And the Lambs Shall Eat the Lion

Tutorial went well, today. We did Malcolm X, so it wasn’t difficult for me to teach on the subject.

However, my kids don’t “discuss” very often. They are strictly “input only”, if you get my drift. So, I either talk or sit in silence with them. Of course, it doesn’t help that they seldom get their readings done in time for class. The problem is, Grimes has made “discussion” the corner stone of tutorials, even if this is a fantasy prompted by too much distance from what undergrads actually do and want.

But now I find out that, for PhD students, TA evaluations are mandatory – They tell us this is to give us a chance to “build a teaching dossier”, but mostly, I think, to judge our performance. Here, if we don’t TA well, they pull our funding.

I have never submitted to TA evaluations before, because I assume that it breaks down like this: Those students who worked hard and got good grades will say I’m great. The ones who do poorly will say I suck.

Bottom line: They are fairly pointless, but also possibly damaging.

However, I am just a cog in the machine that is the “Modern University,” and I must do what the masters order. (Why is that even the profs who bluster on about Marxist theories and the ideals of post-oppression are willfully blind to the mistreatment of TAs?)

I know that I work hard at my job, and that most of my students like me, but all it takes is a couple bitter apples that say I never tried to help them and that I was a callous and horrible TA, and I’m screwed. Alternatively, what if they all write: “Holly is great, because she just tells us everything we need to know, and never forces us to rise above our generation and actually form a thought in our lacquered heads”???

Either way, Grimes will have me for lunch.

I’m toast.