I thought of writing this post in the backdrop of a recent flurry of activity on my Linkedin account which I have since discontinued. I shut the account down as part of my process of winding down my networked existence and retreating into a life of greater solitude.
Not that I sat in the middle of a massive network with several thousand people following me. When I shut the account down I just had some 1700 people in my network at the end of more than a full decade of being a member of the network.
The flow of messages, posts, comments and replies to comments was triggered by my response to a message. My response essentially stated that I had a poster in my office that stared down at me every time I looked up from my desk. The poster simply said: You are a lousy teacher.
The poster is a Word print out that I have made. Similar to a couple of other posters I have that have messages that I wish to be reminded of, this one too is meant to remind me of how I am as a teacher. Before I leave my desk for a class, I look at the poster for a few seconds, take a deep breath and remind myself of many shortcomings as a teacher and utter a silent prayer to the Lord to help me get better as a teacher.
The prayer does not seem to have helped me improve. Instead it helps me by merely reminding me to acknowledge that all that I could do is to merely try. Much of prayer is meant to do that I think - although there have been the occasional miracles in my life that I believe may have been answers to my prayers.
The mention of the poster set off a few responses from my former students who are in my Linkedin account who generously protested and said many things about how in their opinion I was a good teacher. The fact is that they are the exceptions among the hundreds of students that have sat in my class, the vast majority of whom have a different opinion, quite likely diametrically opposite to those of the kind-hearted minority.
In general the majority of students influences popular perceptions of one as a teacher. To make matters more interesting in my case that majority does not have a homogeneous opinion about me. It ranges from indifference towards my performance as a teacher, to downright anger for a variety of reasons.
Between these two ends of the spectrum the numerical score that informs public opinion about me as a teacher usually takes a nosedive. If I am extraordinarily lucky the rating hovers around the mean for the cohort of teachers in that term leaving me like the "living dead" or sideways deal in a venture investor's portfolio.
The reason I have that poster is to remind myself that, in terms of the feedback, at the end of eighteen years of teaching, I am nowhere close to being a star.
In my early years, at the end of every course I would open the feedback with as much trepidation as those students of mine who were hoping not to fail my course even though they realised there was a high chance they might. The feedback sheet would leave me utterly humbled when I opened it.
Then I would read the comments section in the feedback. That is even more humbling. There would be comments about my monotone voice, my lack of humour, the long and convoluted English sentences I spoke and so on. There would be comments about my not having used enough illustrations, having spent too much time on theory and so on.
There would also be the occasional ones that would make me laugh at myself in a tragicomic way. There was for example one comment that said I shouted in the class that they could almost see smoke coming out of my ears. There was another one about how my blue shirt and black trouser that I wore in every class made them wonder if I ever washed my clothes.
The more charitable ones among the angry would concede an element of doubt that may be I knew the subject but I did not do a good job of explaining it. The less charitable ones would pronounce that I did not know the subject and that I should not be permitted to teach.
The moment of crowning glory was when a student published a book on campus life in IIMB in which he said that I had single handedly destroyed his interest in finance. When I read that I realised why I had seen him right at the last desk, with an impassive look throughout the course.
All of that are not the main reasons that one considers oneself a lousy teacher. The more important reason that the feedback matters is that in many institutions the teaching feedback has a large role to play in the career development of a teacher in the modern education system.
Which is why my 19 year old nephew, who is a student of science in a leading institution of eminence in science education in Bangalore, recently told me one day how he had done a good deed by giving a high rating to a terrible teacher who had appealed to the class for a generous rating on the last day of his course.
It is not so much what the students think of one as a teacher that defines one's happiness or satisfaction. It is the opinion that the people who matter in the institution form about one as a teacher, based on what the students believe or reflect in the feedback form.
That makes for a depressing realisation every time one finishes teaching a course. Like the proverbial experimental monkey that avoids touching the bananas that give an electric shock one stops opening the feedback form. Instead one waits to hear the unexciting news when the leadership team of the institution delivers the bad news about the feedback for some official reason or the other.
Dont get me wrong. I am not against teacher ratings. The only academic experience I have is of teaching in one single business school all my life, which is among India's best and most competitive. Students struggle to get in there. They pay an awful lot of money to be educated. It is but fair if they expect that the teachers they learn from perform well. (Apologies for the intended pun in the verb.) Those that do not measure need to pull up their socks. And those that cannot need to rethink their options.
Does that mean teacher ratings should matter less where education is more affordable? I do not know. I am reminded of my conversation with my landlord as I was about to join the place where I teach now. He was a professor of physics at IIT Delhi. He said to me as I returned the keys to the house, "So welcome to the noble profession." I replied to him that I would be teaching in a business school, not in a college of science, humanities or arts, unlike him. He asked me how it differed. I could not articulate my response back then. With nearly two decades of teaching experience, if I were to meet him today I would say to him that I see myself more as a service provider of sorts, than the teacher in a traditional sense. The price of education it appears has a bearing on what is expected of the educator.
Every time I look at the poster in my office, just as it reminds me of the long path I still have to travel to evolve as a teacher, an even more powerful feeling of guilt engulfs me. More than forty years ago as a fiery student leader I accosted Dr Michael, my Physics teacher. I said to him that he was not discharging his duty as a teacher by not covering the portions on time. That academic year my college had worked for 40 days, thanks to frequent student unrest, often for no good reason.
Dr Michael was a soft spoken, kind hearted gentleman and a good teacher too. I could see the embarassment and sadness on his face as I levelled that unkind charge. With genuine remorse he said to me and the other the students who had gathered around: I have failed you all as teacher. I will request the Head of the Department to find a better teacher for you for the rest of the course.
We never saw him again in our class.
This was in a government college. The fees we paid was a pittance. Yet I had displayed an unbecoming sense of entitlement.
I have stopped looking at my feedback form in the past seven or eight years. Yet year on year there is one particular occasion where my feedback for the courses I taught during that year stares at me for a brief while, no matter if I wish to see it or not. My heart sinks unfailingly at that moment when I have to see my ratings. I think of the poster in my office. And then I am reminded of Dr. Michael. I ask myself if my annual angst is karma or nemesis at work.
No matter what it is, I silently ask Dr. Michael for forgiveness. For, today as a teacher who experiences the pain of unflattering ratings from my students I realise how Dr. Michael must have felt the day my classmates and I had attacked him, in spite of all the effort he had put in to cover portions in the few days that the college was allowed to function by my agitating comrades and their unscrupulous political masters.
Nanni....Namaskaaram...
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