Parental phone calls: The new normal?

So, teaching assistants, instructors, professors, parents of blogger and twitter, what say you on this topic?

My colleagues and I have noticed that especially recently, parental phone calls are more numerous than ever.  What's more, parents often call without the knowledge of their students.  Why?  I just can't fathom this.  It doesn't do any good, of course. What is the point?

The first phone call I received from a parent was back in 2011.  It was the Spring semester and I was the only TA for a course on American civil liberties.  I had to grade a TON of papers and tests for 75 students.  It was a harrowing semester to say the least but it was the first time I actually dug into dealing with students one-on-one to improve their writing which was actually really satisfying.

My office phone rings and I look over at it.  Who the hell is calling?  During this time, I worked in a dark, dank office in the attic of what USED to be the psych ward of the university hospital.  I have no windows and asbestos tile on all things.  The phone ringing for the first time in EVER was creepy as all get out.  It seemed like the start of a bad horror movie, but I picked it up.  On the other end was an irate parent who kept calling me "professor" when I kept correcting her.  She was calling in regards to a student who had a good grade in the class but she insisted the grade for the student should have been higher.  I told her that I couldn't discuss any specifics but then she said "SHE KNOWS THINGS! HER FATHER IS A DIPLOMAT!"  Uh, okay?  She clearly didn't understand political science subfields at all but more than that, lady was calling without the knowledge of her kid.  I found this out a day later when I talked to her student in class.  I asked the student if she wanted to discuss things.  She was confused.  I explained the conversation and then the student got red in the face.  I found out that she was mortified.  Her mother had called because of her own personal insecurities about the child's grades.  The student was happy with her grade.

The student told me, "I didn't work hard enough to earn an A.  That's it.  I'm not complaining" or something to that regard.  She took her "lumps" as minor as they were and moved on.  Mom couldn't cut the cord.

This year has been something else.  Parents have been emailing myself, the professor, and then calling everyone in the teaching staff for this large section.  We can't discuss grade specifics, of course, but today, crazy went to a whole 'nother level.

The situation was similar to that of the above one with one difference: I am now in an office in a building with carpet, no lead paint, and a WINDOW!  I'm not in a basement either (that was last year).  Small victories, eh?  However, due to it being an old building and our powerstrips being limited, someone must have unplugged our office phone because, I mean, who calls it?  Well, a parent wanted to.  Said parent was spamming the phone downstairs and the administrative assistant emailed me.  I called on my cell because the cordless phone had a now-dead battery.  Stupid mistake.  I will now fear FOR DAYS her calling my cell interminably.

So, I call her back to stop her from harassing our office staff.  She gets all huffy, won't tell me her name, her student's name, etc.  She kept saying "I know my rights" and talking over me.  She finally gave me her information and the student's and I again told her I couldn't speak about grades and that we would be happy to assist her student.  I then asked her the one question I always ask now: "Does your student know you are calling?"

The answer was, of course, no.  It more often than not is.  Kids are usually MORTIFIED when they find out that their parents are calling.  I would be, too.

The call ended with no progress being made for her.  All she did was yell at me, insult my Chicago accent, tell me I spoke "incoherently" because of it, and then call me lazy.  Even if I COULD help, I wouldn't have.  Rule number one of getting what you want: don't insult the only person who can help you!

But why do parents call, then?  If it doesn't work?  If they know that we can't give them this information?

I know it's not a completely new phenomenon because when I was in school, there were definitely parents that felt the need to intervene - usually by requesting access to grades on OneStart, the grade, registration, and financial system my undergrad used.  They never had access to online course materials, raw grades, etc.  Just final grades.  And my parents felt that THIS was an imposition into my life.  They didn't ask me to sign the waiver to let them have access and I was always getting good grades.  Even if I hadn't, they figured I would tell them.  It's worked out similarly with my sister who is just now finishing up her undergrad at the same school.

However, today, this parent confessed to me that they have the password for Blackboard, Facebook, and university email accounts for this student.  The university actually forbids parents and others from accessing Blackboard and university email for fear of academic dishonesty and privacy.  When I informed her she was violating FERPA and university policy, she basically just wondered how she could monitor the every move of her kid without it!

The parents my prof and I have dealt with this semester have all been similarly minded - go behind a student's back and demand a grade change at all costs.  When that doesn't work, just insult the living daylights out of whatever human being you are speaking to.

Why?  Is this a new trend?  Is it going to stay this way or do we just have a fluke of a section of this class?

Scholar vs. Academic? Should We Take More Time to Smell the Roses?

David J. Leonard, a Professor at WSU in comparative ethnic studies made a really good point in a recent blog post he wrote entitled "Scholars versus Academics".  I thought his short, succinct post was well-argued as someone currently in-process of getting a PhD.

He argues that the normal constraints put on graduate students and junior faculty are often too much on their own and take away from the bigger picture.  We should be training scholars, after all, not academics.  Scholars, according to Leonard and others, are multidisciplinary and focused on development outside of publishing.  Academics push paper and publish.  That's a problem for some.

Certain responsibilities are bound to take over, of course, and publication will matter even for those on the teaching school market at this point.  You are out there in a sea of newly-minted PhD's and those who have accepted visiting positions that now have even LONGER CV's and more experience than they did the year before.  You have to focus on what sets you apart.  But even before that, graduate students are taxed with a ton of responsibilities that can really hinder their development as scholars.

Think about your first year in grad school.  Here, you are required to hold down a .25 or .50 teaching load or research assistantship (these are rarely given to first year students in my department).  You are focused on working 10 or 20 hours a week on teaching, supposedly.  In most of my assignments, I have worked well over that 20 hours maximum.  So, you have to focus not only on your first year of coursework and possibly proposing some conference papers, but also that teaching load.  And it's only the first time you have likely ever been asked to teach or guide students in this way in your life!

This, I believe is a main problem for a lot of departments - and it's worse in many departments than my own.  I think putting the burden of teaching on fledgling graduate students is unfair to graduate students and it's unfair to undergraduates, as well.  I think back to my time as a green-as-grass first year and shiver about all of the things I did not know.  I learned so much about the discipline, teaching, and subject matter in that first year that I can't even explain it easily.  I worked with both a seasoned and a new professor and took a lot away from that important contrast there.  I think observing teaching and the ways others did it (even if I didn't agree with things or would have done something differently) was a key part of my development.  I have since gone on to teach my own "labs" for an intro methods course which is, arguably, the most time-consuming assignment our department offers to graduate students.  But that was in my 3rd year of school not my first.

Some departments are throwing grad students out to teach their own introductory sections their first semester or second semester - well before they are capable of handling these responsibilities.  A lot of my colleagues complain that we don't get enough teachers training.  I see their point but I also have heard the horror stories of others about being "thrown to the wolves" in other departments.  I think we actually have it pretty good compared to other departments in that regard.  Our department rarely gives students their own labs or sections until year 3 or year 4 of their graduate career.  Most independent sections of classes will wait until a student is ABD.  This is the best thing for ALL involved, in my opinion.

What happens when you are a first year graduate student teaching your own course all on your own?

Bad things.  Your perceptions of what is the reality of teaching, what works, and what you need to do emphasize will probably be off.  You will also likely burn out with little mentoring support.  And, perhaps most disturbingly, your students will suffer.  Maybe some people with a Masters already or some prior teaching experience will handle it well enough but I know I could never have managed it.

Professional development really, really matters.  Having a mentor matters. Watching others teach is an integral part of "growing" as a scholar.  Getting more time to smell the roses is good.

This also concerns field research.  I believe an over-reliance on teaching assistantships makes it difficult for students to pursue qualitative research or case studies.  Here, you want to find your data ASAP, write your dissertation in an "okay" and publishable format (3 journal articles, generally) and get the hell out.  The problem is that lots of problems go unaddressed and you never learn to do field research.  I have been lucky enough to have gotten some opportunities in this area which have helped me smell the roses, meet people from other nations and disciplines, and grow as a scholar AND academic.  Many are not this lucky and my fellowship on top of my teaching assistantship affords me more flexibility.  Most of the students in my program don't have this luxury.

I think there are definite priority problems for PhD students, as I've said above.  Teaching is something you should LEARN to do and should be something you are mentored on.  It's not some sort of sink-or-swim experiment in which you take the lives of unassuming undergraduates in your hands and pray you can survive your semester alive and teach as best you can.  That's not the point of training scholars at any level.  Being a scholar is also about broadening the approach and answering important questions- some which can't be answered by canned data which already exists on ICPSR.  Being too focused on the teaching assistantships offered by the department leads graduate students to either forgo funding and finish their dissertation or forgo answering important questions to save funding.

There is still a great deal which needs to be improved upon.  Nothing is perfect but I count myself as one of the lucky graduate students that HAS received good support in teaching and research from department.  Not everyone is so lucky.

We shouldn't lose track of what makes a scholar a scholar.  If we want to educate a new generation of scholars, we need to create graduate students that broaden their minds and go on to teach a new generation of undergraduates that can also go on to be scholars.  If we lose this goal, we do a disservice to the next generation of thinkers and make ourselves irrelevant.

On Junior Faculty

Ah, junior faculty members.  They are the awkwards of departments in some ways.  It's got to be tough.  You have a "real" job now.  You have grad students to manage.  Some of the grad students are older than you.  You're just trying to become a swan but it's really hard to do because you are on an insane number of random committees that no one cares about.

I have heard some great stories and some horror stories from friends now employed (yay!  hope!) at various institutions.  The first year is the worst I've been told.  It's especially awful if you have a TA and now have to figure out what to do with them.  I have two friends that are at teaching schools who have been teaching a wide variety of courses but at least they are on their own.  They don't have to delegate to us lackeys.

And I know, cry me a river, you have a TA, right?

I'm not so sure.  I guess I will some day know (hopefully if someone gives me a job at the end of this) but for now, I actually feel sympathy for junior faculty.  Especially when it comes to dealing with TA's.  Why?  Well, let me explain.

Today I received my teaching assignment for the fall semester.  I have comprehensives so I asked for the least time-consuming option - an intro to American politics course.  I've TA'ed this before but it was an all essay section.  I had an excellent prof who I asked to work for again, mind you, but a hell of a lot more work than everyone else had to do my first semester - 4 sets of exams with 110 students under my charge.  I asked for a multiple choice section since never since starting here have I had that luxury.  Well, now I do, kinda.  I've been assigned to a visiting prof who got his BA at our school with our department.  He seems like an excellent candidate, has taught this class before, etc.  I'm excited to learn something from him but NOT so excited to have to work in tandem to make up exams as I have just been informed.  I get why the DGS is asking me.  He wants to hand me my own class possibly the following semester.  That's excellent news for me.  It's just annoying because I have a lot on my plate and not all junior faculty "get it".  It makes me nervous.  The first semester is the worst and I am not sure I want to be in the fray again.  I have been told by people who know this prof that he is an excellent guy, very personable, and will fit right in.  Still, it's so old hat to work with faculty that I already know.  I've worked for and with most of them by now.  This is a whole 'nother world and I'm an old person at heart that hates change.  I will no doubt learn a lot, though.  So, I have to just realize this is another learning experience in teaching that I will most certainly appreciate in the end.

I have TA'ed for a first year faculty member once before.  They guy was a great lecturer and he had an excellent rapport with the class.  I learned a lot about what to expect my first year because he did take me under his wing and was a great mentor.  However, he didn't understand workloads well.  I had about 2x's the amount of grading of ANY TA in my second semester of grad school.  The next semester, he knew better and asked to have his class designated writing intensive and got two TA's to do the work that I did myself.  It was hellish in that respect.  He didn't know how much to delegate to me and wasn't sure how to manage me.  I think he gave me too much freedom and let me deal with plagiarism cases in a way that I was uncomfortable having so much power over.  It was hard.  He's definitely changed a lot since then based on what he's told me and other TA's have told me.  He's learned and improved. I think he would be an excellent addition come tenure time and would gladly write a letter on his behalf.  And I am glad I got to see this whole situation over time because it gave me insight into dealing with these situations firsthand.

It HAS to be an awkward situation dealing with graduate students.  I mean, this new guy (from what I have been told by people that know him) is 3 years older than me but judging by his CV, we have a similar amount of teaching experience with similar subject matter.  I believe firmly in a strong chain of command.  I may not always agree with what a prof has a TA do or may not feel that everything is handled perfectly but I do know my place, I know how to speak in turn, and I realize there are 100 ways to skin a cat.  I can imagine that there are TA's that are not like this, though.  Some people seem to want to pull rank.  This really makes no sense to me.  You are a graduate student.  You have no PhD.  Unless you are asked to do something essentially wrong, you should listen to your superior.  This seems  particularly problematic ones that are older and feel wiser.  Even personally I can say I know of one situation that a faculty member told me about which mirrors this.  This was a senior faculty member with a first year grad student, though.  She felt very confident in pulling rank there, obviously.  It's got to be similar to the feeling you felt when you came into grad school and suddenly were teaching students that were pretty much your age.  You have to learn to deal with things as they come and assert that you are in charge.  Never admit that you feel intimidated.

Teaching grad students seems to be a similar quandary.  I am finally at the point where I can confidently think about teaching grad students - but only in stats.  I feel most confident in teaching methods.  The idea of teaching a substantive course still seems far off.  I hope after comps I will feel differently.  Regardless, it's intimidating.  That has to be the worst part.  We had one junior faculty member recently.  This was a wild card class out of my usual subdisciplines but it was relevant to some policy research I'd been doing and I had an open spot.  He is clearly still adjusting to graduate seminars.  The prof was a nice guy, he brought about interesting and new questions about gender and race which I so appreciated, but he sometimes tried to make seminar too much of a democracy.  Another faculty member in his first year of graduate teaching assigned far too much too soon for the first years and ended up frazzled and admitting it WAS too much.

It seems daunting to have all of these challenges on top of tenure woes and various bureaucratic "service" responsibilities.  I worry about this.  I've been told that it "gets better" but only after tenure.  That seems like an impossible dream to dream right now.

To all the junior faculty out there, what say you?  To senior faculty, what was it like?  Does it really just get so much better after tenure?

To all the grad students dealing with it, what have been your experiences with junior faculty?  Similar experiences to mine?  Different?  Better?  Worse?

I'm curious!

Would you talk to your boss that way?

"I deserve an A" was something I heard a lot this semester.  And every semester but this one, in particular, was pretty awful.

Entitlement.  It's a problem I deal with on a daily basis and it's everywhere.  It's not just something common in undergrads.  It's common with people of all ages and Americans, I have found in my travels, are pretty bad offenders.  We have EVERYTHING it would seem and we have a desire to have even more stuff on the spot.  And, for the most part, we can get most things either at the drop of a hat or at the click of a mouse.

I think that's part of the entitlement problem among undergraduates.  As we all know, higher education is more available to students from upper-middle-class  and wealthy families than anyone else.  It's natural that these kids have had more and feel entitled to more.  I hate to say it but I was once one of these kids.  While my parents made me have a job, didn't buy me a car and forced me to ride my bike places, and demanded that I make good grades, I still had relatively well-off parents who were able to pay for the 100 grand that my education must have cost me.  They paid a large part of my costs while I was abroad.  And, to their credit, I graduated with very little debt.  I was lucky.  And before living abroad, I was probably a bit of an entitled snot.  However, despite this, I never backtalked to a TA the way that these undergrads often talk to myself and others.

Just last week, I found a student treating me like I was completely at his beck and call.  He had a paper due on Friday.  He'd known about the due date for WEEKS.  I'd sent 3 emails reminding my classes about this due date - in my box by Friday on class time with .do and .log files attached.  He'd even come to my office hours to clarify a couple of things and said, "I think you'll like the improvements I made when you read it tomorrow."  Yep. Well, he emails me a 10 PM to let me know he can't hand it in because he is going on a leadership retreat and won't be on campus after 7 AM.  I shoot him an email back because it's urgent and say, "Look, I wish you would have told me sooner.  The mailroom doesn't open until 8 and you need to have me a copy."  He then sends me an email saying, "Can you meet me at 6:30 AM?"

Now, this is not a student that has ever been disrespectful.  He's a good kid.  He tries at least.  And I don't think it was intentionally disrespectful but it was just that - disrespectful of my time.  He didn't plan well and suddenly it was MY job to go out of my way?  I don't think so.

On the first draft of this paper, another student sent me a terrible message via email at 10 PM stating that my lack of replying to his email an hour earlier was "unfair" and that he was "disappointed in me".  Excuse me?  I deserve admonishment because you waited until the night before the paper to start it and expected me to respond at 9 PM.  Unbelievable!

In these instances, I often ask and have said in class, "Would you talk to your boss like this?"  I'm in charge of their grade. I'm the leader here, ostensibly. And to talk to me in such a patronizing manner is NOT okay.  I made this clear to dead-eyed stares.

Why do they not "get" it?

Well, I have a couple of theories.  The first is of entitlement which is related to the second theory.  The way they have always gotten a trophy is translating to a situation where they don't "get it".  They were told they could get the job they want right out of school.  They were given whatever they wanted as children.  I was part of this generation in some ways, too.  I'm about 3-5 years older than them - not that much older.  But that A is "deserved". It's not earned.  They are owed it.

The second is that, much like my younger sister, many of them didn't have the opportunities to get part time jobs.  They didn't have an economy that was allowing them to get hired.  And so, many of them didn't get the wonderful experience of working a crappy job for a likely awful boss.  They don't "get" hourly terrible work. A lot of them are journalism students or intern at the statehouse and these jobs are what some would consider "dream jobs" for an undergrad.  The journalism school and our department are GREAT at placing students and getting them real-world experience - much better than my undergrad.  This is super important and admirable.

However, they get jobs that are "fun" this way.  And a lot of them work about 10 hours a week in a situation they elect to be in. I have no doubt that they do not backtalk to supervisors but, in general, their jobs are "fun".  I think they just have trouble "getting it".

I fear for those going on the job market this way.  Have we prepared them for the "real world"?  I don't think so.  Work is a four-letter word.  Sometimes it sucks.  Sometimes you want to scream at your boss or get all passive-aggressive but you can't because you need to pay the bills.  And, sometimes your boss is riding you because they are right and they know you have the goods to deliver but you need a "push".  I am not sure we are teaching them that.

Not all students act like this.  Some are amazing, motivated, inspiring, and the nicest kids to work with.  It's the few that make me want to beat my head against a wall on a regular basis that I am talking about.  Most of my kids are awesome.