So, I was writing my evaluation of you on the initial sheet you gave to us, and then I discovered that the dinky little lines provided were far too small for me to fully get my message across. As I have a lot to say, I’ll be writing it here instead, because I feel like it, and I don’t really think you’ll mind all that much. Just keep in mind, because there wasn’t exactly any sort of logical thread sorting out all of the criteria listed out on the sheet, I’ll order all of the talking points by my own discretion. I also have no concept of how to “rate” your performance on a scale of ten, particularly when it involves something that’s quite black and white (in that you either had it, or you did not have it), so I would take most of my ratings with a grain of salt. What’ll obviously be more important to you, I’d anticipate, is what I have to say here.
I suppose I should begin by stating what exactly I like to see in a teacher. Generally speaking, professionalism is key, but not in such a way that it affects one’s personality. There are a couple of exemplaries found within our school, always punctual, always percipient, but never personable. It’s always something about their personality that makes them an unlikely candidate for Favorite Teacher. And while it’s true that the importance of a teacher’s popularity pales in comparison to the importance of how well he or she does at his or her job, having a likable personality is, in my perspective, of vast consequence, and the reason for that is quite simple—people are far more receptive towards those who are charismatic, and thus, will be far more willing to listen to and show respect towards what you have to say based on the fact that they don’t view you not as an overpowering authority, but more as a friend, or at least, a colleague. Someone they look forward to meeting during their school day. This means having a generally informal elocution when giving lectures, so as to create a welcoming atmosphere. When talking to a group of adolescents, one’s ability to communicate appropriately with them is paramount. Now, that doesn’t mean teachers should gossip with students every day, taking up class time, or, like, hanging out with them over the weekends, and stuff like that. Because that would be weird. Teachers who have found a balance, however, tend to be the ones I hold in higher regard.
That said, let me just say that I feel like you already know all of this stuff. You know it’s important both to have insight and charisma. Now, the question remains: are you an insightful and charismatic individual, such that a position in teaching would be an ideal vocational outlet for you? I don’t think I need to tell you what the general consensus in the classroom would seem to be, but in my humble opinion, I feel as though—especially in the beginning—that you were struggling a bit to find that aforementioned balance throughout this year. You have improved recently, but due to a number of factors (at least what I was able to surmise), you fell just short of my given ideal. Though your education and level of erudition is impressive, and undeniably so, your main weakness—and many of my peers would agree—lies within your ability to effectively communicate with your students. Now, I have spoken to you, and I’ve seen you converse with others. You seem to have a good enough sense of humor, which is a start, and you’re very aware of the demographic in which you inhabit. You’re witty when you want to be, but stern when you need to be. One big folly, however, seems to be your normal tone of voice. When lecturing, or even giving basic instruction, you can come off quite condescending or patronizing, as though you have a lot of preconceived notions about our behavior or level of responsibility as teenagers. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, though—I don’t think you fully intend to sound condescending. I chalk it up to a sort of lack of a concept of how to properly speak to us. You may intend to sound jocular or even lighthearted; or to create an air of playful exasperation. Though, more often than not, this falls flat, and ends up sounding more like a velar jab at our intelligence or responsibility.
Either way, some would even argue that this passive-aggressive tendency bleeds over to how you grade our speeches, in that you grade them based less on their true merit and more on your own personal biases towards that particular person. I, for one, don’t think this criticism holds much water. I don’t claim to know your grading system one iota, but the notion that you’d specifically give someone a lower grade simply because of some personal vendetta with them seems ludicrous to me, and I give you more credit than that. Others would speculate that you grade every person on individual scales—those who often give an exemplary presentation and have established themselves as a paragon of public speaking are then graded more harshly than those who, in kind terms, clearly do not have a future in any rhetorical affairs. I would suspect that this method is more in line with the truth, and despite the fact that I personally enjoy that type of system, it has indeed stirred up a bit of controversy amongst my peers, and surely you are well aware of that. And to be honest, lately, I’ve discovered a few issues with it as well. For example, I’ve had friends tell me that they would have had a perfectly scored speech, had you not docked them a single point merely for uttering the verbal auxiliary, “uh”.
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Here’s the thing: You can go on about how we should try to avoid “uh”s and “um”s in our speeches. That’s fine. I agree. One point is paltry. But it goes to show how arbitrary your criteria can really be. The speech was worth fifty-one points—which is a random number in it and of itself (personally, I’d consider using a similar style to Mr. Clancy, where the final grade will be out of twenty or thirty, not fifty-one, which is a bit more math you have to do, but it’ll round off arbitrary final scores like “50/51” to “20/20”—clean, simple, gets the message across), but to go out of your way to dock one single point for one extremely basic mundane faux pas—the sort of thing I’d expect only pedantic nitpickers to point out—I don’t know, man. To me, that’s very petty. We shouldn’t be taught to be logistic robots that never say anything that isn’t completely an English word, are perfect in every way, or do anything that would possibly suggest that we’re fallible or human. I find it amazing how big of a deal “uh”s are when you’ve expressed little relative concern over the very salient issue of enunciation. There’s one student in particular that clearly needed much more help than any of us. His main issue is vocal clarity, because you can’t understand a word he’s saying, either because he talks too fast, or attempts to say a word he didn’t bother to look up and can’t say it because he didn’t prepare. You’ve done well in teaching us the importance of preparation, which is excellent, but to be so fixated on little things like verbal auxiliary communicates to me that you have skewed priorities. We’ve re-elected a person who says “uh” perhaps five hundred times in one speech to the highest and most prestigious office position in the United States. I think we can handle hearing it once or twice in our classroom. I would focus more on content delivery—confidence, vocal clarity, enunciation. It’s the first of which that usually tends to destroy people. And no, I don’t believe that saying “uh” a couple of times is the signature of a lack of confidence or preparation. Again, I think it just means we’re human. When we’re saying “uh” three times in every sentence, stumbling over our words and such, then you can justifiably dock some points off.
When it comes to me, and how you’ve rated my speeches, I have no contentions with anything you’ve criticized me for. I feel like they were all fair, and I appreciate that. I do indeed say “like” too much, and leaning on the podium (though I maintain that it creates a casual atmosphere) is perhaps not what you want to be doing when presenting to a larger group of people. Apart from your criticisms, however, I also appreciate your more positive assessments—notably, your reception of the tone I employed during my speech on antinatalism. I was meant to sound somber and serious, like I was half-regretting what I was saying, but ultimately, it had to be done. I was worried that you were going to interpret that poorly, saying it signified my supposed lack of preparedness, but no, you were able to recognize exactly what I was going for. When talking about something like that, I felt like tone was the only thing I really had to really focus on, because I’m dealing with a philosophy that contradicts a large part of what people strive to be in our zeitgeist. I’m just glad that aspect didn’t fall under your notice, let alone it being “perfect”. You do indeed tend to focus on the negative aspects (which I like, but I don’t know if that’s generally recommended), and only a sparse few times do I remember seeing a positive statement being made about any of my speeches. So to see that you’re at least capable of recognizing both the good and the bad, without being pandering or discouraging, was quite refreshing. Not a lot of teachers here can really find a good balance between that. They either coddle you or dismiss you. In your class, no one gets special treatment. But that’s a double-edged sword, of course, as some people clearly need more help, but I’ve already went into that.
