Good teachers = happy students.
Bad teachers = unhappy students.
Bad teachers-you may have had one.
A class where snoring, drooling, and yawning is the main course may be an indicator of a bad professor.
On campus, students struggle with professors and grades but rarely realize the rights that entitle them to be treated fairly and with respect. If you have a problem with a professor, it is important to address it early on, rather than later.
If you currently have a bad professor, what do you do?
First, evaluate your professor.
Does your professor treat students fairly?
Does your professor show respect to students?
Does your professor make you feel comfortable?
If you said no to any of these questions, then you may consider finding another teacher. It may be personality clashes or that the work load is too much. The point is, if you don’t like your professor, chances are the outcome will be a bad experience or a bad grade in the course.
Second, change your professor.
You are not stuck with a bad professor. Look at your schedule. Find a professor you like and change out of the class. Make sure to know all deadlines are for withdrawal. This semester the deadline to drop and not have it show on your transcript and get a full refund is January 28.
Third, work with your professor.
During the semester things come up. Personal issues and situations make things hard. Work with your professor; respect him or her and his or her class regulations.
While students are probably the ones slacking or avoiding confrontation, teachers are the ones who give out grades. Respect your teachers as you would like to be respected in return.
Fourth, know who to talk to.
If there seem to be no solutions to the problems you have with a professor, talk with the Ombuds office, located in the Student Center across from Scoops in room SC 107, if they don’t have a solution they can at least direct you to someone who does.
Fifth, know your rights.
Many students don’t know their rights.
For example, the UVU Student Code of Conduct, article five, says you have freedom from discriminatory and an offensive environment that may cause emotional stress or a hostile campus environment; this is not generally known to students.
Understanding the need to know these rights, Clay U. Chivers, Director of Judicial Affairs and dispute resolution said, “What we need [on campus] is a strong student advocate. What I do and what ombuds do is maintains the confidentiality and neutrality for the students but this school needs more. We need a strong student advocate.”
Whether a teacher annoys you, makes you fall asleep, or disrespects you, you need to work with them. The truth is, teachers are our friends and they decide whether we get a good grade or not.
I am glad that you brought up the rights that students have. I thought that this article was excellent. I do have one suggestion, however. In future articles, it might be good to place less emphasis on feelings and more on facts. Just because a student may feel disrespected does not necessarily make it true. It may very well turn out to be true that the student is being disrespected, but it is just as easy to imagine professors or classmates to be hostile or intimidating, despite the reality that most of them are anything but that.
The part of the article that particularly caught my attention as to the emphasis on emotion rather than facts was this:
“For example, the UVU Student Code of Conduct, article five, says you have freedom from discriminatory and an offensive environment that may cause emotional stress or a hostile campus environment; this is not generally known to students.”
Sometimes students must step outside of their comfort zone in order to meet new people, learn new subjects, and gain important experience for later in life. Worrying too much about the mere possibility of offense or emotional stress may very well prevent students from improving in such ways. I do not think that students should put themselves in danger, I am just saying that life is not always comfortable, and that can be to our benefit sometimes, for through adversity we learn many things.