Student Evaluations are always, even after 20-years of teaching, a period of deep self-reflection. For the formal reflection, requested by the Academics office, I submitted the following:

For Social-Cognitive Psychology, I really want to build in more discussion/ debate/ seminar-style learning experiences. I find it so difficult however to construct questions & prompts when students know so little about the topic. I’m not interested in how they feel about something, or what they think about it; I’m interested in them developing understanding and making connections between topics in the class — and that’s hard when their knowledge is so limited.

For Ethnic Studies, striking the emotional balance between ‘this is a safe and comfortable environment for us to have uncomfortable conversations, free of judgment’ and ‘you must absolutely follow these class rules’ is tough. I think I just need to be more explicit and engage in the meta-conversation about what liberties students have and do not have in the class.

But that is not everything that I want to be mindful of.

Furniture

Our classroom has relatively unique desks, and all student comments in regards to them were positive:

This teacher is my favorite teacher! He is awesome! Two things that he does to help me learn is that he has lessons that strengthen our understanding in specific aspects of the unit we’re learning everyday and he has those chairs that are the best!

The chairs that roll around in the room that students sit in helps me learn because I like to fidget and they keep me concentrated.

The only “area of focus” comment related to the class furniture was “Have the seating a little more arranged.” That’s an interesting comment because I assume it’s in reference to our lack of a seating chart (with assigned seats, as in a traditional high school class), but it could also be in reference to the way the rolling desks end o chaotically arranged in the classroom – sometimes in clumps, sometimes pushed to one-side of the room, and almost never in identifiable rows or groupings.

Group Work

With my Social-Cognitive Psychology class, students are assigned small groups at the beginning of the semester, and the majority of their “group work” is done with these same three or four students. (The notable exception being when we use the Interteaching method, a new, random small group is generated.) Comments varied:

Mr. Castro keeps me consistently engaged by having a variety of lessons like lectures, group work, videos, discussions, student teaching, and more.

Uses multiple styles of learning, such as lectures, groups, or big group activities.

He gives us group activities and encourages us to take notes to help us study.

We do a lot of group work in different ways, and the way he presents what he are learning is encouraging and engaging (funny too)

Two things my teacher could change to help me learn better include having more “hands-on” examples, as seeing physical visuals helps me to learn better, and incorporating more group projects. 

The work we do in groups is not always that effective and I feel like I learn better in the lectures

It would be helpful if Mr. Castro… not assign us the same partner/group for every project.

We have consciously chosen to use the same student groups throughout the semester, as we are trying to teach life-long collaboration skills. A significant part of that is a feeling of responsibility to the group, which is only formed after extended time together and an expectation of a future working together.

Results

Normally my numbers are higher than the department average, which is itself higher than the school average, but this year my numbers were a little lower. I’m not worried per se, but I do pay attention to these things, and I do try to give students what they need — and, if not in conflict with that, what they think they need.

The above total score is based on the following six sub-categories:

My strength remains my domain-specific knowledge and my passion in the subject. I know and I love teaching psychology; these elements are collected in the “Expert” category:

Though still high, my lowest scores are in the “Manager” category:

In regards to the above, this is often a conscious choice on my part. High school students – even in an elective like psychology – have relatively low intrinsic motivation to teach themselves more about the subject than is required. Assigning students who finish a learning activity earlier than others additional work to do is seen by them as punitive. So, technically the students are incorrect in their scoring for this question; I rarely give them extra work to do if they finish before others. I will encourage them to start on homework, “either for this class or another,” but that’s not what the survey question is asking.

I’ll argue with the above question as well; I’m always ready for the next activity — unless there isn’t one. Because I have the learning outcomes chunked, if we have finished with the day’s learning, I will not start the next day’s lesson. That may leave the last five-minutes of class with nothing to do, and on rare occasion that might be the last ten-minutes of class. At this point, I tell students to “Relax, chit-chat with a neighbor; enjoy their company. You have X-minutes until the bell.” I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

Not Discussed