Image: mountains as far as the eye can see, plus valleys and clouds
In June when I set out on this adventure so many people asked me how I was feeling about my decision to quit my teaching job. My honest response was that it felt like the start of every other summer, so it didn’t feel like a big change, or that I was about to launch off a precipice without a parachute; however, I also shared that maybe I would feel differently come late summer when school started back up without me. Well, that time is here: my academic family spent Thursday and Friday at In Service and classes began today.
I spent Thursday riding my bike over Georgia Pass (Breckenridge, CO area) on the Colorado Trail, down the other side on the CT and back up and over on Jefferson trail . Photos below.
Image: Dark sky over mountains, sparse pines, and an alpine tarn. Taken from Georgia Pass, CO.
Honestly, I do not feel any sadness about not returning to teach classes this autumn. This is the first time in my entire life that I have NOT returned to school in August! I enjoy teaching, believe I am very good at at it, and I really enjoy the connections I make with students and the opportunity to have a positive impact in the lives of so many others, so of course I am reflecting on why I don’t feel melancholy about no longer teaching after more than ten years experience. I believe there are two main reasons for this feeling. The first is that for as long as I can remember I have dreamt of spending the transition season in the Rocky Mountains; to see the aspens change colors and feel the crispness in the the air. The second is that teaching was utterly exhausting for me, not just the exhaustion of an introvert performing day after day, but much more insidious is the exhaustion of teaching while female.
Do you know that there are many studies out there showing how biased student evaluations are against female faculty members (and People of Color)? Average scores are lower than male colleagues, student comments often focus on the female’s appearance more than her talents, males are always rated higher on knowledge and mastery of material, and if a female professor is not the super nurturing mothering type then she will be characterized as “uncaring”. Evidence if you are interesting in learning more: https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/03/student-evaluations-are-discriminatory-against-female-professors.html, https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2018/02/09/teaching-evaluations-are-often-used-confirm-worst-stereotypes-about-women-faculty , https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/03/14/study-says-students-rate-men-more-highly-women-even-when-theyre-teaching-identical . Online class, same teacher with “male” vs “female” sounding name: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10755-014-9313-4 And just to be clear where I stand, I think it should be illegal to use student evaluations in faculty evaluation processes because they are so clearly documented to be discriminatory.
Fortunately for me, advancement (once tenured) and pay were not directly linked to student evaluations in my system, but these evaluations directly impact your tenure process the first few years, and following tenure you still have to defend yourself against specious complaints. The evaluations were peripheral enough to my personal experience in later years that the real sources of frustration and exhaustion were the day to day, face to face, challenges to my knowledge and authority.
Mostly these challenges came from younger white men, who apparently could not accept that I knew more about them than the topic I was teaching, nor accept that I was qualified to critique their knowledge on the subject. Some of this disrespect was shown verbally in the classroom, by constantly asking questions that were clearly not designed to advance the knowledge of the questioner, but to attempt to either prove I didn’t know what I was talking about (really?!? I do in fact have a PhD in this field) or just to show off and hear themselves talk. In my earlier years of teaching, classroom management of this type of student was a real problem as I always had to try and strike a balance between allowing students a voice and moving forward with content coverage. Every single semester I had one of these students (generally NOT students performing at the A or B grade level) who would attempt to argue with me about the material or the “points I had taken away from them” on an exam, during class. In front of everyone. Over the years I developed deeper knowledge, more self-confidence and what I considered more of a sense of gravitas (or can only men have gravitas?), as well as the ability to sense one of these dudes a mile away and nip that shit in the bud. The flow of the class, my enjoyment of teaching, and the enjoyment other students experienced in the classroom improved as a result. Though note the confrontations never disappeared, but decreased in frequency, and the responsibility of “managing” these individuals was tiring and fraught with setting an unwelcoming tone in the classroom if not handled with a perfect balance.
The other huge insult that never went away was students challenging my grading of their exams. It was very common for a student who was not happy with my marking of the exam to take the exam to the Department Chair and complain that I was grading them unfairly compared to their peers. Often they did this without having a discussion with me first. Or a student would come see me, I would walk them through each question and point out the errors or missing material, it would seem like we had reached an agreement and then within a week I would get called into my Chair’s office to discuss this student’s complaint about the unfairness with which I grade exams — apparently we hadn’t actually reached an agreement. Over the years I have polled my colleagues and previous chairs and these types of complaints are almost never lodged against male faculty members. Faculty members who are every bit as strict in their grading, and *maybe* even some who are a bit more capricious in their exam materials and grading, rarely get complaints like this going over their heads to the Chair or Dean. They may occasionally have students complain and try and get more points from them, but it almost always stops there.
Note that every time one of these complaints was made the Chair felt obligated to speak to me about it and even if the Chair had no doubts about my ability or integrity, it was still exhausting to have the conversation and feel like I was defending myself over and over again. It was especially hurtful and frustrating when it came from students with whom I had been going above and beyond, meeting with them regularly to try and help them pass the class honestly and with integrity.
Ten years of teaching while absorbing these insults combined with my love of the mountains and living life outdoors had led me to the point of being 99% ready to submit my resignation. Then last October a former student put the proverbial Nail in the Coffin and I wasn’t going to look back. I have never shared the following story publicly because for much of the school year legal proceedings surrounding this event.
In October 2018 someone put up posters all over my building with a large color picture of me pulled off the internet, a headline “It’s not you, it’s her” (paraphrasing) and directed students to a website where this person had uploaded quizzes, exams, and many of my lecture notes from previous semesters. The website contained additional images of me and a screed about what an uncaring human being I am. Oh the irony, since the primary reason I always kept my teaching load on the low end (and thus made less money than many of my colleagues) was to have time and energy to personally invest in my students– getting to know them and doing everything in my power to help them overcome barriers. And just for extra special fun the website url was my name plus “69”, you know, just to add sexual threat and intimidation into the fun.
For the most part the response of my administrators and colleagues was swift and positive (with a few glaring exceptions, but we are talking about a bureaucracy here…). The website was pulled by the end of that day, and within a couple weeks we had identified the most likely candidate behind this attack on my character and the integrity of my classroom materials. Meanwhile during the time period when I still had no idea of the culprit, I had to continue teaching a night class that I had taken on for a colleague at the last minute, meaning that when students signed up for this class it was with a different instructor – a class that contained a number of outspoken, behaviorally and academically challenged males with whom I had previous experience. Due to concerns about my safety I had to drive to school instead of biking and had a security escort to my car every night that I worked after dark for the remainder of the semester. I was truly afraid that one of the male student in this night class may have been behind the attack. Even once we had identified a likely suspect (not taking classes during the semester of the attack), who was subsequently banned from campus, I still had to live with the fear that this person may be unhinged enough to come on campus, or even worse, find out my home address.* Just another day in teaching, right? So when I say that I am just plain TIRED of it all, I am not kidding.
I wish to stress that I LOVE teaching, will always be a teacher in the same way that I will always be a scientist, and I mostly left my job to be an explorer, but as women continue to not have equality within our society we need to ask how many of the “choices” we make are really personal choice and how much of it is us being driven out by exhaustion from daily dealings with a patriarchal system? Maybe if my students had treated me with a level of respect equal to that of my male colleagues (which I am not saying is perfect nor necessarily adequate respect) I would have been more likely to stay. Instead we now have one less woman teaching science. I may be back, but for now I need a break.
In the interim I will be doing more of this:
And this:
One more?
Image: Flowers in the foreground, mountains forever inthe background.
I’ve got so many more mountains to climb, trails to ride, and dirt roads that Sally really wasn’t made for to explore!
Image: Small blue Honda parked in a meadow with Georgia Pass in the background.
[*Brief story wrap up for those that want it. Legal proceedings were started, most evidence identifying the individual was circumstantial, clear to a reasonable person, but still circumstantial, and of course, anytime lawyers are involved things go slowly. I was leaving Santa Barbara at the end of May, and I was definitely not going to change my life trajectory just to deal with a lawsuit for the next year, so I dropped it. End of story, unfortunately.]