Job Discussion Forums

[SueH]

You don't actually seem very tactful yourself Randolf, in fact you come over as quite arrogant.

'fails to respond to their [students] needs'... is an issue everywhere (I'm not in China btw), but I'm sure China is no different in that students' perceptions of their own needs/wants is not always a reflection of what they actually need. You certainly can't work together towards a satisfactory outcome based on anonymous text messages.

[The Ever-changing Cleric]

[brsmith15]

Try my 10-80-10 rule. In the case of education and your class:

a. 10% will dislike you and believe the entire course an absymal waste.
b. 10% will love you and believe the course the best experience of their life.
c. 80% will be somewhere between the two.

What's nice is to have the majority of the 80% skewed more toward a.) than b.)

[theincredibleegg]

Deleted by user.

[Hansen]

Clerk, Randolf has hit the nail on the head. While you quibble over inconsequentialities, such as how long you have been in China, you seem to be missing his very valid point.

As a teacher, you failed to realize that your student was trying to communicate something to you which challenged both her language ability and cultural conditioning. In one sense, she is one of your best students, trying to climb out of the box in which she has been crushed all of her life. Her apology should tell you where her heart was. She is not s snickering young boy with a bouffant hairdo and wealthy parents.

You seem more concerned about preserving your fragile ego than validating the progress of this student. Classrooms were not really intended to be places where our needs are met, particularly when our needs are evidence of a personality disorder or egomania.

I confess that I resemble you more than Randolf, who is obviously an old hand at this.

Many of us, in one sense, abuse our students, when we expect them to meet our ego needs. I am not suggesting that we tolerate anarchy in the classroom; however, a text message had no impact on the class. Your ego was assaulted. That's your problem, not your students.

[Babala]

The OP did not state that he had a problem with student criticism. He did not give out his number to his students and a student texting a teacher at home to complain is not appropriate. They don't do this to their Chinese teachers because they know this is wrong. I think the OP handled the situation well.

[The Ever-changing Cleric]

[Jati]

Ever-changing Cleric, I just read through all of the posts and I am glad to hear that your solution seems to have worked out. I suspect that you probably want to drop this thread and move on, but I think that you brought up another interesting point.

Were you surprised that it was one of the front-row sitters that had been the complainer? My experience with the front row is that they tend to have the highest expectations, thus, the highest likelihood of being disappointed. Since you veered away from your normal routine (as you said), perhaps this was the point of discontentment.

[theincredibleegg]

[Hansen]

Clerk,

Moving on is a good idea. I appreciate what Randolf said; however, as I mentioned earlier, things did appear to work out for you, in this case. Let's see what happens next time.

[eddy-cool]

We have here a couuple of fellow FTs that take very dogmatic views on what's the best way in dealing with students. Toall thoseRandolfs and Hansens, I would like to say: You don't know Chinese students, and possibly don'tknow students in general.

I may be wrong, of course, just as you quite obviously, are wrong. You are wrong because you were making egregious misjudgements on the O.P. and fellow teachers in a SIMILAR quandary. I know from my own experience what he must have gone through; do you?

Randolf for instance has a uniformly judgemental attitude towards the O.P.; the teacher is to blame, never the student. What a totally unworkable humanist view this represents! He operates with cliches to side with the student - a struggler trying to achieve high goals through constructively critising her FTin that person's first language - and of course, that student was 'discreet' enough to do it anonymously...

The teacher, on the other hand, deserves no consideration whatsoever; he has 'failed' the student, and unfairly so. Utter opinionated and injust nonsense, say I!

And I too, don't know the O.P., but Ido believe I know Chiense students quite well; also, I share with the O.P. an upbringing that included the academic need to excel in several foreign tongues. I think I can put to good use my own experiences as a student of foreign languages as well as my academic background and teaching experience.

Here is an episode that shows how some Chinese students tick:
I was assaulted by a female student during a written exam. The attack came completely out of the blue. There were 7 or six students concurrently sitting in the same classroom, answering questions on a from.
The female student burst into a flaming rage when she couldn't answer some of the questions (I never ask things students have to memorise! I practise every skill with them).

She not only disrupted the ongoing exam, she stormed to the desk where I was supervising the exam, then tore other students' papers into shreds and gave me kicks.

I am sure the scene would have grown uglier still had not other students stepped in and prevented worse from happening.

The student later apologised to me, both orally and in writing. You may think this exceeded a student's cultural awareness and what you can expect from a Chinese person her age; I query you: Why would you think that?

She knew perfectly what she was doing, and why.

The girl had MISSED key lessons in which I had trained students how to answer such questions. I gave each student missing a class chances to catch up with the rest of their class by taking part in parallel classes, or, if needed, in private tutoring.

The immaturity of that student shone in her complaint that she had missed my class but had not made any effort at taking parallel classes or asking her classmates to help her. The latter is for Chiense students the most convenient way of catching up!

Although I received that apology in the presence of the whole class, and although I allowed her to take a new exam, which she had no trouble at all passing, she later bombarded me with foul and vile selfrighteous e-mails defending her own stupid action and badmouthing FTs 'for not accepting the responsibility' she thought we had.

I am more disappointed to know some of our FT colleagues entertain such jaded, jaundiced views on FTs; I don't expect people to pity us but a little more solidarity would go a long way to making our performance here a success not just for our exam score-driven 'students' but for our morale as well!

[sharpe88]

That's a crazy and unfortunate story. However, how is that anecdote more representative than, say Columbine as a fair example that illustrates how some American students tick ?

From everything I have heard from teachers who have taught in the US and in China, the chinese students beat them in discipline by a mile.

[Hansen]

Mr. Cool and Clerk,

To Clerk, I apologize for what appears as a personal attack. I was more interested in discussing the issue, but failed to convey that.

Mr. Cool, Do you see a difference between a physical assault in front of other students and a text message? If not, perhaps you have some sort of difficulty in making comparisons.

You are correct that I don't understand the students very well. My goal is to provide them with a useful lesson which absorbs their attention for at least 2/3 of the class. For the other 1/3, as needed, I provide them with exercises which stimulate their interest in the subject, while allowing them to relax and interact with each other.

I agree that shooting our own wounded is not the answer. I receive criticism not only anoymously from students, but from coworkers and administrators as well. Some of it is valid, some isn't. I try to take whatever lesson I can and move on.

I guess on this issue, some of us will just disagree.

[Tainan]

Almost everything that can be said on this subject has already been said here, and the OP has solved his problem to his own satisfaction, it seems. I would just like to address one statement that was made several times at the beginning of the discussion: Chinese students would NEVER behave this way to Chinese teachers. I have heard two stories that contradict this.

First, when I was teaching in a university in Dalian, one of my students told me about an incident involving another one of my students and a Chinese professor. He had stood up in class and said that she was a bad teacher, and given a list of complaints about her teaching methods. Then she asked the whole class whether they agreed with him, and most of the class said yes, they did. I think she quit her job immediately, but I'm not sure what the outcome was.

Very recently, here in New York, a Chinese student told me a story that happened when he was at university in China. There was a very young new professor (Chinese obviously) whom the students didn't like simply because they didn't take someone young and new seriously. They showed their attitude in various indirect ways and finally one day the teacher began crying in class and said that she had tried to be a good teacher but that she couldn't teach when she wasn't getting any respect from the class.

In other words there most certainly do seem to exist mechanisms whereby Chinese students discontented with a Chinese professor can register their dissatisfaction. I would far prefer to receive an anonymous text message than to be in one of the above situations.

Hansen, what can those poor dogs have done to provoke you to behave in such a cruel manner? They barked, they disturbed your sleep? And so you behaved like Elmira Gulch and seperated a family from their pets? You certainly do not make yourself look very attractive in this anecdote.

[Hansen]

Tainan, There's more to the story than what you read here. I focussed on the part that was applicable to this thread, the part about communicating in a language not well mastered.

How about this? Send me your phone number in a pm. Every time I am driven out of my flat or awakened, I'll call you. How attractive would you be, after going two weeks without a good night's rest?