In my previous post, I mentioned a student survey that I’d recently seen some results from. This survey was only among the elementary students, which is a fairly small group for me since my schedule is more weighted toward the middle-schoolers these days. I actually only have about 20 elementary kids, currently, scattered in half a dozen quite small classes. This survey represents 14 of them.
I might talk about the numerical results at a later point. The two things that jumped out at me were a) my highest scores were for having a “fun / interesting” class (second row), and b) there are 2 students who, apparently, would definitely not recommend me as a teacher to their friends (last row, far right box).
What I wanted to focus on here were the 5 free-form comments at the bottom. These are mostly amusing – there is, in fact, only one comment that is serious, and from its content I already know which student wrote it: she is complaining that I don’t return graded essays for the advanced TOEFL writing class in a timely manner. In that, I’m guilty as charged.
Here is a close-up of the comments.
Here is my transcription, with rough translations.
숙제 내주지 마세요.
Please don’t give homework.
한국어로 말해주세요.
Please speak in Korean.
원숭이 세척 자주 좀
clean the monkey a little
좀스피킹 좀 재미있게 해요. 그리고 Writing 검사를 제대로 해주세요.
Speaking is a little bit fun. But please check writing more thoroughly.
원숭이를 깨끗하게 써주세요.
Please administer cleaning to the monkey.
Two of the five comments received were that my monkey needed to be cleaned. My “monkey” is the Minneapolitan Rainbow Monkey (who goes by the name “Dinner” which is a reference to his relationship with the alligator), which has been mentioned previously in this blog. I took him home last weekend and let him go on a ride in the washing machine, so he’s cleaner now. But I perhaps should make that a weekly custom – he lands on the floor a lot.
