Chronicles of Hire Education

1. specifies goals for the course
2. is well prepared
3. uses effective methods of presenting content
4. gives clear directions
5. invites student responses and questions when appropriate
6. presents content, assignments, and activities in a clear sequence
7. provides opportunities for students to participate when appropriate
8. helps students recognize the importance and purpose of content or activities
9. demonstrates full and up-to-date knowledge in subject area
10. uses class time well
11. communicates enthusiasm
12. stimulates student interest
13. stimulates several levels of thinking
14. shows respect for and sensitivity to students
15. gives fair assignments
16. utilizes fair examination and grading procedures
17. establish and holds students to high academic standards
18. challenged me to think in new and/or different ways
19. enhanced my proficiency in the subject matter
20. overall rating of the course
21. overall rating of my own effort in the course
22. overall rating of the instructor in the course


Dear Carol,

I just look at the comments—not the math.
One lousy remark will nag for long time,
and the good ones are good for a
Swannanoa minute.

Look at those 22 items above.
Read them out loud.
Listen to the sound.

Slam poetry.

Voice is everything.
Vox de Ex Officious

I wish I knew how to critique the whole deal
in these turbulent days of transparency and
accountability, measurable aims and objectives:
reducing quality to quick and dirty quantity . It’d
be like trying to define all-wet to Joe Fish, know
what I mean? Swimming in it. No comparison.

Nevermind.

xxxooo, Sam

Evaluations used to be narrative, for the instructor only,
and then included as part of my year-end report and
face-too-face dean’s conference: we’d talk
how-you-doon? OK,, how YOU doon?

Then Spence Mc Williams, our Buddhist dean, got the
exquisite idea of collecting and averaging and making a
QPA out of them with peer comparison spreading grade
consciousness across the valley & smothering like black
plastic spread over our strawberry patch the devil-may-
care fast & loose, margins for weedy error & rooms for
play so essential to encoiuraging “collaborative genius.”
(Keith Sawyer)

We're in process of developing the same list-poetry for our
programs too, yes? In order to be compliant. (Docile--which
means "a good student" a good learner.)

Wish I knew how to frame this dominant assess mental
paradigm for the environ-mental and un-sustainable hazard
that it is, but I know it feels like second nurture, common sense,
and necessary evil to you all.. . City Hall. Tar Baby. Georgian
Naughts. Double Bind, Rock & a Hard Pace, Devil in the Details.

That's the way we do it:
money for nothin & a check-list for free. .