Good And Bad Professors By Benjamin Todd Eller

What is fascinating about every campus in the world is that everybody knows which teachers are good and which ones are bad. I grew up in education. My father taught educational psychology, my sister was a school psychologist and now is the head of the department of educational psychology at a top rated public arts university, and my mom started out her career as a guidance counselor. I suppose initially I went into educational psychology out of laziness. I could easily make “As” in these courses because I grew up being taught so much about the theories of the Vygotsky, Skinner, Piaget and the other educational and psychological giants. As a student, I was always far more critical of the professors and teachers that I had throughout my educational upbringing. However, I noticed that in my high school everyone knew who the good teachers were and who the bad ones were. Not too many of the students went into too much detail why the good teachers were good, they simply said things like: That teacher is really good. I like him. I did however notice that when there was a bad teacher, students would go on and on about all the shortcomings of that particular instructor. I became rather close to several of the teachers in my high school especially during my junior and senior years. On a few occasions, I would have lunch with them, and they would freely admit and often discuss some of the other teachers they felt were poor at their jobs. Now, this was many years ago. I’m not sure if this kind of honesty would occur in today’s environment. Teachers have tenure so it is very difficult to fire a teacher even today if they are not pulling their weight. I guess that was and still is the bad news. However, the good news is this and please allow me to quote one of my favorite plays A Man For All Seasons. In the play, Sir Thomas More is trying to convince his friend Richard to become a teacher. Sir Thomas More tells his friend that he would be a good teacher. His friend states:

If I were, who would know it?

Sir Thomas replies: You. Your pupils. Your friends. God. Not a bad public there.

The power of teachers is more powerful than any sports star, celebrity and perhaps even certain politicians. When I was in the first grade, I did not like to read. My reading ability was below my grade level. Luckily for me I had a brilliant teacher by the name of Ms. Gerace. I found out years later that my mom had had a meeting with Ms. Gerace, and clearly my mom was extremely worried. Ms, Gerace told my mom not to worry, and that I would start reading in my own time. She knew exactly what to do. By the end of my first-grade year, I was reading on the third grade level. I believe to this day that if I had just about any other teacher on the planet, I would have been assigned to a special education class or held back for a year. If I had been held back or put in special ed, the impact could have been irreparable. Ms. Gerace changed my life. Of course sometimes it is necessary to send a child to special education or to hold them back for a year. However, Ms. Gerace had been teaching for years by the time I entered her class. Her experience, patience and brilliant techniques motivated me to enjoy reading. Actually, my elementary school had a contest who could read the most books for a charity. And yes, I won.

If you’re reading this book it is most likely because you are going to teach or you wish to enhance the skills of your current educational practices. First, let’s take a look at how educators are doing. According to Gallup (2015), 70% of teachers are not engaged or actively disengaged with their work. Gallup also determined that disengaged teachers had 2.3 million more missed workdays than engaged teachers.

When it comes to finding national studies on how students feel about professors, the evidence is quite interesting. According to a recent study by Uttl and Smibert (2017) who reviewed over 325,000 student surveys, the kind of class a professor would teach was highly correlated with the ratings. Professors teaching quantitative vs. nonquantitative courses were far more likely to fail norm-referenced cutoffs. Therefore, subjects like history, English and psychology received higher scores than the subject of math.

However, the validity of ratings, surveys and student evaluations has often come into question. The Daily Trojan of the University of Southern California reported in 2018, that the most popular rating service of professors, Ratemyprofessor.com showed that the top-rated instructors also scored the lowest when it came to difficulty.