Is Passing On Knowledge Worth This?
I spent a year as a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) while I was in graduate school, and three years as a faculty Lecturer afterwards. In that time I experienced many wonderful events, but also a couple of very concerning ones.
I was always close to my students, especially as a GTA since I really wasn’t much older. Several of my students became close friends and I even dated one for a while (after she was my student). For most of my students, I never developed a personal relationship in any way. But one thing remained constant with all of my students: my grading was always fair.
Fair tended to have a different meaning to some of my students than it had for me. My definition of fair was that everyone was graded equally, with as little subjective grading as possible. Their definition often meant giving them a break or letting some inaccuracies slide. Their definition was not really fair, but nice. My definition of fair also meant that I did not blame my students for my mistakes. If I was ambiguous or unclear in my instructions, I did not penalize them.
This attitude came about from my first semester as a GTA. I was one of three GTAs for a course, with each of us teaching three lab sections. In one of the labs we had students writing programs to calculate various geometric values. We would grade the programs by executing them and comparing the results with our calculated results.
There was a problem, however. We forgot to give them a specific definition for the value of Pi. So if we used 3.14159 for Pi, but the student used 3.14 or even 3.1416 they would get slightly different answers than us. One of the GTAs would mark these results wrong. I thought this was extremely unfair, and it colored my teaching techniques ever after.
The friendships and the other rewards of teaching were among those wonderful events. Now I will share one of the concerning ones. This is an event that literally gave me nightmares (and that is no easy task).
The first class I taught as a Lecturer was an introductory programming class using C. My students were made up of three types: freshmen Computer Science students, sophomore Engineering students (of various types of Engineering), and senior Computer Information Systems students.
For the CS majors, my class was the beginning of a long path of similar topics. For the Engineering students my class represented one of a few such classes they would take to augment their engineering skills. For the BIS majors, my class was the one Computer Science requirement they had in order to graduate.
While I do not like to make general comments, the BIS majors overwhelmingly performed worse. This scared me because they had the most to lose. Many of these students needed to pass my class to graduate.
One such girl had come to my office a number of times over the semester, but never for help with my course material. She was always asking me for help with her other classes, which I was happy to provide. She was not performing well in my class, and I spoke to her about that on each of her visits. She assured me that circumstances were to blame for her grades and that they would improve in the future.
Well, her grades did not improve. She ended up failing my class, and like so many other students who feel they were graded “unfairly” she came to talk with me. She admitted that her grades were the result of senioritis and that she just didn’t feel like doing the work. She told me that she was engaged to be married after graduation, and that her fiancé told her to come to me and do whatever it took to get a passing grade.
I told her that I do not give grades to my students; they earn them.
She offered to do anything, and I emphasis the anything, to get a passing grade. I stood my ground and told her there was nothing I could do at that point. I told her that if she had come to me before the semester ended I could have helped her, but that she ignored the problem for too long.
She then told me that she would be telling the university administration that I had requested sex from her in return for a passing grade. This kind of accusation is a very serious issue, and had always been one of my few fears. You see, in cases like this the burden of proof lies on the accused. It would essentially come down to a he-said/she-said situation, and men are often assumed guilty.
So for months I had to wonder when this girl would make her bid to ruin my life. It would keep me up at night, and dominate my mind during the day. I talked to my department heads and they told me the only thing I can do is wait for it to come, and then deal with it. The fact that both of these fine women supported me, both in words and writing, was encouraging.
That little girl’s accusations never came. She was bluffing. But her criminal words caused me a great deal of anguish, and were ultimately one of the reasons I left teaching.