Is this teacher fair?

Last week, we were asked to pick one or two classes and, at the end of class, pass out a sheet of paper and ask them to answer, anonymously, this question: Is the teacher fair? Oh boy. While this seemed like a golden opportunity for my students to obliterate what little self-esteem I have as a teacher, I actually found a surprising amount of encouragement in the majority of the responses.

I surveyed four classes, some being my trig students, some my geometry students, so the sample ranged from sophomores to seniors. They were all surveyed at the end of class as instructed, so any particular offenses or grudges that I re-aggravated in the 50 minute stretch would be fresh for reflection. I told them to be sure that they answered anonymously (which somehow one student still failed), and to elaborate on their answers if they wanted. I didn’t have much guidelines for responses outside of requesting that they not use profanity.

As said before, when I was able to read the results from the four classes, I found them to be different than initially anticipated. First, only one person wrote, “no, you suck!”. Along the same chord, I only received two that said, “NO!” with a frowny face drawn. Success. I knew that those would come, but I honestly anticipated I would have received more. I also had some of the more diplomatic responses like, “sometimes yes, sometimes no” which doesn’t grant a whole lot of guidance, but I’ll try and focus on the sometimes. The most surprising result, though, was the amount of “yes” answers I received back. This wasn’t surprising because I take great pride in creating a classroom built on unfairness, but rather, because I just assumed that the students thought so many of my procedures were unfair. Examples: I try to insist that students raise their hand to respond, I rarely let people use the restroom, and if you’re not in your seat when the bell rings, you are tardy. These policies are ones that the students have warred against since day 3, so I didn’t expect fairness to be something they associated with Coach Ware. My only explanation is that my students may actually understand that expectations exist for a reason. If they didn’t, I don’t see why they would have responded so generously. One girl’s response was particularly telling. She wrote, “I believe the teacher is fair, it is the students who are not fair to the teacher”. Wow.

All in all, the survey was an interesting way to gauge the classroom thus far. As for the one girl who failed at anonymity, it was ok, because on the back of her hall pass (which documented her name) she wrote, “hell yeah”. I guess I’ll take that.