I was reading an article on celibacy and the priesthood the other day and came across this:
And while abstinence does not inevitably lead to child molestation, critics are quick to draw a link between priestly celibacy and recent pedophilia scandals.
My first thought… “Wait a minute, does celibacy often lead to child molestation?” This is no [...]
Archive for the ‘teaching’ Category
where an instructor admits lack of knowledge (and then rationalizes it)
Posted in crime, prison reentry, research, sociology, teaching, undergrads on May 23, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Grade Grubbing
Posted in teaching on March 21, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Strategies to avoid the parade of students looking for you to add a couple of points to the grades the TAs gave them on their papers, even after you explain to them that you and the TAs graded a proportion of the papers together and were within a point or two of one another in [...]
Help Wanted: Methods Textbooks
Posted in teaching on January 9, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Comments warmly solicited:
What’s the best undergraduate methods textbook? Better yet, what’s the best interdisciplinary undergraduate methods text? Why?
Enter Cynicism
Posted in teaching on December 10, 2008 | 1 Comment »
In a short six months, I have been transformed from a person who was shocked (shocked, I tell you!) by blatant plagiarism to a person who just burned an hour trying to figure out where a student copied his/her paper, only to realize that the paper is one of the best that I have read [...]
NSP: Consistently Ardent, Wrathful, and Dominated by Powerful Emotions
Posted in teaching on December 3, 2008 | 5 Comments »
A colleague alerted me to my new presence on ratemyprofessor.com today — I was hoping to permanently dodge it. No chili peppers or comments on my perpetually unruly hair or bad taste in clothing. I was unsurprised to see that I am viewed as an easy and approachable professor (3.3 on a 5 point scale), [...]
I HATE grading…
Posted in teaching on June 14, 2008 | 8 Comments »
not because the papers are poorly-written and not because it takes forever. I hate it because I am in a school that makes this silly +/- distinction so I am forced to make distinctions among students that, for a few, amount to 2 point differences on exams. I need to change my evaluation method or someone [...]
What would happen if undergrads found out…
Posted in teaching, undergrads on May 7, 2008 | 3 Comments »
that the average professor knows A LOT about a VERY LITTLE? The breadth of knowledge the students credit me with is truly astounding.*
One of my students invited me to participate in a knowledge bowl at the undergraduate honors dorm. Thinking this meant I was somehow ‘cool,’ I quickly accepted without thinking about it. It works like this: [...]
But what of the pepper?
Posted in teaching on April 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Apparently evaluations on rate my professor correlate well with more ‘respected’ evaluation systems, so it’s either just as good or just as bad as others we take more seriously.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but what of the pepper? What does it mean? I’m a person who thinks evaluation is good (pretty much because mine are high*), but I’d also [...]
The first foray into graduate teaching.
Posted in teaching on April 12, 2008 | 3 Comments »
a couple of months ago, i asked for advice on how to teach a good grad seminar. none of you thought to tell me the most important rule: BRING A COMPLETE SYLLABUS TO CLASS WITH YOU!
last week i started teaching my first grad seminar — suffice it to say, i obsessed a bit about the first impression, [...]
Leave me alone, rate my professor.
Posted in on the tenure track, teaching on March 28, 2008 | 15 Comments »
I just received my teaching evaluations for two new classes. They were good. One student, however, appears to despise me. For every category, the student ’strongly disagreed’ that I did anything helpful with respect to lecturing, discussion, grading, or organization. Of course, the student also left no comments so I have no idea what I [...]
