Evaluating my evaluations

This morning, the big white, whirring garbage truck hoisted our blue recycling bin off the driveway and dumped its contents into the cavernous bed.

The truck's compactor then unceremoniously squashed 24 years of student evaluations of my teaching into illegibility.

I stopped teaching last year but I continued to horde away in the basement my college course evaluations from as far back as 1986. Somewhere in the basement may be ratings from an even earlier teaching stint in the late Sixties and Seventies.

When I find them, they’ll go curbside too.

Why did I keep those dozens of envelopes, one for each and every class I have ever taught?

At one point I thought they might help me get a job. To a hiring committee, I might say, but never did, “Here, sort through this box and pick a course at random. Let my students do the talking.”

Maybe I kept them because I remember how I’d expectantly wait to get the evaluations back from the dean. He always got first crack at them and then would seal them in a big security envelope. My feeling while tearing it open was similar to the anticipation I had as a student when my grades came in the mail. Two As, two Bs and a C — or some such.

For me my “grades” from my students were check-mark rankings from “among the very best” to “among the very worst.” A simple check in a box summarized ten weeks of “having” me.

Most of the time I was “very good” to “good” with a rare — GLORY BE! — “among the very best.”

Occasionally I’d get a student who was, as they say, a “bad fit.” I would conclude that we were, forced to be together, “among the very worst.”

It happens.

I remember one who reported that my “teaching style” didn’t fit with her “learning style.” I had utterly and insensitively failed to “adjust,” she noted. I confess, I was late to get with the whole “learning styles” issue. I’m sure I never mastered it. The good news is that the other students didn’t seem to have a problem with me, stylistically.

Perhaps they adjusted.

The majority of written comments, like he check marks, were quite positive. As of this morning's garbage collection, I am not longer capable of quoting from them ... and that’s okay. You’re going to have to trust me — not that it really matters.

After my retirement, I think I kept the evaluations just in case I needed to be reminded that my teaching was not just good, but worthwhile. The classes made a difference and some students said so, sometimes glowingly.

As it turns out, I haven’t needed the reminder. I never looked at the evaluations after my first eager-anxious reading. I’m still in touch with a few of my students. I’m proud of them. They are the best “evaluations” a teacher can have.

Since the evaluations were trucked off this morning, I have had no regrets. If anything, it’s good to be rid of those envelopes. To know the paper will be recycled and that our basement is one box less cluttered with the useless relics of a useful life.

A Retro Recommendation

Portland Community College did a thoughtful thing as the spring term began. Sylvania Campus president Linda Gerber sent us copies of comments that students filled out when asked by advisers and counselors, “Do you have a GREAT TEACHER (sic) you’d like to recommend to other PCC students?”

The good news is that I had a student who recommended me.

“Savvy,” the student wrote. “Challenges students’ perceptions about media and gets them to utilize critical thinking more skillfully. I loved being in his class. Like I got smarter every day I showed up...”

Ah the joy of reading that!

Now the not-so-good news.

One: I retired at the end of last term. The recommendation is for naught.

Two: The student took my class in the winter of 2006. In media terms, that’s an eon ago, which is one of the reasons I retired.

The media rapids run so fast that this teacher had to pull hard just to keep from being swept under. Just when I'd learned to navigate blogging, I'd be swamped by Twitter or Facebook or “sexting.”

Students, on the other hand, ride media white water like seasoned rafters. They grew up on these rapids.

Look at me. I still read the newspaper (two actually). How 20th Century!

And unlike some of my students last term, I’m adamant that Oprah and Rush are NOT journalists.

Edward R. WHO?

So my former student’s recommendation is a curious artifact. I hope my admirer is still getting “smarter” about media. I always tried to teach my students how to learn without my gentle prodding and probing. I wanted them to prod and probe themselves.

Now I’m doing that with me.

I’m the one trying to “get smarter” — at least every day I show up.

A Parting Shot

It’s looking as though my class this Thursday will be my last. No, not for the term, but for life.

Which raises the prospect of giving the proverbial “last lecture” in my “Writing for the Media” class.

I’m inclined to not let my students know that on Thursday I will have run a far longer course than the one they have been enrolled in.

Still, looking back over the years I’ve taught, I wonder just how many classes I’ve presided over since my earliest classroom assignment in western Kenya, not far from Barack Obama’s father’s village. I was in the first Peace Corps teaching program in Kenya back in 1965. The East African country was itself a mere two years old.

My math tells me I've been 45 years, on and off, between classroom and newsroom. I've literally taught thousands of classes.

Could it be?

I wish they kept “teaching stats” the way they do with baseball. I wonder what my lifetime “earned teaching average” was. Or my “strike outs” per times at the lectern. I can remember a few grand slams. A smattering of doubles. I may have stolen a base or two in my heyday. And, alas, I've had my slumps and my errors.

The demise of journalism in recent years and the on-line information diets of my students have kept me nimble. In today’s class, not a single student could name Oregon’s two U.S. senators. How strange it must seemed to them that I even thought the information was important for them to know.

I don’t know why I should say anything different on Thursday than I’ve been saying in recent years. The students in this class have no reason to see Thursday’s class as having any particular significance. No more than the names of Oregon’s two senators.

In truth, I won’t really be ending my teaching. I’ve learned to teach both in and out of class. That comes with being a journalist. I concluded some time ago that journalists are teachers. If anything, reader-students are more demanding than those in the classroom. That’s probably because journalists have to anticipate reader demands. They aren’t staring us in the face. There are no hands raised to be called on.

So I’ll continue to write — and hence teach.

I’ve enjoyed classroom teaching. I like the give and take. The theater. The stage. Reading faces for signs of learning or evidence of uncertainty or an opening for a laugh together. I’ve stayed in touch with quite a few of my students. Amazingly, some of them are retiring themselves. In my early days, when I was teaching journalism at Berkeley, I was only four or five years older than my students. It’s hard to imagine that I had anything worthwhile to share.

Now, if anything, I’m overwhelmed by my experiences. I want to share the satisfaction of accomplishment and the lessons of mistakes. I’ve had my share of both. So will my students. They shouldn’t let either get the better of them. They should learn from them all.

And that, friends, sounds like the makings of — if not a last lecture — a parting shot.

I want my retention bonus ... or else!

I’m trying to figure out this whole “retention bonus” thing that the corporate executives get in anticipation that they might leave for more money.

I’m thinking I might want to angle for my own retention bonus.

I begin teaching a 10-week course Tuesday. I’m thinking that about five weeks into the term, about the time I’ve made myself pretty much indispensable to the students' getting credit for the course, I’ll demand a “retention bonus.”

I’ll pass the hat around the classroom. "Your money or your class credit."

Why don't more folks demand retention bonuses? It seems like a no-brainer.

Why, for instance, don’t flight stewards come down the aisle collecting “retention bonuses” for pilots. The crew may have delivered you to 40,000 feet, but what if they decide they want a little extra to get you down — at least to where you want to go?

How about the plumber's demanding a retention bonus to finish the job? Without the bonus, the plumber could just walk away to another job that pays more.

Who's to say that those corporate executives are any more “indispensable” than the rest of us?

Think about brain surgeons in the middle of a job.

Or bridge builders.

Or soldiers.

Or bus drivers.

Hey, wait a minute, you say.

What about pride in one’s work? The satisfaction from a job well done?

Customer or company loyalty? Commitment to one's students, patients, passengers, nation?

Those are all so NOT what's happening. I mean, aren’t we really all in it for the money?

Today, commitment, loyalty, perseverance now come with a price — the retention bonus.

In the case of the executives, the bonuses are hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars — and they apparently don't even have to ask for the extra money. It's just assumed to be part of the deal. Give 'em the bonuses — or expect to pay the consequences.

Then there's the curious metaphor "golden handcuff," which is what "compensation consultants" (another timely topic) call really big retention bonuses. The handcuff image begs deconstruction—starting with the question: Is a handcuff, even a "golden" one, ever anything more than a handcuff?

Stop!

In the spirit of the subject, I refuse to share any more thoughts about retention bonuses ... until I get one myself.

Sorry, but that’s the way things are.

Journalistic uncertainty

Today I taught my last class of the term, and, as is my custom, I invited questions on anything having to do with journalism.

One caught me flat-footed.

“If you were a student now, would you go into journalism?”

Dramatic pause.

I stared at the floor, looked up and smiled. “I’m not sure what it means to ‘go into journalism’ anymore. It’s not clear what journalism is becoming.”

Nor is it clear what it means to inform, or be informed, at least through journalism.

As a member of the pre-Internet generation, I have some idea of what it once meant. It seems like only yesterday that it had to do with newspapers and magazines and reading. I left it to editors to direct my attention to what was important, and each day I would sidle up to the journalism trough and partake of the news.

Today I don’t see all that much sidling or partaking. In an age of Twitter, blogs and Facebook, I’m not sure whether there is even a particular hunger for the news, at least the news as I understand it.

Gossip, trivia and opinion, yes; but not the news.

What constitutes journalism today? For a few more months, before newspapers vanish entirely, it may still be defined by “the Press” and its editors.

What then?

Like so many others, I believe a new, sustainable journalism model has yet to emerge, and it probably won’t until we are faced with the utter absence of newspapers. At that point, someone, some organization, some foundation or some cooperative will see the need for reliable sources of information on-line. The skills of newspaper reporting will be handed down to on-line journalists.

Alas, how they will be paid remains a mystery.

So, after a false start or two, I told my inquiring student that future journalists must be fully immersed in the changes taking place in communication. They must be flexible and prepared for the next Internet. If journalists are messengers and the medium is the message, then we must be masters of media and not let media master us.

Personally, I’ve had it easy because I am ending my journalism career at the end of a long, stable journalism era. The next generation of journalists will live through many eras thanks to changing technology. That’s a given. And each succeeding era will be shorter.

So the journalist embarking on a career today has a much more complex task than learning how to report and write. The job is more challenging, risky and exciting.

I saw the student who asked the question later in the day and asked him what he plans to do now that he has taken my journalism class.

“I’m thinking of teaching,” he said.

Actually, it was the caterpillar

One of the things I love about teaching is how much I learn — and the surprising ways I learn it.

Near the end of a four-hour class (don't ask) the other night, I had occasion to refer to "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" — wrongly as it turned out.

We had just watched a short episode from John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" documentary, based on his classic book. At one point, Berger stares into the camera and exclaims a tenet of consumerism:

"You are what you have!"

Our discussion about the statement led us to consider Gandhi, who "had" virtually nothing. Who was he?

I speculated that, paradoxically, we was everything he didn't possess. I suggested that what we are left with when we strip ourselves of possessions is the answer to...and here is where I went astray...the Cheshire Cat's sweeping question, "Who are you?"

Whereupon, Amy, attentively taking all this in, gently interjected, "Actually, it was the caterpillar."

Exactly. What a delight to be corrected with such a bizarre assortment of words suddenly and unassumedly dropped into a lofty discussion.

"Actually, it was the caterpillar." I can hear her saying the words as I write them.

They brought me right down to earth, where I belonged — especially after four hours.

Lewis Carroll would have loved it.

As I grow older, I am certain to have many more "actually-it-was-the-caterpillar" moments.

Amy's phrase will help me, actually, grapple with "who" I will have become.

Where public words go

As a journalist, I'm used to having my name in print. So when I become a named source in a story, as I was today, it's no big deal.

I'm pleased to be quoted accurately and in context.

Today's story was about TV Turnoff Week specifically and media's impact generally. It appeared in the Living Section of The Oregonian. Reporter Abby Haight used one thought of mine that the others she talked to apparently didn't make.

I noted how televisions (and all "screens" really) are powerful tools, and how we must use them constructively, not let them use us destructively.

I'm glad I mentioned that, especially if others didn't, and that she included it.

It was a good story.

I have a quibble. I don't describe myself as a "journalism professor," as she did. Generically I suppose that's what I am, at least some of the time. But in the hierarchical world of academia, the title "professor" implies tenure and academic distinction. I have neither.

I teach at Portland Community College from term to term. I have no hold on even my part-time employment. The administration can let me go at any time.

"Tenure" is a funny word. It works two ways. It means you are assured a job—that you have a "hold" on it. But often that security means the job has a hold on you. I have found my lack of tenure to be liberating, both for me and those who have hired me. We can both take it or leave it.

My students generally appreciate my efforts, but professorial "distinction" isn't a word that appears on my end-of-term evaluations. Several students have felt a certain "passion" in my teaching. If true, it is a guilty charge I gladly accept.

This all began as thoughts about a story in today's newspaper. It's hard to know what becomes of such stories. To write for mass audiences or allow yourself to be quoted is a leap of faith that you will touch some unseen reader or readers.

On rare occasions a reader will respond, commenting on the impact of something we have written or been quoted as saying. But for the most part, the writer's printed or speaker's quoted words all become part of the swirling mix of ideas that shape our existence.

And we hope for the best.

Remembrance of an editor, teacher and friend

Dan McDonough died in Longview this morning after a long illness, but, as he told a friend recently, he had led a good, happy life and was ready for the next one.

His life was good for him, and it was good for those of us who knew him and worked with him.

Of all the people who have labored to teach me how to write, Dan was the most demanding and the best.

Dan anchored the copy desk at the Longview Daily News. Fate had placed us at an exceptional, family-owned newspaper at a challenging and exciting time — the era of the massive eruption of nearby Mount St. Helens. The paper won a Pulitzer for its coverage of the eruption and of the long recovery that followed it.

Hardly a sentence went into the proud little paper without Dan's overseeing it, or polishing it or massaging it. Dan reshaped a phrase here, inserted a comma there, and, when need be, demanded that his young reporters rewrite whole sections.

"SEIFERT!" he would bellow across the newsroom for all to hear. I'd drop whatever I was doing and jog up to where he would be staring at a computer screen filled with my flickering prose.

"Seifert," he'd say, "when are you going to learn how to use commas?" He had reached some breaking point, weary of putting in, or taking out, commas in my copy.

Other times he might question a date or the spelling of a name. He seemed to know the correct spelling of every person's name in Cowlitz County.

Sometimes he'd want to shift some buried anecdote or quote to prominence by putting it up near the story's lead. "This is interesting," he'd say, highlighting a paragraph with his cursor. And with the punch of a key, he'd inject, "Put it HERE!"

One day he bellowed out "Seifert!" and I jogged up ready to greet disaster. He looked up at me from the screen and said, "This is just a really great story — and well told. Good job."

Of course I learned as much on that visit to his side as I had on all the others.

Notice that I have used the words "learn" and "teach" in writing about Dan. Great editors are great teachers, although the opposite isn't necessarily true. I've held both jobs in my own life, and I have learned the limitations and potential of both.

And much of what I have learned about each, I learned from Dan.

After I left the Longview Daily News, I would occasionally see Dan at reunions of one kind or another. His Christmas letters were masterful and packed with news. He was 25 years my senior, and when he retired he grew to be a dear, supportive friend to me and many he mentored.

As the years wore on, we realized that Dan always had been a friend.

Kind, caring, funny, candid, wise — Dan had been all we could ask for in an editor; all we could wish for in a friend.