Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard
They were all spectacular. They were all spectacular. They were all positive. I could fax them to you. I don’t mind, I could honestly fax them to you, but no professional support or guidance from the beginning. But, I was confident in my ability to teach expository writing, so I went about it with very little support or direction from the department. That is, in itself, very unusual to have a writing program that does not have a structured orientation program for its new writing staff. Very, very extraordinary. Very out of the ordinary. Very unusual
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Sir, I agree about the gag material. Gag in both senses - gag as a joke, and gag as a physical reaction.
If I might add a few observations...
1) Student surveys tend to be positive. It takes spectacularly bad teaching to get large number of bad surveys.
2) Surveys are easily manipulated. A little grade inflation, maybe bringing in food toward the end of the semester, and the numbers go up nicely.
3) The lack of an orientation program is quite normal. For example, a certain research university placed a particular teaching assistant in front of 250 students. Preparation consisted of a copy of the text book.
As pointed out, she is a nut case. The problem is - she (apparently) went through the process of getting a doctoral degree, taught as a teaching assistant, and was hired by Dartmouth as faculty. Which suggests that either the screening process is badly flawed, or she isn't particularly divergent from the norms.
By the way - costs for college increased by 110% from 1981 to 2001. Median family income increased 27%. This from: Education Commission of the States. (2008). Affordability
http://www.ecs.org/ecsmain.asp?page=/html/issuesPS.asp