In recent days, schools have been getting more and more outraged over ratemyteachers.com. The site allows you to anonymously rate your high school teachers and express discontent. Of course, no teacher deals well with anonymous feedback, particularly in the form of a public site. That said, we’ve all been through the hells of high school and there’s nothing more entertaining than voicing our aggrevation.
Unfortunately, more teachers will take this as an attack rather than use it to understand how they are perceived by their students… I know in my high school career there were both teachers I would have liked to really express my frustrations with and others who should have received more credit and appreciation than they did. Similarly, as I continue to work in secondary music education I’ve found that one of the greatest problem I encounter is understanding the ever-widening gap between my students and myself.
What about positive feedback? How do they handle that?
I could care less what my students think of me. I care about what they learn.
I could care less what my students think of me. I care about what they learn.
To Chrissie,
You could care less what your students think of you? What if they think you are a confusing lecturer who belittles them? What if they think they need better guidance from you in how to approach group work?
to ruth williams
you don’t care about your students you just want paided and treating us like we are worthless idiots and make up words for us to find in the dictonary and if we don’t find them we get a 0 on the assignment! you need to losen up!
What about a site asking teachers to rate students publicly?
Unfortunately, I suspect students who are driven by a need to “rate” a teacher, often either have an axe to grind or love teachers whose curriculum includes “Movie Friday”.
Good as well as bad grades are often (and should always be) a result of student drive, effort and, to some degree, innate ability. Teacher evaluations of students should reflect their abilities, which are developed through good lessons, student initiative, and concentrated, purposeful effort.
Unfortunately, teacher evaluations often do not match the students’ own perceived abilities, which are often undermined by students’ strange in-class behaviors, spotty attendance and lousy work and study habits. Honest feedback in the form of class evaluations (anonymously written) are much more helpful to me, as a teacher, than a numbers game that appears to punish the challenging teachers and reward those who are “easy”. I have a “good” rating on this site and I find it unseemly…it’s not an accurate reflection of what occurs in class unless everyone participates and even then, only three categories for rating and a sunglasses notation of “popularity” does not constitute a truly helpful critique.
Now, what about a site for teachers rating students? The three categories might be “Quality of Work”, “Attendance” and “Behavior”…we could add sunglasses for kids who are simply nice to us, as all of us should be to each other.
How helpful would it be to me to know that a student who is doing brilliantly in my class is failing another teacher’s? It’s irrelevant.
I too have not found the comments on the site particularly useful and my rating is 4.2 – considered fairly good. The comments range from “he rocks” to “he’s so funny” to “booooring” to “he is so mean and I didn’t learn anything”. Frankly, I think students go to the site to vent recent anger or frustration about a teacher and, while they are there, post positive comments about other teachers. I have noticed that postings for my school come in clusters of 3 to 6, with one or two being quite negative and the others being primarily positive.
I do find anonymous student feedback valuable and collect it twice a year at the end of each semester as a homework assignment. Students are given the assignment a week in advance and must type it. They do not sign it. They are asked to answer two questions: What should I do differently as a teacher and what should I not change? I have them drop it in a box when their name is called and I cross their name off. I very rarely get blank or meaningless feedback (about 2%). Most feedback is well-thought and valuable, and I try to incorporate what I can.