Rate My Professor

At every semester’s end, institutions of higher learning afford their students the opportunity to evaluate their classroom experience by filling out forms on which they may offer anonymous commentaries and ratings for their professors. Once grades have been submitted, copies of the completed forms are then given to professors. Students and professors alike are curious as to whether or not anyone else reads them or whether they serve any purpose other than allowing students to sound off by way of blame or praise. I remember when I was in divinity school and we too engaged in this end-of-the-semester activity, there was a section on our forms by which we could identify ourselves. Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza told us that she would not read any evaluations that were anonymously submitted. She thought that the anonymous evaluation was cowardly and she would only entertain those assessments in which ownership was claimed. And further, the anonymous evaluation signaled a dead end. How could she discuss a particular student’s point of view with them (if she chose) if she didn’t know who they were?

I always identified myself.

 

On the form that is utilized at the College of Charleston there are eight boxes that allow for 1) a quick “fill-in the circle” rating, ranging from “Highly Agree” to “Highly Disagree” and 2) handwritten commentary. Each of the eight boxes represents a particular element of the student’s experience.

 

Below is a sample of some of the comments that appear on my student evaluation forms this semester along with the heading under which the comment appears (in bold). A brief response from me will follow. I think you will also be able to see from the students’ comments, which often seem to be in complete contradiction that these evaluations say more about the student than ever they do about the professor.

 

1. The instructor is well prepared.

 

“Always ready with some damn deep discussion.”

“She can actually give a lecture without Power Point. Impressive these days.”

“She probably doesn’t even need her notebook.”

 

My response: As for the notebook, I probably don’t. But it’s like Linus’ security blanket. I just feel better with it.

 

2. The instructor presents material in an understandable way.

 

“Absolutely, her points in class are so clear.”

“Material not always clear.”

“Always breaks it down to our level and makes us think.”

“Sometimes the readings are above our level and very difficult.”

 

My response: Stretch…or die.

 

“”Sometimes she sort of told stories.”

“Good stories and tangents.”

“Has stories which relate to material and engages students.”

“Gets way off on tangents.”

“The tangents are the best.”

“A lot of things are taught that don’t deal with the class.”

 

My response: Sometimes the most important lesson is in the tangent. Or the tangent from a tangent. Or the tangent from that one.

 

“Gives an objective point of view on every topic discussed.”

“Does a good job of approaching subject academically.”

“Presents a biased view.”

 

My response: “What you see depends upon where you stand.” Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza

 

3. The instructor encourages students to express themselves.

 

“Discussion and questions all the time.”

“Yes! This is a great class for thinking out loud.”

“Love the ‘Milk and Cookies Controversy Days!’”

“This class encourages discussion more so than any other religious studies class  I have taken.”

“It’s refreshing not to have to inhibit oneself and one’s ideas.”

“Love the Kazoos!”

“Even though it was 8 AM.”

 

My response: Well, most seemed to be in agreement on this one but…

 

“Encourages feminist perspective, but does not embrace the male perspective in religion.”

 

My response: No comment.

 

I once had a student tell me that in a Philosophy class a young man was attempting to offer a response to the philosophy of one particular thinker and the Professor said, “I don’t care what you think.” So much for the Socratic Method.

 

4. The instructor is helpful.

 

“Very approachable.”

“Goes the extra mile.”

“She bends over backward to help her students.”   [Now there’s an image].

“Doire, you completely understand that as a student life is not one-dimensional and I appreciate that.”

 

My response: I always thought it would be hypocritical or, at the very least counter-productive to teach a course on evil and suffering, which emphasizes compassion, and then not be compassionate to students’ issues and needs. There are stories of pain in those classrooms beyond belief.

 

5. The instructor provides constructive evaluation of my work.

 

If a student writes anything in this box the comment usually takes one of two forms; 1) something like “always comments in a helpful way,” 2) “it takes her too long to get work back to us.”  This latter I concede. Every semester I vow not to procrastinate and every semester I do.

 

6. The instructor is an effective teacher.

 

“This class has turned every preconceived idea I had about religion on its head. Thanks Doire.”

“Made me think more about religion in one semester than my 12 previous years of education.”

“Every class is inspiring.”

“She’s my hero!”

“The best I’ve ever had.”

“She is the best teacher at this school. Give her a raise!” 

“She speaks too much about feminism.”

“She rambles and goes off on these really long tangents.”

“Didn’t learn anything.”

 

My response: Nothing?? The kid learned nothing??

Shoot, I learned at least 10 new things, and I'm the teacher!

 

7.  This course stimulates critical thinking.   

[This box is the most important one to me].

 

“All the damn time.”

“I think so hard it hurts.”

“I can’t sleep at night.”

“Oh man, that’s an understatement. This course made me think of life differently.”

“It is a heavy course due to the amount of thinking I do after class.”

“Too much sometimes.”

“I have made so many epistemological leaps in this class it isn’t even funny.”

“Yes. Now how do I turn it off?”

 

My response: They simply crack me up.

 

8. I would give this course a positive rating.

 

“Yes. Makes you look at religion in a different way.”

“Should be a requirement.”

“Incredible.”

“What you thought you knew before, you don’t really know.”

“Enjoyed every minute.”

 

“11,273,489,508 on a scale of 10.”

 

My response: Awwwwwwww... thanks.

Christmas time is here

Happiness and cheer.

Fun for all that children call,

Their favorite time of year.

 

Snowflakes in the air,

Carols everywhere,

Olden times and ancient rhymes

Of love and dreams to share.

                            

                      “Christmas Time is Here,” (Vince Guaraldi-Lee Mendelson)

 

I suppose everyone expects me to launch into a social analysis of Christmas capitalist consumerism, or to attempt to debunk the myth of a young Jewish virgin girl giving birth to a child, but the truth is… I love Christmas. I always have. 

 

Friends and family back in Rhode Island used to (affectionately) call me “the Christmas slut.” It seems a harsh characterization I know, but all it means is that I have no Christmas morals. I shake packages, eat cookies and candy canes off the tree and open presents as they come in not waiting for the 25th to arrive. There are those who maintain strict Christmas ethics and will not, under any circumstances open presents before Christmas Day, and then there are the rest of us, the Christmas sluts. It’s just too exciting and tempting and we Christmas degenerates simply do not have the strength of will to observe such demanding Christmas commandments. When my children were little, I would be the first to awaken Christmas morning and if I grew too impatient waiting for them to arise, I would go into the kitchen and make noise to wake them. What kind of a mother disturbs her children’s sugarplum slumber to satisfy her unquenchable thirst for Christmas surprise? A Christmas slut of a mother, that’s what kind.

 

When I was a child, there was no separating the holiday from the Holy Day. I knew that Christmas was about Jesus and loving him and welcoming him was an integral part of my childhood Christmas ritual; midnight Mass or Christmas morning Mass after the presents had been opened always began with the processional song, “Veni, Veni Emmanuel” (O Come, O Come Emmanuel). It is still my favorite Christmas song. I learned early that “Emmanuel” means “God with us.”

 

And Christmas is ultimately an ancient celebration of the belief of a god who comes to earth, in spite of and despite the season’s modern bastardization. It is an observance of the universal myth of communion of the human with the divine; of earth and heaven joined. It is echoed in the myths of Olympus and Athens united; of Horus, the child of Isis and Osiris (one of the first divine families of three). Even the ancient rituals associated with Bacchus and Dionysus were exploited as justification for orgy and excessive drink. And the Romans complained in their missives to Saint Paul that when the new Christians arrived for the agape, the “feast of love,” some of them consumed too much wine and approached the table a bit too tipsy. My French-Canadian uncles were simply echoing the traditions of the ancient Christians when they went to midnight Mass after having consumed screwdrivers and a keg of beer amongst themselves, consequently singing “Joy to the World!” with a bit too much joy. There is nothing new under the sun. 

 

I love Christmas trees that sparkle with lights. And Christmas carols that move me in tender remembrance of the child I once was who thought that the baby Jesus was just the sweetest present ever. I love sugar cookies and vintage glass Christmas balls that must be handled carefully lest they crash to the floor and splinter into shards so small one finds traces of them in July. I love wrapping presents while watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” for the umpteenth time. I always, always cry when Donna Reed is on the phone with Sam Wainwright and Jimmy Stewart is so close to her he can smell her hair and he grabs her, the phone crashing to the floor and they hug and kiss in tears and desperation (sigh).

 

Doire Christmas tangent: When analyzed theologically of course, the whole premise behind “It’s a Wonderful Life” is false. According to Catholic tradition God only made a  certain amount of angels at  the creation of the universe and that’s all there’s ever going to be. One cannot become an angel. There will never be any more angels, so the whole story line of Clarence and the bell ringing when an angel gets its wings is counter to doctrinal angelology. When one dies one can join the communion of saints, but not the heavenly host of angels.

 

Doire Christmas tangent II: In Catholic angelology there is a hierarchy of angels (of course there is) comprised of seven types of angels on a scale of most illustrious to least. At the top of the list are the Seraphim, those gigantic Amazonian angels with powers we cannot begin to imagine. Second, are the Cherubim who stand at the gates of Eden with "a sword flaming and turning to guard the tree of life." At the bottom of the list are “Ordinary Angels,” which to me frankly, seems an oxymoron.

 

I love Christmas cards and packages; Christmas fudge and candy canes.

I love funny little Santa figurines and golden snow globes.

I love to find surprising presents to give to the people I love.

I enter into the season with joy and good intention.

 

And now, if you'll excuse me, this little Christmas slut has presents to open early…

Pepere: Part II

French was the language of my childhood. My parents and grandparents spoke the French-Canadian version of French, which is somewhat different from French French. Take for example, the word for vomit. No really, there’s a story behind my choice of that particular example (of course there is). When I was five years old I had to spend the night in the local hospital to have my tonsils removed. It was the first time I’d spent a night away from home and it was very scary. I had a dream that night that I vomited all over myself in my hospital bed. I woke up, thinking there was vomit everywhere. But I didn’t know the English word for “vomit,” only the weird French-Canadian one, so I began to scream, “Je renweille! Je renweille!” (The real French phrase would have been “Je vomite.” MY word is so NOT a French word that I don’t even know how to spell it and can’t even check a French-English dictionary, but I pronounced it “RANH-WAY-EH.”). The nurse of course had NO idea what I was screaming, which made her agitated, which made me more scared. When I finally looked around and saw no vomit, I calmed down.

 

I understood every single thing my grandfather ever spoke to me in French. There’s something about Grandfather French that lends itself easily to translation.

 

Pepere loved to play cards. Oh, how he loved to play cards. When he sat at the kitchen table to play he wore a green-tinted sun visor (to keep the light’s glare off the cards?) and little garters to keep his long sleeves at elbow length. His favorite game was pinochle but that was so complicated for children to play that when he played cards with my cousin Ronnie and I, we played Cribbage. He made his own Cribbage boards in the basement. Every Sunday night my aunts and uncles would gather around my grandfather’s table and they would play marathon games of cards, my grandmother sitting staunchly aside, Uncle Norm every so often lending her a glance at his  hand.

 

My grandfather allowed me to make his cigarettes with a little machine that had the word "Laredo" stamped across the front. He bought me ice cream on a stick. We walked to the neighborhood store and he bought 2 FudgeSicles or 2 Ice Milks and we sat in the backyard on the wooden bench that he’d made. He always did the same thing with his wrapper. When his ice cream was finished, he’d insert the stick in the paper and twist the wrapper tightly around the stick. It was the way it should be done, so I did it that way too.

 

I was 11 years old and in the sixth grade when he died on a beautiful June day. My tender age and my intense love for him probably contributed to its remaining the most sharply painful experience of my life. I don’t know how else to explain it. My father’s death surely was the greatest loss, but the first cut is the deepest I suppose and so my grandfather’s death was the cruelest. I was inconsolable. Walking out of Saint Agatha’s Church on the day of his funeral I remember sobbing from such a deep place within me, I couldn’t catch my breath.

 

A few days later, back in school, my sixth grade class was assembled on the steps of the auditorium stage to practice singing our songs for the end-of-the-year concert. I remember only that we were singing a song about a man flying an airplane in the clouds. Something about the man or the music or the moment reminded me of my Pepere and I began to cry again. My teacher didn’t know what was wrong. She pulled me out of the row and asked. Through my sobs I barely managed to say the words, “My grandfather died.” She walked me to the Nurse’s office. The Nurse was told why I was crying. She put her arm around me, led me to a cot and allowed me to lie down and rest. I fell asleep and dreamed of clouds and of men flying.

Yankee Speak

Oh man. Now I've done it. Yesterday at Starbucks when calling a drink order I said, "Vaniller Latte." I'm never going to live it down. All morning my co-workers were saying "vaniller." I  must have been very tired because usually I am on my guahd. This is almost as bad as the time I was filling out a job application and spelled "Harvard" the way I say it. Yeah... try convincing a potential employer that you have a Masters degree from Hahvard when you can't spell it... I was hired, but they never let me forget it.

Pepere

Last week I made a tortiere for the department holiday luncheon. A tortiere is the traditional French-Canadian Christmas meat pie. On Christmas Eve (Reveillon), French-Canadians would attend midnight Mass, come home and gather to eat tortieres, drink beer and open presents. When I make a tortiere the smells take me back to the nostalgic place of childhood; of seeing the world from a stature so small everything is wondrous and big.

 

My grandfather was born in Quebec at the end of the 19th century. His family moved to Rhode Island when he was just a baby. He played semi-pro baseball (second base), hated “I Love Lucy,” followed the Red Sox, made his own cigarettes and loved me. I grew up in an environment one doesn’t too often find these days. My grandfather owned a “tenement house” in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Each of the four apartments was occupied by members of my family. My grandparents lived “first floor front,” my family lived “first-floor rear.” In the second floor apartments were two sets of aunts and uncles and their children. There were eleven cousins in the house. In the apartment just above ours my aunt and uncle lived with six children. These apartments had four rooms. I never heard any noise. My mother tells a different story. My brothers held a grudge for a very long time and reminded me repeatedly that because I was born they lost their living room. One set of parents, two sons and a daughter required three bedrooms. In a four room apartment that meant three bedrooms and a kitchen.

 

When I was very little some of my cousins were already teenagers and they taught me how to dance the Frug and the Mashed Potato. My  cousin Susie would tell me about the latest in her seemingly endless string of boyfriends and dreamy-eyed, she would sing “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore” for the current one lucky enough to bear that name. My three oldest male cousins would come downstairs so that my mother could alter the hem on a new pair of pants they needed for that evening’s date. They were very handsome and played musical instruments. They successively all joined the Navy and when they came home they wore their white or navy blue bell-bottomed sailor uniforms, the little white sailor cap worn cockily to the side. Women swooned. My cousin Michelle, just a few years older than I told me about sex and destroyed my belief in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. She was a dare devil and the rebel of the house, and my hero.

 

But for me, the figure in the house that loomed the largest was my grandfather Samuel, my “Pepere.” My grandfather was a “machinist.” I still don’t know what that means. I don’t know if he operated machinery in the textile factories that were the economic foundation of Woonsocket, or if he repaired them. I do know that because he was a “machinist” he always had work, even during The Depression. I was the youngest of the grandchildren living in the house and when he retired I was not yet in school. He was home. I was home. I was his shadow.

 

My family’s apartment and my grandparent’s apartment were separated by a narrow hallway. I pattered across that hallway so early in the morning that I'd still be wearing my pajamas and I watched him while he made his breakfast. I don’t even think I knocked. Pepere ate the same thing every morning of his life and it was so gross, I never took a bite. I think he offered a little to me every now and then just so he could see the look of terror on my face at the prospect of actually taking a spoonful. First, he filled a bowl with Wheaties and added the milk. Then he cracked a raw egg over the cereal and placed the bowl at the back of the stove to warm. Now mind you, the egg wouldn’t cook. He allowed the mixture to sit, which meant that the egg white oozed through the eventual soggy mess. And then he ate; egg white and yolk and Wheaties dripping from the spoon. In the winter my grandmother always had a big pot of oatmeal cooking on the stove and I ate that, but not in the usual way of course. I’d spoon big dollops of the cooked cereal on the corners of my buttered toast and eat the gook-smeared toast with my greedy little hands. It is a comfort food for me, even now.  When I am sick I make oatmeal and toast and spoon the oatmeal on the bread; it makes a precarious journey from bowl to mouth, the oatmeal so heavy on the toast, the bread is always on the verge of limping over.

 

My grandfather played the harmonica, the piano and the mouth bow. The latter a marvel to be sure and I recognized the sound years later when I heard the boing-boing of it on a Buffy Sainte-Marie album. I think the only time he lost patience with me was when he tried to teach me the piano. Day after day I just couldn’t get it. He resorted to applying little Scotch-taped letters to the keys to help me along but to no avail. And rather than risk furthering his frustration, I quit.

 

He had a wood-working shop in the basement and he gave me little chores to do, like sanding or varnishing. I had a little sterling silver charm bracelet with filigreed charms of Catholic saints, a gift from a pious aunt. Because of my love for Church (not the aunt), it was my most precious possession. One day my grandfather presented me with a new charm. He had carved a basket from a peach stone, varnished it ‘til it shone and attached a little silver ring to the miniature handle so that I could add it to my bracelet. After his death, I lost the bracelet on the street, in the snow and when the snow melted I searched and searched into spring. Up and down the street, again and again I walked with my back bent, eyes to the ground.

I never found it and I was heartbroken.

 

I know that every child likes to think they were the favored child of an important adult in their lives. But I really was my grandfather’s. My mother said so. To everyone else he appeared gruff and grumpy. He lost his temper at the never ending parade of cousins and friends on the front porch, despite his bellowing, “Get off the piazza!” I don’t know why French-Canadians would call a porch a piazza. It hardly seems like a French word to me. We heard his profanities, muttered in French when he found orange peels under the piazza.  My little girlfriends were afraid of him. I thought they were silly. Towards me, except for the short-lived piano tutorial, (and even then, he’d walk out of the room rather than speak a hurtful word), he was never anything but gentle and loving.

 

To be continued…

 

Early Morning Ramblings

I think I suffer from some weird form of insomnia (but then, what other kind would I have?). I have no trouble getting to sleep, but I awaken at an ungodly hour (like 4:00AM) and then cannot fall back to sleep. So this morning, I found myself sipping coffee at 4:30, listening to Christmas carols and writing...

 

** In the past week or so a travesty of justice has been committed. And I won’t be speaking here of war, disease, genocide or poverty. I have expounded on those global realities of evil often enough in these blog entries. No, this is not a universal injustice. It is, some might judge, a trivial one but I am compelled to speak of it. Bob Dylan’s Modern Times has not been nominated for a Grammy Award in the categories of Album of the Year, Record of the Year, or Song of the Year. He has been nominated for three Grammys in less prestigious categories; Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album (Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album??), Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance (well, make up your minds. Is it folk or is it rock?), and Best Rock Song (Someday Baby, which is actually my personal favorite from the album…why do we still call them “albums?”).

 

Regarding the nomination for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance I would snub my nose at those who make no secret of telling me that they think Bob Dylan “can’t sing.” Screw you.

 

By way of protest this week I have been playing Modern Times at Starbucks during every shift I have worked and I have sported my Bob Dylan denim jacket. I mentioned the gross insult which has been hurled at the best damn album of the year to a colleague this week at which point he  said, “Hasn’t Bob Dylan had enough recognition?”  Huh?  What’s THAT got to do with anything?  When did Muhammad Ali get enough? When did Bach get enough? Hasn't Albert Einstein received his due? Shouldn’t each achievement be judged on its own merit? Shoot, if “enough recognition” is the criteria for no more recognition than maybe we need to stop talking about how great Jesus was.

 

OK…Ok… I’m finished now. Who cares about the Grammys anyway? I just don’t like it when Bob is underappreciated.

 

** Final exams have been graded. Final grades have been submitted to the Registrar’s Office and I am now officially on “Christmas” vacation. And yet, I cannot stop thinking about something a student wrote in a paper. My Intro to World Religions classes had a choice of four topics on which to write their final paper. One of the topics was to “choose a religious tradition we have studied this semester and write a paper that describes how that tradition addresses the ‘human condition.’  Consider the following questions in your essay:                                                              

* What does the tradition assume concerning the self, human nature, and human freedom, e.g., about the  human capacity to know truth or the “good” and to do it?  What problems do you see with these assumptions?

* How are the tradition’s concepts of deity or ultimate reality reflected in the ultimate resolution, i.e., its account of salvation or enlightenment? What IS the solution according to the tradition?

* How does the tradition describe the human condition and what does it present as the fundamental, or root cause?”

 

One of the students chose Christianity. In the body of his paper, he wrote this sentence, “However, to be good is not the point of Christianity.” In the margin I wrote, “How unfortunate.”

 

I should know better by now, but it was a stunning remark. I marveled at how a person could be raised a Christian (which he admitted) and walk away from 20 years of Christian education without a sense that Christianity entails ethical teachings and obligations. Perhaps it is because I was raised a Catholic and it was made abundantly clear to me even as a child, that central to the commitment of being a Christian are the mandates to love, to be charitable, to be virtuous, generous, self-sacrificing and concerned enough about the suffering of others to extend a hand to alleviate it.

 

So, what did he say was “the point of Christianity?” Why, salvation of course. But of course! Set your sights on the prize of the afterlife and to hell with the world down here. Who cares as  long as I am  saved?

 

And by what means is one saved?

 

Good ole’ Martin Luther… He won his place in history when he nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg chapel in the 16th century and thus launched the Protestant  Reformation. With all due humility (ok, maybe not so much), I charge that he made a grave error when he asserted that salvation is achieved through faith alone. “Justification by faith, not works.” Under this system (evidently) all one need do is declare, “I believe” and eternal salvation is won. So, why give a flying #@*! about anything or anyone else, except for those one would tend to love anyway as a result of being human and of having a family and friends?

 

This is the kind of Christianity that views Jesus of Nazareth primarily in terms of the spiritual salvation he brought to humanity rather than the ethical model for living he exemplified. The focus is on his death, not his life. The imperative is to declare the ascending Jesus rather than the earthly Jesus who sought justice. Liberation theology (all of them) has its roots in the work of the Jesuit priests who lived with the poor in Latin America. They asserted a theology "from the bottom up," i.e., God leans on the side of the poor rather than the triumphant. The liberation theologians thought that theology is useless if it isn't on the ground. And theology as a project is empty if it doesn't lead to justice.

 

In Hinduism and Buddhism one must work towards one’s liberation from Samsara, or for one’s Enlightenment. Imagine  how Buddhist practice would change if all one need do to attain nirvana is to accept the Buddha into one’s heart and declare him an Enlightened Being. I suspect the Noble Eightfold Path would quickly fall into disuse.

 

OK, admittedly I have oversimplified the analysis. And yet, that student’s remark was indeed astonishing to me and perhaps poignantly representative of the underlying theological and (non) ethical imperative of American Christianity today.

 

** one more thing to tell. A friend and I went for a pizza the other night. On the wall of the little pizzeria is a reproduction of DaVinci's The Last Supper. My friend asked, "Why are the disciples all facing the same way?" I said, "Because the TV is on the opposite wall."