Hell's classroom
Here’s a teacher who sees the way Gordon Ramsay treats people on Hell’s Kitchen as a model for teacher-student relations. I see a lot of attractive possibilities in this!
From near the end: “It’s often said that the toughest teachers receive the highest evaluations.” It may be often said, but it’s not true. There are some students who evaluate teachers only in terms of the grades they received. But I think it’s fair to say that many students really do appreciate demanding teachers — if the teachers also demand a lot of themselves. Nothing is more frustrating to students than the teacher who prides himself or herself on being tough but whose own intellectual and pedagogical habits are slovenly. But the teacher who is willing to work hard and bring energy to the classroom is typically rewarded with pretty good evaluations.
The question of where Gordon Ramsay fits on this scale I leave as an exercise for the reader.
“Nothing is more frustrating to students than the teacher who prides himself or herself on being tough but whose own intellectual and pedagogical habits are slovenly”
Don’t get me started. Oops, too late.
I adored my demanding teachers. Adored and still adore. But I have also witnessed teachers whose pretentions of “tough but fair” were nothing but cover for laziness or even outright sadism.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 17, 12:45 PM · #
I do agree that teachers expecting high things of others and not themselves do not lend themselves to good reviews. My wife is a teacher and many of her peers think she is too hard on her kids (3rd grade). She expects a lot, gives them lots of freedom to learn and explore and is highly individualized in her teaching. Her class is almost entirely small group based so kids do lots of work individually and in small groups but their time with the teacher is exactly where they are at. To do this well requires a lot of work because you are not preparing a lesson, but a lot of lessons. Just as time consuming, she has to continually monitor her students and move the groups around so that those that are getting something quicker than others are being challenged. It is the later part that most of her peers just refuse to do.
What amazes me are the other teachers that complain (usually behind her back) that she is too hard on her kids but then complain out loud that their own kids are out of control.
— Adam S · Apr 17, 12:47 PM · #
Adam, when you next see or speak to your wife, thank her for me. I’m sure she doesn’t hear it enough, but it sounds like she deserves it. If I were to ever have kids or live in her district, I’d be shoving my kids into her class.
My dad was a teacher in the district I grew up, which sucked for all the reasons you could imagine. But it, being a small town, meant he knew the elementary school teachers even from the junior high, so I always managed to get the best teachers “somehow” — this didn’t always meant I got the teachers who I thought were nicest or the teachers I wanted — but in hindsight I sure appreciated it.
There’s a lot to be said for demanding more from kids than they think they can give, but you also have to be a teacher who they can respect enough that they don’t want to fail you. This can — and should — happen as early as first grade. You know how sometimes a security question for your password is name your favorite teacher; thirty years (almost) later, my first grade teacher is still my answer to that question. And I’ve had a lot of good teachers and professors since then. But the first one who treated me like I was special (rather than a pain in her ass because I was a faster reader than everyone else) AND demanded that I push myself into reading harder books than I thought I could shaped my life probably the most. Like a lover, there’s a reason why you never forge your first(which I realize sounds creepy in this context, but you get what I mean).
— LogopolsMike · Apr 17, 01:22 PM · #
Part of the cultural chaos I referred to on another thread was the completely batshit insane idea that order and discipline is stunting to children’s intellectual and emotional development. Discipline has, to a certain degree, come back in vogue, but it seems that many (most?) people think it’s a magic bullet or quick fix; when in fact, as your wife points out, it’s a hell of a lot of work to be a compassionate, nurturing,,and effective disciplinarian. Tough love is a lot tougher on the teacher than it is on the pupil.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 17, 01:35 PM · #
Hear, Hear.
— c.t.h. · Apr 17, 02:44 PM · #
I remember the very first lecture I attended during my undergraduate degree, the tutor followed up his opening comments with (in a heavy Dutch accent): “Now then. There are a great many people within the university teaching profession who take the view that the best way to move your students forward and to help them succeed is always to be positive in your criticism. I am not one of these people.” Good times, noodle salad.
— Anthony · Apr 17, 02:49 PM · #
I’ll come at this from more of the food side than the education side. I loathe Hell’s kitchen and Gordon Ramsey. I am a dedicated fan of Top Chef, I think Tom Colicho gets it exactly right. He is demanding and intimidating, but he can back it up. He gets the best out of the chefs because he wants them to succeed and is hard on them. Gordon Ramsey is simply a bully.
— BrianF · Apr 17, 04:01 PM · #
Okay, just read Thomas H. Benton’s essay and on that basis I get the impression that Prof. Benton doesn’t know very much about snow flakes, or the various ways that various sorts of snow flakes are good for making snowballs, or make nice powder for skiing, or make a snowpack that lasts long into early Summer, and keeps stream flows sufficient for the Chinook to do their thing; or that if the wrong sorts of snowflakes get together in the right sort of way, it makes for terrible dangerous backcountry skiing conditions.
I am a beautiful flower with an odd fragrance.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 18, 10:38 AM · #
It’s an interesting concept, but it only works because he’s Gordon Ramsey, brilliant chef and businessman. The average teacher simply doesn’t have the knowledge or the gravitas (and I say this as a former teacher; I certainly didn’t) to pull off that kind of unconditional respect.
— jacobus · Apr 20, 12:15 AM · #
This seems like good advice, but the real problem here is the whole idea that you can evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher by measuring student satisfaction.
Do students actually learn more from gruff teachers or from nice ones? Who knows? But we’ve at least made a half-hearted attempt to figure out which experience they say they enjoy the most, surely that’s good enough?
— Michael Straight · Apr 20, 02:09 PM · #
Hmm. There was once a Wheaton professor of English who was rumored to have returned a student’s paper to him with no markings other than the comment “This paper does not deserve a grade.”
— Karl · Apr 21, 11:44 AM · #