<p>DH did sit in on one of D1’s classes, same field as DH’s expertise. He did disagree with the prof’s approach. And that was that. We expected two things from the college experience: hone their ability to think critically (which includes research) and expand the depth and breadth of their knowledge. “Check” on both counts. Highly satisfied. But we think or kids got started on that in hs and at home.</p>
<p>What’s the purpose of this question, OP? Respectfully, what’s your dog in this race, for all the opinion threads you start? Ae you in the biz of “college help?”</p>
<p>Who is suggesting that professors don’t work on the weekends and evenings? This is the issue - students (and parents, apparently) assume that because professors don’t respond to their emails on the weekends and evenings (assuming they don’t, because most of my professors have responded to weekend or evening emails) that means that the professor is not working at that time.</p>
<p>Direct interaction with students is only a small fraction of the work that professors do. Even at primarily teaching colleges, professors must prepare lectures and activities, create exams and assignments, and grade those exams and assignments. They have to do the readings before you do. And they may have 150-1000+ other students in the same semester you (or your child) is taking the class. And at the types of colleges that many CC students attend, professors are also (and often, primarily) expected to do research. At many of these places research is expected to take up 60-70% of their time.</p>
<p>So after your professor’s class in those evenings and weekends, he might be running lab meetings, advising a couple of doctoral students, writing grants to pay his own salary, or answering questions from the hundreds of other students he has. I think I’d be hard-pressed to find an academic who doesn’t spend many Saturday or Sunday mornings answering emails, creating lectures, grading papers, or doing some other kind of work.</p>
<p>Also…academia is part of the “real world.” It’s not like business is “real” while academia is…what, fake? It’s simply a different industry with different norms.</p>
<p>Oh, and do you know why elementary school teachers complain about staying until 9 pm for parent-teacher conferences? Because the time between when school lets out and 9 pm may be the time that they’re normally grading and preparing lesson plans. Now because they have to do P/T conferences until 9 pm, somebody else has to feed their kids and get them in bed, and maybe they’re up until 1 am trying to get everything done. Do people still assume that teachers stop working at 3 pm just because they’re not at school? Just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not working. I have friends who are teachers, and I can assure you that they don’t stop work at 3 pm when the kids leave (and many of them also work through the summer on something or other).</p>
<p>I’m a professor and a parent of current and former college students. I am myself a student in a class I am taking for fun. I have lots and lots of opinions on what the ideal instructor brings to the table - knowledge, humility, organization, a sense of humor, promptness in grading, fairness, respect, passion for the subject, and more. Everyone has their own individual “style,” and I respect my colleagues even when I disagree with their choices (me, I’m on email so much that it’s easier to just answer the student’s question on the weekend or the middle of the night, but I can see why my colleague with an infant choose not to do so).</p>
<p>But I’m not Customer Service. You didn’t pay for me with your tuition check. I can’t “give you” an A, just like your personal trainer can’t “give you” a great body. We can help you reach that goal, but the student has to put in the effort. </p>
<p>As a parent, I want my child to have professors who inspire and motivate them, who are interested in them as people and as future professionals, who respect them while holding them to high but fair standards. But if my kid calls in tears about that horrible, mean professor, I’ll sympathize but I’m not getting involved.</p>
<p>And now I need to stop procrastinating and get back to grading papers. </p>
<p>In the case I’m referring to, the professor was on email answering emails, and spent more time explaining why it was the weekend and she couldn’t possibly answer the question, than if she’d just answered the question and moved on. (It was based on extremely confusing and contradictory instructions that were given late Friday afternoon and due Monday.) It would almost have been better if she hadn’t responded at all.</p>
<p>“Direct interaction with students is only a small fraction of the work that professors do. Even at primarily teaching colleges, professors must prepare lectures and activities, create exams and assignments, and grade those exams and assignments. They have to do the readings before you do.”</p>
<p>Yes, and answering my client’s emails is only a small fraction of the work that I do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t do it at night or over the weekends (esp with clients who are halfway around the world).</p>
<p>“Oh, and do you know why elementary school teachers complain about staying until 9 pm for parent-teacher conferences? Because the time between when school lets out and 9 pm may be the time that they’re normally grading and preparing lesson plans. Now because they have to do P/T conferences until 9 pm, somebody else has to feed their kids and get them in bed, and maybe they’re up until 1 am trying to get everything done.”</p>
<p>Big whoops, professionals do this all the time. I’m sorry, I’m just not all that impressed by - 5 days out of the year, I have to stay up til 1 am trying to get everything done. That’s life in the big city. I don’t know a single working professional who doesn’t periodically have to stay up super-late, or work all weekend, or whatever. </p>
<p>@julliet thank you, well said! As the spouse of a tenured professor, I see him work basically all the time. Weekends are getting his own research and writing done, as well as recommendations for graduate students and undergrads, grading etc. The week is spent on class prep. Does anyone outside academic understand the hours it takes to craft a thoughtful lecture or seminar? A good professor doesn’t just stand up and talk for an hour. The lecture is created to serve specific teaching goals, to integrate materials in a certain way, and to challenge the students. It is not a fact delivery system. </p>
<p>If he didn’t set limits on email correspondence with students, they would email him for paper advice at 11pm and then tear him apart on course evaluations for not responding before 8am the next day. He, and everyone I know, respond to clear student emergencies over the weekend. But students are supposed to be developing the adult skill of managing their course work. When a paper topic has been assigned, and the opportunity for office hours or even scheduling time outside of office hours during the week has passed, do not email asking for tips over the weekend. That is not a proper boundary. </p>
<p>I say this at the same time that I was grateful, but a bit shocked, when my own college student’s professor responded to my then-freshman’s weekend message about a paper. </p>
<p>lookingforward, my interest in this question stems from my desire to see everybody reach their full potential. Education is the second-most important institution for achieving that (families are #1). I would like to know what others think are the most effective methods for educating students at the college level.</p>
<p>I do recall reading about a study that found “direct instruction” to be the most effective approach among the several that were studied but I think this was at the elementary level. As I recall, “direct instruction” was a more didactic approach.</p>
<p>I place a higher value on factual knowlege than some of you. Knowledge is the raw material for thought. I disagree with the characterization of lecture methods as “passive learning”. To me, a good lecture presents lots of factual information, includes explanations and examples, and allows for questions and comments from students. Lectures are a form of active learning in that students are absorbing, digesting, evaluating, understanding, and so on, The activity is mental. On the other hand, a discussion among students who have little knowlege is pretty fruitless.</p>
<p>Good lectures are mostly didactic but partly interactive. They can promote critical thinking skills. I think lectures are the most productive use of class time for the large majority of courses. Seminar style courses, however, are designed for discussion.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t expect a professor to reply over the weekend but taking the time to reply in order to say that you won’t reply because it’s the weekend seems strange. That would go for anyone, really. </p>
<p>And whether a given person Is effectively on call over the weekend is pretty variable by job. It has not been my experience that all salaried professionals are likely to respond to emails and such outside of normal business hours. </p>
<p>“And it’s precisely this work ethic that makes those of us in business roll our eyes at how allegedly hard the academic lifestyle is. Really? You people who couldn’t possibly spend a half hour on Saturday morning or Sunday evening answering a few emails would get eaten alive in the real world. This is like when you hear elementary school teachers complain about the handful of times a year they have to stay til 9 pm for parent-teacher conferences. Um, really - in the real world, people work late all the time, it’s just not the big deal you think it is.”</p>
<p>My daughter is a high school teacher. Not only does she grade papers, write recommendations, and do lesson plans most evenings, but she spends weekends and evenings helping students with service projects, mentoring debate and mock trial teams and going to extra training that she feels will make her a better teacher. She volunteers with high risk students from her school during the summer and usually organizes at least one summer outing for her students. There is no extra pay for this, but she does it because she loves her job and considers herself a “working professional”. Many of the teachers she works with do the same, and don’t expect extra praise for it. They also spend a lot of their own money purchasing extras for their classrooms and for students who can’t otherwise afford it. I don’t know too many professionals in the business world who will spend their own money for business related items. We know several college instructors who also put in many extra hours and just consider it a part of their jobs. Of course there are those teachers at all levels who put in the bare minimum, just as there are those in the business world who do the same. Eventually it comes back to them in some way, You seem to have a pretty low opinion of those in the academic business.</p>
<p>@collegehelp: I sincerely doubt that you place higher value on factual knowledge than others posting here. We also value reading and calculating and drawing and other skills and tools. Some of us don’t think fact-jammed lectures are the best form of instruction or the best allocation of a professor’s time, and part of the reason of this is that in many classes at universities there is little or no time for the professor to field questions or lead a discussion. This is one reason why there are “discussion sections,” mostly led by teaching assistants. It’s also a reason why students are expected to undertake research projects or write papers that apply learned skills to address problems or test hypotheses. Large lecture classes can help to weed-out students who can’t master the basic skills in their discipline. But they don’t make students into scientists or engineers.</p>
<p>Furthermore, if you want a society of technicians, you can jam them full of facts and formulas and possibly they will spit out a useful answer if you’ve programmed them right and pushed the right buttons. If you want a society of innovative engineers or designers, you help them to become problem solvers. Not just math problems but design problems, often involving complex systems and novel problems. Imagine that you’re designing a nuclear submarine that you want to make capable of sending up ballistic missiles. How do you keep the boat from being swamped when you open the tube to launch the missile? (That problem was solved in the 1960’s. I knew the engineer who solved it.) Suppose you’re planning the first manned mission involving a Mars landing. What kind of training should the astronauts have in field geology – literally, so that they know which rocks to pick up or photos to take – or are they just along for the ride and waiting from instructions from Earth? (I know the guy who trained the Apollo astronauts in field geology so they could do this on the Moon. It involved months of field training and much more than a walk on the beach looking for interesting seashells.) Or imagine you’ve got a space probe attempting to land on a comet hundreds of millions of miles away. There are thousands of difficult problems to solve as part of a team. It requires a great deal of imagination and creativity. What has been accomplished so far in addressing unforeseen issues is extremely impressive.</p>
<p>I’ve used examples involving aerospace. But creative design and problem solving is needed in all industries and sectors of the economy. Factual knowledge, scientific knowledge is a starting point. But that’s all it is.</p>
<p>“But students are supposed to be developing the adult skill of managing their course work. When a paper topic has been assigned, and the opportunity for office hours or even scheduling time outside of office hours during the week has passed, do not email asking for tips over the weekend. That is not a proper boundary.”</p>
<p>I absolutely agree. This wasn’t a case of student-procrastinating-and-now-wanting-tips, at all. Believe you me, I’d be all over my kids if they tried to pull that!</p>
<p>Takeitallin - I have a perfectly fine regard for those in academia. Your D is exactly what I mean when I describe someone who is professional. I do think it’s a crime that teachers have to spend their own money purchasing materials for classrooms. I just think sometimes the <em>talk</em> of those in academia betrays a belief that everyone else is 9 - 5.</p>
<p>"I place a higher value on factual knowlege than some of you. Knowledge is the raw material for thought. I disagree with the characterization of lecture methods as “passive learning”. To me, a good lecture presents lots of factual information, includes explanations and examples, and allows for questions and comments from students. "</p>
<p>I don’t think you get it, collegehelp. In a class studying a piece of literature, for example, the learning isn’t about facts such as “what is the third word on the second line on page 83 of this novel,” or “the author’s birthday was May 4, 1812 and he had blue eyes.” What is valuable is precisely the give-and-take, the interpretation, the I-see-this-and-you-see-that. What does this remind you of, what other works by this author or by his contemporaries have similar themes, why do you suppose he had the character say this but not that, how did he foreshadow something that would happen later, what does this mean about how we as a society view virtue or love or death or whatever. It’s not “factual” in the same sense that knowing that carbon is a member of group 14 on the periodic table, but that doesn’t make any less valuable in the context of learning. </p>
<p>@pizzagirl – thank you for that insight. The difficulty is that the incident you describe was a single person, yet it is too easy for others to interpret that as an indictment of an entire profession. I don’t how many of our friends in business think my spouse has a “cushy” job. He has a very difficult, stressful job which also requires way more deep thinking than I am capable of (I teach, but as an adjunct). However, because he doesn’t sit at an office desk all the time, outsiders think it doesn’t “look” demanding. </p>
<p>Okay, I worked a bunch of real world jobs, including “professional” ones, before I became a professor. The endless triage of teaching, service, and research; the humiliation involved in errors as small as a typo or ineffective email; the constant need to be current or ahead of the wave; and the drone of “publish or perish” puts academic life in a cage of its own. Perhaps other professions are as difficult, but not in the same ways.</p>
<p>I want my kid’s professors to respect her as an intellectual. Fortunately she is at a school where that will happen, but I know it doesn’t happen everywhere. </p>
<p>Wow, I totally disagree with those parents that believe that the professor should be available 24/7 (or beyond stated office hours) for their children. And, before anyone speaks, I have a very high maintenance D who is a high achiever who I was involved in her high school education but never to the point of harassing her teachers. As a college freshman, I would expect her to be responsible. To read her syllabus and ask questions and seek help during appropriate times. To not expect her professor to answer her e-mails at 9:00 on a Sunday night or even 9:00 on a weeknight because that’s when she got around to doing her work.</p>
<p>I work in a job that is 24/7 and I have a work phone that I must keep on me at all times. That is the nature of my job and the one I signed up for. However, I feel that it is condescending to intimate that if a professor is not available to your whiny child 24/7 then they are not professional. Not doing your work timely is not an emergency. I am sure there are people on campus to deal with true emergencies and if, by chance, not being able to reach their professor at midnight results in a mental breakdown - I am sure the mental health staff is on duty at all times.</p>
<p>"I work in a job that is 24/7 and I have a work phone that I must keep on me at all times. That is the nature of my job and the one I signed up for. However, I feel that it is condescending to intimate that if a professor is not available to your whiny child 24/7 then they are not professional. "</p>
<p>This isn’t what I said at all. That’s not the situation I was referring to. I completely agree they are not at my kid’s beck and call, and there is no excuse if my kid procrastinates. </p>
<p>Oh, health services is not on duty at all times, but that’s another thread :-)</p>
<p>I’m not sure folks (e.g., teachers) who earn $35,000 - $60,000 a year–salaried or not–should be expected to be on call to the same extent as MDs and JDs earning $175,000-$350,000 per annum…</p>
<p>Pizzagirl - I wasn’t reacting to your post specifically. We often speak on the same topics and usually agree. Oh, and at my kid’s school medical is open 24/7.</p>
<p>It seems a bit odd to me that @collegehelp seems to have extrapolated from a single professor answering a weekend email curtly to deciding that a huge proportion of professors are layabouts who aren’t professional because they…well, I’m not exactly sure what. It sounds like maybe it’s because they see the value of a healthy work-life balance.</p>
<p>But I digress—I actually just popped in to point out that the widespread tendency to make an unwarranted extrapolation from a single event to an indictment of a whole group (a whole profession!) is one of the reasons it’s so vital for us to teach critical thinking skills in college, and not just knowledge of facts.</p>
<p>To be clear, I was making no statements about profs in general. Then again, I fail to see how a half hour email session over the weekend is inconsistent w work life balance. Indeed, it can aid work life balance - less to do on Monday. </p>
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