First off, I disagree because “attention whore” is a disgustingly pejorative term all too frequently attached to minorities who dare to suggest that they’re entitled to be treated equally, especially by authority figures. It adds heat, not light, and serves no purpose.
Secondly, I disagree because in this case, the teacher had every reason to have her “authority” in this matter challenged. That she couldn’t handle this by simply saying “this is not a question and answer period, only a lecture today” shows pretty clearly to me that as an award-winning, 37 year classroom veteran, she was working in a black hole of ignorance and incompetence where this kid was concerned, all stemming from her inability to deal constructively and positively with the challenge of his disability. And that’s a black mark on no one but her. She had a lot of options available to her and she didn’t take any of them.
And no, for the record, I don’t believe either party’s word unvarnished (so I decline to accept her claim that the student refused to meet with the dean, especially not multiple times) but this is an incident that both agree occurred, and which, quite clearly, she could not have dealt with more poorly.
Sure, there’s a distinction between an instructor and a professor - and the lady in the story is a type of professor (an adjunct professor). Usually an instructor doesn’t hold a PhD and a professor does (at least that’s how the titles are used at my university). Adjunct professors are just not tenure-track faculty and often they also work elsewhere. It’s unclear to me what exact position this person holds, but the article refers to her as a professor, so it seems fair to assume that she is one.
I’d still like to know why you think she has an overblown ego.
Who said she’s lecturing every day? She mentions a single ‘detailed presentation’ (which sounds more involved than a lecture, to me) that she didn’t want to interrupt. We don’t know what else she does on other days.
I also don’t see why it matters that the kid is 16. If he wants to take university courses, he needs to be responsible for himself the way any other university student is (okay, some aren’t, but they’re supposed to be). Teaching someone how to be a student (ie. don’t dominate discussion, don’t put your hand up for an hour) and holding their hand through the process is not a part of the professors job description. If he needed accommodations of any sort or had a problem then he should have been proactive and dealt with it - and it sounds like he was given lots of opportunities to discuss the issue with her and with the dean, and every university that I’m familiar with has Disability Services, so he could have gone there.
Again, I’m not saying that she handled the issue exactly the way she should have. But, as Kolga says, this isn’t really a common situation, and a lot of the information we’re getting is coloured by the students feelings.
Also, I note that people are talking about writing down questions to be posed through another student, or emailing questions for later. Does this teacher not have a phone? This is the 21st freaking century. Communication across continents can occur instantaneously. If she was interested in having this student’s questions be a part of the interactivity of this class, and not in shunting him off, the answer would’ve been instant messages or text messages, not emails to be read and answered later.
The tech exists if you’re willing to use it, he’s probably more handy with texts and IMs, as a 16 year old, than the majority of people in the room, and it would’ve allowed for the participatory aspect of classroom discussion to continue for everyone if – but only if – this allegedly innovative, sensitive, inclusive teacher were willing to try.
Give students my personal phone number! Genius! I don’t see how that could possibly go wrong. Now that I’m thinking about it, my beef is why isn’t she in his house in the morning making breakfast? Huh? huh? you with me? Why isn’t she his personal slave? He paid for that class like everyone else and she better be there to turn down his blanket at night!
Uh … Every syllabus I’ve seen in the last five years or so includes the professor’s personal phone number, either home or cell. Often both. I can’t actually recall having a professor who couldn’t be reached at home.
I’ve never thought of the phrase in this way, but there’s no need to get in a dispute over semantics. Is the phrase “attention seeker” sufficiently non-disgusting to you?
If so, I claim that this child’s decision to leave his hand up is a piece of evidence that he is an attention-seeker. Do you agree or not?
Well do you agree that the student could have pursued his grievance privately?
The article seems to say that he agreed with this point. Agree?
The professor seemed pretty convinced that his stuttering was interfering with instruction. I find that explanation simple and clear enough as well as being in the range of my experience. Otherwise I have to accept that this award winning professor is somehow anti-stutterer. It just doesn’t seem within the realm of possibility.
There are often students who will monopolize class time. Sometimes it is due to mental problems, and sometimes it is due to being a little too enthusiastic. Either way it needs to be toned down somehow to get the material covered.
And she most assuredly DID NOT say he couldn’t speak in class anymore. She asked him to place limits on his behavior and tried to work out a deal with him.
By the way, CitizenPained just admit you were trying to get in a cheap shot over Professor Snyder’s title. An instructor is a full-time teacher in a university. It’s a position for full-time contract employees who are not bringing in grant money or doing research. A professor is everybody else. There are many levels of professor. Everybody in a teaching school is a professor of some kind. No student in the history of postsecondary education has used the term instructor over professor. They all say professor. Professor, professor, professor!
Yeah, her title is irrelevant. Usage differs from country to country, but in the United States, even an instructor or a lecturer is from a student’s point of view just another kind of professor, even if he or she doesn’t officially hold that title.
Well over half of my friends are college and university faculty. No one of them, to my knowledge, puts his or her home or cell phone number on the syllabus. I don’t do it, and neither do any of my immediate colleagues.
We all put our email addresses and our office phone numbers on the syllabus, but almost no-one gives out personal phone numbers.
Every professor I know does not do this. We are firmly told that it’s a bad idea. I don’t see how it is a good idea. Maybe the school provides them with a number for students to get a hold of them.
All three of my profs this semester have office and mobile or home phones listed on their syllabi, two give specific hours when each can be used. If not text messaging, there’s instant message and hell, direct messages on Twitter could be used for this purpose. All would enable interactive communication rather than ghettoizing this one student’s questions and contributions out of the classroom.
Not when you’re still using it as a pejorative. You’ve yet to explain why it’s inappropriate for someone to try to get the attention of someone who is supposed to be teaching them and interacting with them, and why the incident was only a demonstration of inappropriate response on the student’s part or why he’s obligated to pursue his grievance privately when the consequences of it were playing out with the teacher’s public behavior toward him?
I don’t see that in the original article at all, so no.
I agree, using IM or Twitter is a clever way to solve the problem in everyone’s favor. I think those “home” numbers are probably not their personal numbers.
Ghettoizing is a gross exaggeration. The student was provided with means to participate in class without being disruptive. They are suboptimal but they work.
Well I’m not sure how it’s possible to discuss the situation coherently if you refuse to use any words which are pejorative.
I mean, it’s one thing to argue over whether the hand-raising is evidence that the student is an attention-seeker. It’s another to refuse to even discuss the question because it contains a word which is negative.
Please show me where I made such a claim. Please QUOTE me. Failing that, please admit that I made no such claim and apologize.
Here is a quote from the follow up article, which is linked in Post #147.
Ok, having read that excerpt from the follow up article, do you now agree that the student backed out of meeting with the dean?
So it is your belief that solving this problem is entirely in the prof’s hands? Doesn’t the kid have some responsibility for his own education?
There’s nothing to suggest that he proposed any alternate means of asking questions in class. He was given the opportunity to email her his concerns (and presumably suggestions), but he chose not to. He didn’t go to disability services and ask for advice. He refused to meet with the dean and talk about the issue. I’m not clear on how the prof was meant to ‘try’ for solutions when he wouldn’t even meet her halfway.
She’s probably never encountered this situation before. She may not have reacted in the ideal way, but it’s rather extreme to make her out as an ogre who was determined to oppress and humiliate him. It’s not like she openly mocked him or told him to shut up in front of the whole class or even just ignored him without ever explaining why.
By the prefixes, I can tell that two are mobile phones, and one prof says as much in the syllabus. My poli sci prof prefers tweets (when possible) and emails, my history prof this term prefers phone calls between the hours of 10 a.m. and 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and says to feel free to try either number if you need to reach him urgently.
No, he was provided with a means of having questions answered. That was not participating in class and interacting in the classroom, which is the entire point. He was the only student who was not being given the opportunity to involve himself in the Q&A sessions, to raise points that would have other points raised in turn, or to expand on someone else’s thoughts. He was the only one being forced to take notes on the Q&A so that he could draft questions later, that would be answered in a vacuum, after the immediacy of what prompted the question had passed and perhaps fallen out of mind. If that’s not ghettoization I don’t know what is.
Why the need to negatively characterize at all. If you can’t discuss this without casting aspersions, don’t bother.
You’re the one using loaded terms like “attention whore” which clearly denote that the action of trying to get this attention is inappropriate. If you didn’t think that sitting there with his hand raised, desperately trying to get attention was wrong, then you wouldn’t have called him names for doing so. It’s pretty damned plain on is face so no, you’re not getting an apology.
The writer needs a grammar lesson, but granted, Phillip backed out of a meeting with the Dean. Given that they should’ve been meeting with disability services, I don’t know that I blame him, nor blame him for not going into any meeting without someone to advocate on his behalf along.
No, my belief is that this is a kid in a freshman level class, who is also 16, who’s been shut down and shut out by the person with not only authority, but dozens of years of teaching experience at her disposal. He was put into a position where he had been told by this authority figure that his input was not valued, his options were none. He would participate in one way, and that was it. There was no offer come up with other options, just an offer to sit down and talk – not his strong suit – with yet another authority figure.
Are you suggesting that this was a scenario in which the kid is going to feel empowered to advocate on his own behalf or make suggestions? Are you suggesting that this professor was coming across as someone who wanted to explore alternatives?
Part of discussing stuff is to criticize which you are well aware of since you have no problems casting aspersions on the teacher. The bottom line is that I asked you a simple, reasonable question and you made up an excuse to avoid it.
What I said was that the hand-raising incident was evidence that the student is an attention-whore; not that the incident per se was inappropriate. Reading is Fundamental.
Anyway, I don’t have much interest in being strawmanned or having you play hide-the-ball with your position.
I am faulting the teacher for not handling this correctly and asking a student to email questions on account of his stuttering. She admitted that. Do I not take her at her word?
There were more things the teacher attempted to do to accommodate the student than you describe here. In fact, you are stating the one thing the student said was offered as an option. Since the data you ignore comes from the teacher and the data you weigh comes from the student, then teacher = 0% and student = 100%.
You should go back through the thread and look at the responsibilities of students and teachers. The teacher performed her duties, just not at an ideal level. The student can be seen to ignore all of his responsibilities in favor of the drama that ensued from his actions.
Like I said, she should know better. As the esteemed professor and former schoolteacher, that should’ve been a head/smack DUH! moment. But now she fears for her safety? Get real.
The teacher herself said that she had to consider, you know, *the time it takes for him to ask a question.
*
She told him to stop because he stuttered, not because he was precocious. The college has already said she acted improperly.