As is the case at the end of any grading period, I had my students write anonymous evaluations of my 11th and 12th grade English classes after they completed their final. Not that it’s an exactly innovative notion, but I am generally interested in redesigning and shaping my class around what my students see as being successful for their needs. The exact prompt students were asked to respond to was as follows:

Evaluation: This is the end of your 2nd mester of English, you will not have any more English classes this year. Please write down what you think could be most improved about this class for future students. What do you think was least helpful in your development as a reader, writer, and critical thinker? What do you think was most interesting or most helpful? How can Mr. Garcia be a better teacher? Do you have anything else you would like to say? Please do not put your name on this evaluation.

I continue to struggle with trying to come up with a way to get students to be harsher in their criticism. I generally get positive affirmations about how students liked the class, my teaching style, or the curricula used. The problem is I don’t really need to hear these comments; sure, they’re nice, but they don’t help me improve. Perhaps most frightening with this semester’s batch of evaluations is the number of students that reiterate the following basic idea:

“…I think that you already are a good teacher and do not have anything you need to improve. I think the people who need to change are the students…”

Much of my class revolves around decisions: students choose to focus on their work, to push themselves, to turn in their myriad writing assignments on time. So many of my students wrote their reflections about how their classmates are not holding themselves accountable or up to the expectations delineated in the class goals. To me, when I a student is not succeeding in class, I (as I’d guess many other teachers would) take the lack of success personally – I am not able to connect with the student or find a way for this student to make the decision to engage in class work.

Not to get too righteous here, but the students in my class have been denied access to the kinds of educational opportunities that other public school children have received for far too long. It’s evident that this kind of hidden curriculum is so deeply engrained in our students’ psyche when the onus of blame is seen as that of one’s classmates than on the educator. That is, I should be the one scrutinized, criticized, and lambasted if a student is not performing as expected – not the student in the class conspicuously trying to text message a friend.