Validation of self-worth: obtained

At universities in the States (or at least, in most programs), students always fill out discursive evaluations of their instructor at the end of the course. The results are taken more seriously in some departments and programs than in others, but ours treats them as a rather weighty matter. Bad evaluations can cost you your job, and they certainly effect things like internal PhD applications. Apparently your ability to get 17 year olds to passionately love analyzing texts is related to your ability to do your own doctoral research. Your guess is as good as mine, folks. I'm told that this is not at all the way teacher-student power dynamics work everywhere else in the world (US in doing things differently than Europe shocker!). A girl from Spain in my office was incredibly surprised that we all were so worried about what these discursive evals would say. In her experience, teachers held power in the classroom simply because they were the teachers, the end. There was much less hand-holding through the writing process (something we're strongly encouraged to do), and also much less of an attempt to make sure that every student understands the material and is happy with the class. This attitude occurs in the US, too, but always among tenured professors who can afford to not care what their students think. Anyway, after that lengthy preamble, I have to say that my evals this quarter were shockingly good considering how badly I thought the class went. I didn't get one of the coveted "Letters of Commendation" (which, I imagine, makes the envelope glow and hum like a thousand angels), but there are some departmental politics involved there. The professor who runs the E110 supervision, and doles out the letters, is somewhat biased against the medievalists. None of us have ever gotten a letter, even those among us who have won university-wide teaching awards. She's got a horrible sense of style though, so it's ok. And now, some excerpts from some of the evals. I only had one that was actually negative. In response to a question about my comments on their rough drafts, he/she wrote: The instructor's written responses were good. The verbal response I received was not as good because she didn't give me much of advice or assistance that I needed and when I was describing what my paper meant that she couldn't understand, it seems like she had no intention of trying to understand me and was one-sided. I can't really think of a response to that that doesn't involve defending my teaching methods, so I'll just say: whatever, kid. Have a nice vacation. That one negative evaluation is more than compensated for by the other great ones I received. Some selections of my favorite answers: From a question about my effectiveness: "Sarah was a GREAT [triple underlined] teacher." And from the same eval on a question about my comments on drafts: "Advice on ungraded Rough Drafts was WONDERFUL [double underlined]; it made working on the paper much less stressful but was great advice and help." Extra points for use of the semicolon! From a question about their expectations: "I didn't really know what to expect besides a regular English class. However, Sarah didn't make this class like any regular English class. It was fun!" I had a lot of responses saying I was a fun teacher, personable, nice, even well-spoken (despite all of my awkward and inappropriate examples and moments -- if anyone wants to hear the stories about the Nazis and the dog genetalia, just let me know). But the responses that made me feel the most sniffly were the ones that indicated that these kids learned something. And nearly all of the evals indicated this, even the bad one. No Letter of Commendation though. I might write my own and stick it on the fridge.