Rebuttal

My online rating as a teacher took a major plummet this week when a student gave me the lowest score possible across the board. I know exactly who wrote it because of her description. And it's not like I teach too many classes.

This student had been caught cheating with her lab partners earlier in the semester. They copied someone's work verbatim, including the spelling and grammatical mistakes. So after reading 6 identical labs, even an idiot could figure it out.

Since I gave them all 0's for that assignment, they've been forced to do their own experiments but very reluctantly. One guy in the entire group pretty much does everything while the rest just sits around till he comes up with the answer, then they all jot it down. One girl tries to get through the work as fast as possible by asking me for the answers to the discussion questions. These are questions they're supposed to figure out by doing the experiment and/or microscope work. So I tell her to either read through the lab for the answer, because it's clear she hasn't, or to wait till the experiment is done.

Her comment on my rating was that I'm extremely unhelpful, that I refuse to answer any questions, and that I embarrassed her (with questions like, did you read the lab?). It was so easy to figure out which student it was because the description is so not me. I may have my faults as a teacher, but I answer every question, even the "no such thing as" stupid ones.

I'm actually not too bugged about my new negative rating. Because hopefully it will scare away other lazy students like her. Her kind always looks up ratings and picks the easiest teacher. I certainly don't want any more students like her. What boggles my mind, though, is that she couldn't wait to post her negative comment till after the semester. She chose to do it while it could conceivably affect her grade. Not that I would let this affect my grading.

Still, she doesn't know that. So she's either completely arrogant or stupid. In this case, both.