Exactly. And I see that the prof “asked” the stutterer in the email to alter his behavior during class, not demanded it. She may have worded her reasons in a way that offended the stutterer. In that case, she should apologize. I have a lot of sympathy for adjunct faculty. They’re usually at the bottom of the heap among the faculty with no guaranteed employment and the lowest salaries. My general approach in these kinds of classroom situations is to let things continue as is unless I hear grumblings from the other students. No matter how difficult it may be for me as the instructor I know it’ll only last until the end of the semester. However, if I feel that any classroom behavior is disruptive to the learning environment, then I will find a way to deal with it as discretely as possible. If I can’t, that’s when the department chair or dean can step in.
Are you joking?
You want to remove him from the classroom experience because he stutters?!
Hey, guess what. Students are entitled to a university education around here. With the attitude of these boards (as most of us hold grad degrees), you’d think college was a universal human right.
Hell yeah he’s entitled to be treated with respect.
There are many solutions to this problem. Just in the course of reading this thread, here’s what popped into my head:
[ol]
[li]If Philip has a notebook or tablet, he could email questions to the professor during class, or even set up a private chat room where he could type the questions. I’ve done this when I had students “attending” my classes via videoconference from another school.[/li][li]Philip could also text the questions, but this would be more difficult for the professor, as I’m sure she keeps her phone turned off in class and this would require having the phone on.[/li][li]If another student is willing, Philip could jot down questions (or whisper them) and have the other student read them out loud.[/li][li]Philip could write down questions and hand them to the professor - perhaps sitting in the front row to avoid disrupting the class by standing up and walking to the front.[/li][li]If the disruption/delay is as minor as it appears to be, the professor could just suck it up and let him ask the questions out loud, thus allowing him practice in public speaking and helping him to work through the stuttering.[/li][/ol]
So what if it is a command. I am not sure why everyone has this outrageous sense of entitlement these days. The teacher provided him with solutions that should not interfere with his learning, or hinder him in any significant way.
But more importantly, this is clear evidence of the lack of respect teachers/instructors get, and why otherwise talented people never want to teach. Everybody has no problem telling a teacher how to run their class, or whining when some student has their feelings hurt or gets a bruised ego. Imagine if this were a corporate board room. Do you think anyone would be saying that some middle manager should have the right to speak whenever they want irrespective of a stutter? In the private sector, they would just tell you to shut up.
There’s a big difference here. The students are paying for an education. Your hypothetical middle manager is getting paid to be there.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:45, topic:599392”]
There’s a big difference here. The students are paying for an education. Your hypothetical middle manager is getting paid to be there.
[/QUOTE]
Why does that matter? The actions in question are those of paid employees. The teacher doesn’t work for the student, and thus has very little responsibility to them beyond teaching the material. More importantly, like any “customer” her can go elsewhere if he feels he is not getting his money’s worth.
I’m not sure that is true. If speaking up in board meetings was required as part of the job, and the person was hired to do the job, accommodating such a situation could very well be required of the company.
It’s not even about the fact the student paid for the class (IMHO)- it’s about the It’s about balancing the need for the student to get the education with the need for the professor to run an effective class for everyone. Those needs must be balanced in a way that allows for the learning outcomes of the class to be met for each student.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:45, topic:599392”]
There’s a big difference here. The students are paying for an education.
[/QUOTE]
Yes they are. And that includes the other 30-odd people in the class.
Also, in most community colleges and state universities, students don’t pay for their whole education; the public picks up some (even, in some cases, most) of the tab, and the standard of education provided should conform not simply to what a few students think is appropriate, but the intellectual and pedagogical standards appropriate for an institution of higher learning.
The idea that students are customers and deserve to be treated as such is one of the most pervasive and wrongheaded attitudes in education these days. Colleges and universities have an obligation to provide an education, and to act professionally, but their “customers” are not simply the people sitting in the classrooms, and not everything is OK just because the paying students think it should be.
There are a bunch of differences there, and it’s a really terrible comparison since nobody has a right to speak during corporate meetings. But stuttering is probably covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act, so in the right circumstances, the manager could sue, and I think just about everybody here would agree that telling someone to shut up just because he stutters is an asshole thing to do.
The professor is being paid to educate the students. U.S. laws – such as the A.D.A. – require reasonable accommodation for students with disabilities. If she doesn’t do the best job possible and work within the constraints of laws and school policies, the school loses students, which means losing money.
“Student” equates to “customer,” not to “employee.”
I think the instructor/professor handled the situation well. Offering to answer questions before or after class is a very professional way to handle it. He is still getting the attention he deserves, and nobody has to have their time “wasted” with his questions.
As a teacher sometimes there just isn’t enough time to answer a bunch of questions during lecture, even if they aren’t asked by someone with a stammer. Requesting that a student save questions for before or after class is standard practice.
And the teacher provided reasonable accommodation.
To all those saying that she should have asked the disabilities accommodations office for advice, what would you say if their advice was to do exactly what she did do? Or what if she had already asked the office, and was doing as they suggested?
That seems reasonable, but I would only do so if nobody else was properly handling the situation.
Everyone has to draw the line somewhere, and your situation with compensation for your teaching sounds superior to mine. On the other hand, the school is getting your services at a premium. The students bought their education from the school. Not you. At least this is my view on my role as a professional. (I also believe it is a professional’s role to make sure they do not change the standard by which their peers are judged. A willingness to go above and beyond for a pittance screws everyone. But I digress. Perhaps it would be an interesting debate in and of itself.).
My contract says I am paid to teach and give an office hour per course. It says nothing about getting involved with each student’s individual needs beyond the process implemented by school policy. My role in it is to sign off on the accommodations agreed to by the department, the academic disabilities office and the student - and that is only after the student and I agree on which accommodations to implement.
I plan on teaching part-time until I am buried. I honestly hope to work for a department as enlightened as yours someday. Although mine is very good atm, that is a great policy.
In my experiences with the accommodations office they would suggest something along these lines, but may also want the professor to implement in-class mechanisms to allow the student’s questions to be heard.
I say the teacher should have known better than to put this in email, in this day and age.
I don’t put anything in email that will come back and bite me in the ass.
I don’t think prohibiting the student from classroom discussions is a reasonable accommodation. In courses like this (history, English literature, etc.) classroom participation is the point of the classroom time - students respond to the questions and comments of the teachers and each other.
The easiest thing would be to limit everyone’s questions to email/office hours, not just the stuttering kid. Of course, I’ve mostly taught science classes where the vast majority of the questions either indicate that the student hasn’t done the required reading or aren’t actually questions, but rather some arrogant pre-med showing off that he spent a summer in a lab that researches the topic. Every once in a while someone asked something for legitimate clarification, but it was a definite minority.
Obviously in a discussion-based class, this would be a bigger issue.
I don’t, however, think a stutter should entitle one student to waste 30 other students’ time as much as he wants. I think asking him to write his questions down would be kinder, but I disagree that asking him to restrict his questions to office hours is completely unreasonable. Depending on how bad the stutter is, it could be wasting large amounts of class time.
I’m envisioning this as a discussion class - otherwise, I agree that a “no questions” policy for all would be appropriate.
I don’t disagree in principle, but I’m having a hard time imagining that he’s wasting any more time than some of the non-stuttering classmates I had, who could ask the oddest, most rambling questions. I know stutterers; it might seem like it’s taking a long time to get the question out, but that’s because I’m mentally editing out the "um"s and “likes” from other people’s comments - and those take time, too; it’s just time that people are used to wasting.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:50, topic:599392”]
The professor is being paid to educate the students. U.S. laws – such as the A.D.A. – require reasonable accommodation for students with disabilities. If she doesn’t do the best job possible and work within the constraints of laws and school policies, the school loses students, which means losing money.
“Student” equates to “customer,” not to “employee.”
[/QUOTE]
Stuttering has been recognized as a disability under the ADA in at least two court decisions.
I have no idea if the accommodation offered is reasonable, but it seems to me that more students might be lost by allowing a student to take three minutes to ask a question.
Then a reasonable accomodation would be for the student to put the question or comment in writing and pass it to the prof. No problem.
Yes, reading between the lines of the story I can easily see this kid sucking the air out of the class. If the author of the story is to believed then we have a precocious teenager with “a lot to say”.
It’s the teacher’s duty to the other students to stay on track and get through the lesson. It was handled privately and to the point without ambiguity.