversation, or not staying on topic, and the like. I would have certainly had the conversation face to face to a) avoid the e-mail being circulated to the media and b) see if the student noticed the same issue I had, and work on a solution together.
I also use small group discussions to allow quieter students an easier way to participate. We also use asynchronous discussion boards (yes, our very own SDMB!) to continue conversations. All of these methods count toward their class participation so even if someone doesn’t say much in class they can do well.
Well, hereis the student’s YouTube channel where you can hear him speaking. He sounds a lot better in his latestvideo.
Well, he’s presumably working off a script that he himself wrote and possibly rehearsed beforehand (or recorded several times, and we’re seeing the best). In class, asking a spontaneous question, I can see him eating up a lot of time, to the point where the teacher’s overall schedule is being disrupted.
I’m willing to cut the teacher some slack on this.
Question for those who think that this kid shouldn’t be allowed the extra time it takes him to ask his question: what if a kid had a Stephen Hawking-like device which he spoke through? Should he be allowed the extra time, or should he be relegated to asking his questions after class?
Philip’s ability to participate fully in the class is more important than the students’ and professor’s desire not to have their time wasted. It would be one thing if the professor offered the option of emailing the questions in response to Philip being uncomfortable speaking in class. That would be supportive. Telling him not to speak in class because his stutter is wasting the other students’ time is cruel and stupid.
Again, it would depend on exactly how much class time this was taking up, and how significantly it affected the teacher’s ability to get through the material properly with everyone else. There is no “one size fits all” solution to these problems.
I have had students with various physical and learning disabilities in my classes, and overall everything worked smoothly so far. In some cases, their disabilities were such that regular class was not affected at all, and they were able to succeed through the use of accommodations like having a note-taker, or getting extra time on exams. There have been other cases where i have been able to help students by meeting with them one-on-one outside of class time if they were having trouble keeping up. I’ve been lucky enough never to have encountered a situation like the one we’re discussing in this thread.
As i said above, my first strategy in this case probably would have been to ask the student to try to confine his questions to issues that were central to the topic, especially if i felt that some of them were tangential or irrelevant. We have a Disabled Student Services office on campus, and i likely would have brought them into it as well.
But, while i firmly believe that policies designed to help disabled students get an education are a good thing, there are some situations in which making an accommodation might mean providing a substandard education to everyone else in the class, and i don’t think that’s acceptable. I don’t have enough details about the student’s contributions to know whether or not that was the case here, but neither does anyone else in this thread, and i’m not willing to be too critical of the teacher without a more complete picture of what happened.
The teacher did open a dialog with the student on possible ways to resolve the problem. She opened that dialog with a couple of suggestions. If the student had other ideas for how to resolve the problem, he was free to respond to suggest them.
Yeah, it sucks that this student can’t get as much interaction as other students, but that’s not the teacher’s fault. Any approach to this situation would end up with him getting less interaction than other students, since a stutter will in itself hinder interaction. And the teacher is responsible for the whole class, not just one student.
I’ve had students with disabilities that interrupt the classes I teach. I take them aside and let them know that I will try to answer their questions but I may ignore or interrupt them if they take up too much time. They’re usually good with it if you talk to them face-to-face as an adult.
On the other hand I gotta raise an eyebrow to those who think an adjunct professor should “just go down to the disabilities office” and work all this stuff out for the student.
Adjunct professors are typically paid half-price to teach the same class with no benefits. That professor shouldn’t spend any more time on this than it takes to fire off an email or talk to the kid face-to-face. The department, or preferably, the kid and his parents needs to handle this.
Not according to the article. She told him to ask questions before or after school and to write down the answers to any questions she asked when the other students would respond verbally. How is that opening a dialouge? It’s a command. There’s no evidence anywhere that she asked him for suggestions, or hinted through word or deed that she was open to such.
Well, firstly, i don’t think anyone ever suggested that the teacher should just “work all this stuff out for the student.” In this situation, i would first have a quick chat with the disabilities office myself, either over the phone or in person. Then, if we thought it was necessary, i’d organize a meeting with the student and the disabilities office, preferably during my own office hours. That way, it’s time when i have to be on campus anyway, and the three of us could talk about possible solutions to the problem.
I’m well aware of the low-paid and precarious situation of the adjunct instructor. I am one myself right now. I’m lucky enough to work in a system where the money, while not great, is better than at a lot of other places, and i do get benefits like health insurance.
While i’m very sympathetic to the situation that many adjuncts find themselves in, however, i don’t think that our low pay and insecure employment situation absolve us from the responsibility of acting like professional educators. I know my stuff, i think i’m a good teacher, and i take pride in doing it well. My students have a right to expect the same level of engagement and professionalism from me as they do from the tenure-track faculty at my university. While the university might pay less for my services, the students don’t get a discount on the classes they take with me, so they don’t deserve to get inferior teaching. A meeting with disabilities services in a case like this would be, IMO, part of my professional obligation.
I’d take the view that this is only an issue because he made it an issue, went public with it, making videos, sending letters, convincing other students that she was being unfair, etc.
But in a classroom setting, the teacher is the one in charge of the classroom. If she needs something from you, then she’s the boss. If you’re a child then you’re not expected to understand the why of it, just to do it anyways. If you’re an adult then you should be mature enough to follow direction.
If she was being abusive, then by all means report her to the school authorities. But asking you to write down your questions for later so that she can give you one-on-one time is not abusive. If anything, it’s getting more teacher for your dollar than all of your fellow classmates.
Maybe they did have some discussion about that. Or maybe the prof did try other solutions first. I’m not saying that she did; rather, I’m just saying that we don’t know enough about the situation.
There’s tons we don’t know. The debate, as I understand it, is if it is ok for an instructor to tell a student not to speak in class because their disability slows their speech. My answer to that is that it is not appropriate and that a more appropriate step would be to discuss alternate solutions with the student directly.
This is truth. As chair, I have it set up so that all adjuncts in my department have a full-time professor who is their “go to” person for dealing with situations beyond the normal scope of the class (from administrative to bureaucratic to classroom management). I would step in if the FT person was not available or didn’t know what to do. We try extremely hard to support our adjuncts so they can focus their efforts on teaching.
But I would approach it as I described in an earlier post- contact disability services because they tend to be really, really good at figuring out realistic solutions.