Parents- nix these behaviors in your kids before they go to college

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:College professor year. I've been a professor for 24 years and every year it's worse! Parents please try to nix these behaviors in your HS kids before they go to college AND teach them a few basic life skills. I promise spending some time on these will ensure your kid has a better experience in college and in life.

Behaviors to nix:
1. Asking a question instead of looking at the syllabus or, frankly, using google. I can't tell you how many times a lazy kid will ask me something in class that is on the syllabus, and/or I've said repeatedly in class, and/or has nothing to do with the class that they could easily figure out on their own. It all comes down to pure LAZINESS.

2. Give your kid consequences for bad behavior like being disrespectful, being late, talking during class, getting up and stomping out of the classroom, anything like that. These kids today are clearly being raised without consequence.

3. Have your kid practice sending you and email, with you being the professor. Make sure they know how to properly address the person. Make sure they know how to type full sentences and make their question clear.

I routinely get emails like this:

Yo, whats on the test and do I need to read the textbook please let me know right away.

Notice that they 1) don't identify what class they are referring to, they don't really have a question I can answer, and they clearly didn't spend much time thinking about or writing the email. I usually just ignore this or send a quick reply to refer to the syllabus.

4) Do NOT, and I mean do NOT, tell them that if they have an issue with a professor that they should call you (the parent) and let you (the parent) contact the professor. I don't care who you are, there's this law called FERPA which means I can't discuss your kid's academic record unless they are present and have given permission to do so. Furthermore, I like to treat your kid as an adult and you probably should too.

I could go on but I won't.

Now for essential life skills:

A. For god's sakes teach them how to do laundry and have basic pride in their personal cleanliness. I can't tell you how many times some kid walks into my office stinking to high heaven and wearing clothes that look like they haven't been washed for weeks. Now I would normally think perhaps they struggle financially but when they whip out their iphone 14 or 15 and talk to with me airpods in, it makes me think they probably can afford to do laundry. They just don't and/or they don't know how.

B. How to set an alarm clock. Every quarter some kid misses an exam because they slept in and then they get mad when I won't let them take a makeup exam.

C. Same thing with how to use a calendar and write down important dates.

D. Finally, tell them to take out their airpods and put their phone down when speaking to someone. It's really disrespectful when a kid comes to my office and won't even lift their head up from their phone.

I'm also a college professor.

It is so easy to just teach some of these skills, instead of berating our students. In some cases, it even takes less time! Email norms, professionalism, time management, and social skills are embedded in my courses. When I began to notice some of the struggles you mention, I devoted some class time each week to explicitly address them. Students share their tips for staying organized, I show them a feature of our LMS, we look at educational research demonstrating ways to study, and we look at examples of school-appropriate emails.We may be teaching math or science or history, but those things are part of their classroom success, and I think it is valuable to include.

I could make a similar list of things that have gotten better in my 20 years of teaching. Students tend to be better self advocates, have a stronger grasp of technology, are more flexible regarding content format, and - most notably - are better classmates. In recent years, my students have been overwhelmingly accommodating and inclusive toward their peers with noticeable learning differences such as ASD. They work well in groups. They share resources. They organize outside of class. They are a joy.

I hope you can shift your focus to helping your students develop in all ways, not just in your subject. Being a parent is tough, being a college student is tough, and being a professor is tough. We could all use some patience and grace.

NP. Absolutely not. This is what high school is for. Are you serious??? If I’m paying top dollar for college it’s not so a COLLEGE PROFESSOR can teach your lazy kid how to send an email.

Seriously! I'd be unhappy if I paid all that money for my kid to learn how to write a "school-appropriate email" instead of, ya know, the academic subject matter.

Luckily there’s tenure, and I’m there for the students and not you! I do my best to meet student needs, and sometimes even high academic achievers need supports.

Five minutes of discussing study habits or explaining how office hours work isn’t taking a thing away from their academic learning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank god for Rate my Professor.

My nephew was starting freshman year this year and a bunch of recent graduates had 1 piece of advice for him at his going away party ... do not take a class from a professor like OP.

1. Check Rate my Professor before registering
2. The 1st class, feel the professor out, if he is like OP DROP.THE.CLASS. You can't out IQ a bad professor, you can't teach yourself the class, drop.the.class. There is no getting around a bad arrogant professor, just drop the class and take an elective that is open. It gets better when you are in your last 2 years, ask friends who can teach, who is good.. take their classes.

Hey Professor care to share your name so we can look you up in Rate My Professor?

You Okay? You seem a little unhinged.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank god for Rate my Professor.

My nephew was starting freshman year this year and a bunch of recent graduates had 1 piece of advice for him at his going away party ... do not take a class from a professor like OP.

1. Check Rate my Professor before registering
2. The 1st class, feel the professor out, if he is like OP DROP.THE.CLASS. You can't out IQ a bad professor, you can't teach yourself the class, drop.the.class. There is no getting around a bad arrogant professor, just drop the class and take an elective that is open. It gets better when you are in your last 2 years, ask friends who can teach, who is good.. take their classes.

Hey Professor care to share your name so we can look you up in Rate My Professor?

RatemyProfessor often ends up favoring easy profs--and often adjuncts who are young. What a waste of resources for your kids to take classes from the people who are not the top in their field and who may be nice and understanding but have lower demands. I guess if your aim is to get through school with the least amount of work possible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm also a professor, and I've been teaching for 20 years. I'm tenured (in the humanities) at an R-1.
I'm guessing that OP had a bad day or a series of incidents with bad students. I totally empathize.
I will say that 98% of my students are good eggs. They are engaged, smart, do the work, etc. Most don't even come to my office hours or stop by to talk to me after class. A small fraction are notably ill-prepared for college, whether it be academically, socially, or psychologically. Those that really require help I do notify admin about through various means--an all reputable universities will have deans, support services, etc., in place for faculty to flag students who are in need of help.
We are most definitely, however, not trained counselors or even teachers. We receive minimal pedagogical training, and we are rewarded with tenure (at research universities) not for teaching, but for publishing. Our pay raises are for publishing and for winning grants, not for teaching.
Parents who expect professors to intercede on behalf of their children who need to shower, do laundry, learn manners (via email or otherwise) do not understand the role of faculty in a college. University is not an extension of high school. We are not "partnering" with parents to raise your children. We are experts in our chosen fields, and we transmit knowledge to young adults.
And while I sympathize with parents who have SN children, we are never to assume that a student of ours has SN and therefore treat your SN with courtesies that we would not provide to other students. If you child does have SN, then you as a parent must communicate with the college's disabilities office. That office will then send a letter to your student to send to professors about any academic accommodations. Academic accommodations, not social ones.

Excellent response. R1 means the university brings in substantial government and foundation grants and other investments.
I taught at a land-grant (public) R1 as a grad student, and then at private R1 and "tuition dependent" universities as a newbie PhD before I moved on to the private sector. Now I'm a parent of one student in college and another looking at schools right now.

I very much agree most students mean well, whether or not they "like" you as a professor. Teaching at a public R1 generally insulates tenured professors the most from interference regarding teaching and grading, as the focus is indeed on research productivity and generating revenue. Non-tenured and tenure-track faculty will get trouble if they irritate students known to the administration for donating significantly or having some sort of other leverage (i.e. relationship with state legislators, paying out-of-state tuition, prominent athlete, etc). Such faculty will also run into problems if they can't fill their classes. But tenure provides almost total protection from students (and parents) seeking unwarranted (i.e. non-SN) special treatment. Most parents almost certainly can't generate enough $$$ or leverage to convince the University to welcome the "academic freedom" firestorm that would ensue from stepping in without cause on the favored student's behalf against a tenured professor.

Things are somewhat different with private R1s because private college tuition replaces the state funding that allows for in-state tuition and other support. But here research still matters much more because it is publicly verifiable (unlike "good" teaching) and it reflects well on the University's reputation.

Students and their parents have the most leverage at tuition-dependent (non-R1) private schools. Indeed, these are places where they're most commonly perceived to be "the customers". These are the types of places where you'll see the "Center for Teaching Excellence" and similar endeavors that seek to boost the quality of instruction. Indeed these efforts are quite successful at many places. The metric, of course, is generally the students' responses to the teaching evaluation questionnaires rather than other non-student generated evaluations of teaching.

I suspect OP is a (presumably male) tenured professor at one of these private tuition-dependent institutions of higher learning. He'd love to retire but he's got one more to get through college, and can't afford the tuition if he loses the tuition remission from his current position. He's also not prominent enough in his field to be able to get a tenured faculty position at another university as his research has gone rather stale.

He gets frustrated with the antics of certain students in the wake of getting various emails about best practices in undergraduate education and invitations to all sorts of "teaching excellence" workshops. Perhaps he fields calls from the Dean on a fairly regular basis asking if that kid who plagiarized his paper really understood that you can't repeat four pages of an article word-for-word given that there wasn't an explicit admonishment against such behavior on both the syllabus and the printout of the assignment itself. He may be asked to re-grade the paper, while learning that yes indeed the young man is indeed the grandson of the person for whom a building on campus is named. Or perhaps the young woman is a key starter on the women's soccer team and really can't be expected to keep up with the overly strenuous demands OP's assignment places on all students in the class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank god for Rate my Professor.

My nephew was starting freshman year this year and a bunch of recent graduates had 1 piece of advice for him at his going away party ... do not take a class from a professor like OP.

1. Check Rate my Professor before registering
2. The 1st class, feel the professor out, if he is like OP DROP.THE.CLASS. You can't out IQ a bad professor, you can't teach yourself the class, drop.the.class. There is no getting around a bad arrogant professor, just drop the class and take an elective that is open. It gets better when you are in your last 2 years, ask friends who can teach, who is good.. take their classes.

Hey Professor care to share your name so we can look you up in Rate My Professor?

RatemyProfessor often ends up favoring easy profs--and often adjuncts who are young. What a waste of resources for your kids to take classes from the people who are not the top in their field and who may be nice and understanding but have lower demands. I guess if your aim is to get through school with the least amount of work possible.

Very true. Then if you're a younger professor who's more difficult and perhaps socially awkward? Oy vey. Students HATE that dissonance and punish such professors accordingly.

[Anonymous]

These issues also come from middle school/high school policies that are too accommodating. Direct some of that energy to those schools and the school boards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank god for Rate my Professor.

My nephew was starting freshman year this year and a bunch of recent graduates had 1 piece of advice for him at his going away party ... do not take a class from a professor like OP.

1. Check Rate my Professor before registering
2. The 1st class, feel the professor out, if he is like OP DROP.THE.CLASS. You can't out IQ a bad professor, you can't teach yourself the class, drop.the.class. There is no getting around a bad arrogant professor, just drop the class and take an elective that is open. It gets better when you are in your last 2 years, ask friends who can teach, who is good.. take their classes.

Hey Professor care to share your name so we can look you up in Rate My Professor?

NP. I have a 5/5 rating on Rate My Professor (not that I care, but you asked so I looked) and have received multiple awards for teaching and mentorship. I agree with every word the OP said.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank god for Rate my Professor.

My nephew was starting freshman year this year and a bunch of recent graduates had 1 piece of advice for him at his going away party ... do not take a class from a professor like OP.

1. Check Rate my Professor before registering
2. The 1st class, feel the professor out, if he is like OP DROP.THE.CLASS. You can't out IQ a bad professor, you can't teach yourself the class, drop.the.class. There is no getting around a bad arrogant professor, just drop the class and take an elective that is open. It gets better when you are in your last 2 years, ask friends who can teach, who is good.. take their classes.

Hey Professor care to share your name so we can look you up in Rate My Professor?

And when your boss is MEAN (wanting you to show up on time, meet deadlines, not ask him to wipe your butt), quit your job. Repeat as necessary. That will look *awesome* on your resume. Then go move back home to mommy who tells you you're special and the world owes you everything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank god for Rate my Professor.

My nephew was starting freshman year this year and a bunch of recent graduates had 1 piece of advice for him at his going away party ... do not take a class from a professor like OP.

1. Check Rate my Professor before registering
2. The 1st class, feel the professor out, if he is like OP DROP.THE.CLASS. You can't out IQ a bad professor, you can't teach yourself the class, drop.the.class. There is no getting around a bad arrogant professor, just drop the class and take an elective that is open. It gets better when you are in your last 2 years, ask friends who can teach, who is good.. take their classes.

Hey Professor care to share your name so we can look you up in Rate My Professor?

NP. I have a 5/5 rating on Rate My Professor (not that I care, but you asked so I looked) and have received multiple awards for teaching and mentorship. I agree with every word the OP said.

DP. Same and I'm female (since someone said OP must be male). And I do love teaching, in general, but these behaviors among the students are increasing year to year.

[Anonymous]

At a certain point the students learns from consequences. They are your students. This is your job. If you find an email rude tell the student. If the information has already been provided tell them.

Op, you aren't making sense saying kids can't function but then expecting parents to hold hands through college.

And do you really think parents haven't been telling them to shower more regularly for years?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If they need to shower and do laundry, that's on them. I taught them, sorry. Not sure how they learn that lesson the hard way, except perhaps socially.

This +100.

And your second point about consequences for bad behavior like being late for class or rude. It's college...how would a parent know?

[Anonymous]

Fully agree. When I went to college, I was truly on my own and there were consequences for mistakes. I also couldn't imagine being rude to a teacher. This generated is very coddled.

[Anonymous]

*generation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At a certain point the students learns from consequences. They are your students. This is your job. If you find an email rude tell the student. If the information has already been provided tell them.

Op, you aren't making sense saying kids can't function but then expecting parents to hold hands through college.

And do you really think parents haven't been telling them to shower more regularly for years?

the point is that these things need to be taught BEFORE college. if they haven't, and the parent needs to hold hands, it is much too late.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Dear Prof,

I have been working on these and other skills for years with my ADHD/ASD kid.

He will mess up, despite being explicitly taught these things. He's in contact with the disability office and has already asked you for his extended time.

He had high stats and is an academic, intellectual person, which is why your place of employment accepted him. Sorry, but he's always going to be an absent-minded professor type, and his brain is somewhere in the vicinity of Pluto most of the time.

And you know who it hurts most? Not you. HIM. He is destined to go through life with ADHD and ASD and all his social quirks. You've only got to suffer him for your class. He has to suffer himself for life.

Best regards,

Mom.

+1

But minus ASD