Job Discussion Forums

[molly farquharson]

one of of most popular teachers does not know turkish so of course does not use it in class. she is demanding of her students and they respect her for that. we don't have teachers who play games all the time. I think the students rate the teachers' energy in class highly.

dmb as to why we don't ask if the teacher speaks turkish in class, there is no need to, as the students don't want it and complain if the teacher does it.

someone commented that evaluations that are high for the teacher are always high for the materials and course. That is not necessarily true, though if the teacher is good, the students will like the materials better.

[Sheikh Inal Ovar]

What of the fresh off the plane recent TEFL cert graduate, who feeling equipped with very little attempts to make up for it by bending over backwards (and somersaulting with a few forward rolls) to create a favourable impression ...

... when compared to the old tefl turtle whose pace is a more measured one designed to be friendlier to both teacher and discerning student alike ...

To less mature students, the highly popular can-can teacher is often the best thing in town since Harold the Elephant accidently squashed the clown at the local circus ...

Students are oblivious to the fact that this could be tourist might be costing them hours of unnecessary labour in their language learning efforts ... extra labour, for example, spent having to learn the most common collocation(s) of an item of vocab before they are able to use it correctly; an item of vocab their whacky teacher had already taught them in a wonder fun activity called 'Watch me dance - prance - Synonyms"

Who gets the better evaluation? Well if you gave old wrinkly all the students who want to learn something and young zippy all the students who don't know what they want, then everyone would be happy ... but it just don't work like that ...

[bigbadsuzie]

I wanted to say something about this topic because recently a couple of collegues got dragged over the coals over comments students made at the end of the first semester.
Firstly are these evaluations about the teacher or the course itself and the materials ?It seems to me that the students make all kinds of personal remarks about the teacher and these are considered to be valid and they are given usually AFTER the students have taken a final exam for the course I feel this can negatively effect the feedback that is required . Does this happen at your place ?Do you think this system is fair or is it used to punish teachers who have social issues with the kids rather than poor teaching methods !

[Sheikh Inal Ovar]

I'm sure if teachers evaluated managers in the same spiteful manner, there'd be witch hunts ...

[molly farquharson]

our evaluations are in three parts. They are modelled after ones developed in the US, by the way. the first part is about the teacher, asking questions such as whether she is prepared, respectful, effective in teaching,etc. the second part is about the materials and the course. the third part is about the student, attendance, homework test results. any comments about the teachers are written on the followup evaluation with all the points and comments about the course and materials are collected and sent to the manager. the head teachers are evlauated by the teachers and by me, and the head teachers evaluate me. the students generally don't write much about the teachers, actually. usually we do the evals in midcourse, but this time we are doing them all at once, since this is evaluation month. that seems to be working pretty well. they are not seen as punishment, they are not intended as punishment, and in fact several teachers who hadn't had theirs done yet asked for them to be done because they wanted to see the results.

when i taught in the us st evals were always done, and the same when i taught at koc univ. i was on the committee there to overhaul the evals and we are using quite a bit of those, which largely relied on some developed at the univ of washington. i think they are balanced and give valuable information all around. teachers need to be accountable and this is one way to do it.

[bigbadsuzie]

Thanks for the informative post Molly .I still get the idea that this is a big brother watching you situation, the kids it seems can say pretty much what they like about you wether its justified or not .I know of at least three people who have recently had a roasting over students evaluations and were unable to confront the students who made the comments . Sorry but it all seems a bit one sided to me ! When you do get a good average mark and there are no comments which reflect badly towards you no one comes up and says "Hey well done,you're doing a good job" it seems the administration only takes an interest in you when its time to put you in your place .
Btw Molly ,in the general discussion forum some people make a big deal about my poor puntuation or lack of it ,some of them are pretty anal about it . "So what " you may say well you don't use capitals much ,do you ? Ever get any flak for that ?

[dmb]

[thrifty]

Who is the teacher supposed to be respectful too? The students? I thought it was supposed to be the other way round. If the teacher has to be respectful shouldn`t the employer be respectful to the teacher?

[molly farquharson]

as a matter of fact suzie, runeman got upset at my lack of capitals. i use them at work but i don't have to use them here.

re evals, i have been doing the ones at the branch where my office is, and if they are good, i commend the teacher. most of them are ok, but we know without them who the weak teachers are because the students complain about them. i think our evaluations are evenhanded and the teachers generally look forward to seeing how they are, so i think they are useful. there is no big brother-- perhaps a big sister.

and isn't it interesting that big brother is considered a heavy but big sister is not

[Sheikh Inal Ovar]

[ardabay]

Unfortunately most Turkish students are unaware of the criteria to evaluate successful teaching. They have no sense of communicative method or whatsoever. Usually dersanes ask their teachers (native or non-native) not to speak Turkish in class and encourage the students not to do so. However, the management or the head teacher or some other person should also warn the students beforehand about the dangers of L1 overuse in class. It�s really hard for the teacher to convince the students on his own. When it comes to evaluating teachers according to the student feedback, managers tend to leave the teachers alone and support the students.

[misterkodak]

Ok.. here's a different slant on things. So many firms rely heavily upon the students evaluation of teachers but, how many firms actually listen to the teacher's evaluation of students? It should be fair play, right? ahahahahaah!
There should be an entertainment section on those teacher evaluation sheets. I agree with the Thriftmeister, it seems like most dershane students expect to be entertained or something. Education is purely secondary. I think each textbook should have a supplementary "game booK".

[dmb]