BY: Savanna Sabb
The roles of the teacher and student are starting to reverse. In a traditional classroom, it has always been the teacher who graded the students. The teacher told the students what needed improvement and where they were excelling. The teacher determines whether the students will pass or fail.
There are surveys that are given to most students both college or high school after each semester that allow them to anonymously critique their teachers. There are also websites like Rate My Professor and Rate My Teacher that students are able to use to rate their teachers on a scale from 1-5 in the four categories of clarity, helpfulness, popularity, and easiness. Students are also able to share with the public what it was like having a specific teacher for a semester on these websites.
Despite the fact that some vengeful students use the surveys and teacher rating websites as the opportunity to seek revenge on the teachers that in their eye, gave them a hard time during the semester, students grading their teachers is equally helpful to both. Teachers are able to see how the students react to their teaching style. Aside from their results on assignments and tests, there is no official way that a teacher could know if what they are teaching is really getting through to their students.
Keith Williams, the president of the Memphis Education Association who was previously interviewed on the topic of teachers grading their students stated, “the union agrees that teachers need to be evaluated on various measures.” He did raise concern of second or third graders ability to effectively grade their teachers, which is why the surveys are mostly given to junior high, high school and college level students.
The questions that are asked on most of the surveys revolve around the student’s opinion on the teacher’s behavior in the classroom and their effectiveness in relaying the lesson to their students. These surveys help the students in letting them know what they were supposed to be achieving during their classes versus what they actually did experience during their time in the class.