You can't please everyone...

I found Curzan and Damour's advice for reading students' evaluations of your teaching to ring true to my experiences as a middle school teacher last year, so I imagine that they'll also be applicable for teaching English 1000. Too bad I didn't read this book before I started teaching!

I think feedback about teaching is a valuable tool for improving teaching. At the same time, though, students' evaluations often reveal more about the student than they do about the teacher. I agree that it is good to give students a chance to tell you how they think the class is going and that you should consider those evaluations, but I also agree that it's important not to take evaluations too seriously.

My 8th grade class last year (all 9 of them) presented me with a list of complaints fairly early in the first semester. Some of the other teachers I showed it to didn't think it really merited a response, since some of their demands were rather ridiculous, but I decided that, since they'd presented their complaints in a relatively mature manner, they deserved a respectful reply. So I wrote them a letter in response, and we discussed each of their suggestions as a class. I didn't give in to their demands (being able to use calculators was one of them, I believe), but I spent time explaining why I'd made the choices that I had in structuring the class. Even though they would have preferred that I agreed to all of their suggestions, a couple of them did then say that they now understood my reasoning and were ok with that. Of course, that didn't make the rest of the year go by without problems (they were in middle school!), but I think that it made them realize that I did care about their concerns.

So I think that listening to and responding to students' feedback can be a very useful tool. In some situations, it can help to see things that aren't working and fix them, and, in others, it can show an area where you might want to clarify the reasons for your actions.

But I also think it's important to remember that students (and their parents, in the case of middle school) don't always give accurate evaluations. There will always be students who blame you for their failures, and they are pretty good at finding weak spots in your armor to try to make their comments hurt.

My homeroom class (6th grade) last year had had problems for years and years; when they were in second grade, one set of parents sued another set of parents about something one of the kids had said to the other in class. No one bothered to tell me this, of course, until problems started erupting. On one side of the battle was one of the smartest girls in school who happened to be from an indigenous family; on the other side was one of the smartest, richest, whitest boys in the school (and in the whole country). Basically, through trying to be fair to both parties, I got accused of favoritism by both sides (the parents were involved in this finger-pointing). There was literally no way for me to make everyone happy. Life would have been a lot easier if I had learned sooner that you really can't please everyone.

So, like Curzan and Damour say, listen to what your students say, but, at the same time, be sure you don't over-value negative comments.