Posted by Denise Seguin.

This week Nicola Winstanley shared an interesting blog post with a higher education group on LinkedIn. Winstanley is a community college program coordinator from Humber College in Toronto, Ontario, and her post was about student evaluations, titled It’s Not Me, It’s You: Coping with Student Resistance. She shared her insights on student feedback for instructors, and her honesty with the descriptions of her reactions to negative feedback made me feel better about my own experience. It’s mid-November, which means at my college, teachers are getting ready for the instructor feedback surveys that will be taking place over the next few weeks. I can always tell the timing is right because everyone seems to get a bit edgy. I believe it is normal to obsess about negative comments in these surveys. As Nicola wrote, intellectually we know that we cannot have perfect synergy with each student. Yet one negative comment on a survey can send me into a tailspin. I remember one survey in particular. I had had a negative experience with a student who had left the classroom very disruptively while I was working through an accounting problem on the whiteboard. This student did not return to class until I had finished working through the example and answered questions. I had given the students a similar problem to work on at their desks and was going around the room helping individuals work toward the solution. When I got to her section of the room, this particular student told me she didn’t understand anything. Suffice to say, I did not handle it well. It was an 8:00 am class and I was irritated with her disruption. On my instructor feedback survey results later that semester, I scored lower than normal on the question, “Is helpful when I don’t understand something.” Ouch. I knew that most likely that student had something to do with my lower score. Upon reflection, I realized I had not taken the trouble to learn why she had to leave the room. Perhaps she had received a text from someone and had to respond immediately to a personal issue? Or maybe she needed to go to the bathroom and waited a respectful time to reenter? Maybe she just went to meet her boyfriend for a coffee. Who knows? We have no idea what personal challenges or hurdles our students are dealing with to get to our classroom. Wouldn’t it have been better if I had given her the benefit of the doubt? Every teacher has one of these experiences. The important takeaway is to spend the time to reflect and think about how to handle the situation differently the next time it happens. My colleagues and I joke about sitting around a campfire and reading the survey results, after which we will throw them into the fire. Do we ever do it? No, of course not. We read the results in the privacy of our office or home so that we can ponder in private what students have to say about us. Truth is, none of us are courageous enough to share our results in public. One teacher in my department, let’s call her Mrs. K., was renowned for her teaching style. Whenever I encounter a graduate who’s been in the workforce for a few years, the graduate, without fail, will remark that she is so very thankful for Mrs. K. It’s always Mrs. K. who receives the glowing praise. Is Mrs. K. the most beloved teacher? No. Quite the contrary. Most students found Mrs. K. to be demanding and somewhat intimidating. It was a challenge to get an A in her course. Students often complained about how hard she evaluated their work. Did she get positive student evaluations? Yes. But she also got a lot of negative comments too. Mrs. K. retired a few years ago and I fear her high standards are fading from the department. Now a perception exists that some teachers have lowered standards in order to gain higher scores on student evaluations. It’s hard to say for sure if this is true, but I would not doubt that some teachers have caved on grades or strict deadlines from time to time in order to avoid being called into the Chair’s office to defend themselves. Our Chair is not immune to the idea that students are “customers” that need to be kept happy. We all strive to teach well. We all want our students to like us. If we’re sincere in our efforts, chances are we do a good job overall. So, let’s try to check our ego at the door. Let’s read the student evaluations with an eye to finding those nuggets of insight that can be used to improve our work. For whatever reason, the students with the best constructive criticism do not want to approach us in person to share their insight. Instead we must rely on the anonymity of the student evaluation process to gain these pearls of wisdom. Bear up, stand tall, and get ready for the sealed envelope that will arrive in your mail slot soon. Stay positive and open-minded. Teaching is also about learning, and the learning is not always easy—just as our students would say, no doubt!If you want to read the article I referred to above, follow this link. Don’t forget to read the comments too—some thoughtful remarks by fellow teachers will add to your reflection.http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/its-not-me-its-you-coping-with-student-resistance/