Master teacher

A few years ago, when reading up about Boris Pasternak, I was delighted with the way he had phrased the statement declining the Nobel Prize (under pressure from the bastard Soviet overlords.)  Pasternak's statement, in a telegram to Swedish Academy, was this:

Considering the meaning this award has been given in the society to which I belong, I must reject this undeserved prize which has been presented to me. Please do not receive my voluntary rejection with displeasure.

I found that statement to be so awesomely phrased.  It was even better than Groucho Marx's line on why he did not like being a member of clubs: “I wouldn't want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.”

I liked Pasternak's statement so much that I decided that if ever I was even remotely considered for a teaching award at my university, well, all I would do in my reply was to quote the Russian ;)

The "best teacher" awards at most places are variations of a popularity contest.  Increasingly so in the students-are-our-customers atmosphere that now envelops higher education.  There's no "business" like higher education.  I, on the other hand, do not care for popularity, whether it is with students or colleagues, or with blog commenters or neighbors, or whoever.  Which is why, sadly enough, I will never get an opportunity to use Pasternak's lines! ;)

Identifying the teacher of the year, or other such awards, is "bunk" (paywalled):

How does any professor, let alone a panel of judges, really know what goes on in another professor’s class? Longstanding academic convention dictates that we rarely cross the threshold of a colleague’s classroom. We are seldom invited to one another’s lectures and seminars. It goes without saying that an unannounced "pop in" is strictly out of the question.
The door to a lecture hall could just as well be a police sawhorse — if that sawhorse stood behind a moat and was outfitted with a gun turret. Herein lies an unrecognized truth about American higher education: The inner workings of college teaching spaces are more or less unknown.

I have no idea what goes on in any other professor's class.  Literally, not metaphorically.  Neither in California nor here have I engaged in serious discussions on how we teach what we teach, and more.  It is like there is an unwritten rule that we can talk about everything else, but not about our classroom teaching!

On my campus, I am almost always shocked at most of the people receiving such honors.  From my interactions, I would never have picked most of them as even halfway decent teachers, and yet they represent the university as model teachers.

I once had a colleague who taught a 200-level class. She loathed the fellow who taught the 100-level that was a prerequisite for her own. The latter was a campus legend. He was a flamboyant character who gyrated and twerked as he lectured. By the time his students cycled into her class, they knew exceedingly little about the subject matter. Her 200 regressed into a 100, because the guy in the 100 was teaching — well, she had no idea what he was teaching. He did win many Faculty of the Year awards, though.

I know plenty of faculty like that!  "flamboyant character who gyrated and twerked," indeed :(

Good college teachers, then, don’t necessarily do what is in their own professional interest. They do what’s in the interest of their students.

Exactly.

I know I am not a good teacher.  But, my approach to teaching is not about me nor about my professional advancement.  It is about students.  In developing the syllabi for the upcoming year, I am actually tightening up the structure for my classes because I worry that I am not being rigorous enough--even though, tightening up the structure is not the route to popularity.  I don't care.  I am used to being ignored, neglected, and dissed.  After all, in my life, I have never been popular even when I am all by myself ;)