Call and Response

Gotta love evaluation time. The cream of the crop of my student evaluations, and my response:

Under "Things the instructor did well":
"Teach!"
Uhm... okay.

"I appreciate his 'soap box moments'."
Some one got an earful of my corn rant.

"Enthusiastic. Clear. Humurous."
Kind of sounds like a fragrance commercial. Eau de nerd...

"Related examples to fit the students."
Yes. Unemployment does affect you when you get out on the job market and realize there aren't any jobs.

"Very organized and dependable."
Some one wasn't paying attention in class.

"This is Econ, not theater, you're a great teacher."
Uhm.... okay.

"The small discussion groups helped out a lot and saved my grade!"
Keep this one in mind for the next section.

Under "Suggested Improvements":
"No more group discussions. They lasted too long and we learned little."
Contradiction thy name is student.

"Quit abbreviating everything."
Very well. On all my graphs I will write out to the bitter end: Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Gross National Product (GNP), Consumption (C), Investment (I), Capital (K), Consumer Price Index (CPI). It is rather confusing.

"Crack a smile. Don't be so serious."
Same class as Mr. "Humorous" from above. No kidding. Maybe my jokes just aren't appreciated.

"E85 is good."
Some one did not get enough of an earful of my corn rant. Get it? Earful? Corn? Ear? Yeah... I guess this all goes back to appreciation of my jokes.

"Actually give the answer to a question instead of giving part of it."
I guess I can't expect them to think about things and try to solve it for themselves.

"Economics is not easily understood by many. Have a little compassion."
No. I am an evil, evil man and I will smite you with my godlike GTA powers. When I'm not in office hours, going over homeworks, reviewing with students for quizzes... yeah. Having no compassion is an awful thing.

"Nix the substitute girl, she sounds like an NPR telethon."
Okay... seriously: what substitute girl??? My Ukrainian friend subbed for me one Friday but he is neither a girl nor does he sound like anyone on NPR. Unless he wore a dress and a wig and did his best Ira Glass voice.

"More examples that students can relate to would increase class participation."
Yeah, see the "related examples" comment above. Funny story, both the "relate examples to students" comments were from the same class.

"Lecture preparation could be better." Some one WAS paying attention in class!