Last yr I had some negative TA evals from students - largely bc I was struggling w/ chronic illness & didn’t always attend lectures. I did, however, respond to emails, offer extra office hrs, & go out of my way to help students. Still negative reviews (thread).

Today I was offered my own class as an associate in for summer. Yay! Except because of the 2 courses where I got negative reviews (among the dozens where my reviews were exemplary), I‘m required to take a class or workshop from our teaching & learning center before I can teach.

I’m not bothered by having to attend workshops that will help me grow as an educator. But I am bothered by the fact that we are STILL using student evals to judge the quality of work despite the overwhelming research that they’re biased - especially against marginalized folks.

I’m also annoyed that there was never any requirement to take teaching courses or workshops before I was thrown into the deep end as a TA. Only after 5 years (!) of teaching am I suddenly required to undergo additional training. Based on biased student evals.

I’m glad these teaching resources are available to me thru my university & I’m truly looking forward to taking advantage of them, but it would have been nice if at any point they were made part of my training & time was carved out for them.

Bc when you’re only able to access these resources “on your own time” we see a divide b/w privileged folks who have the time for extra training & those who are first gen, working class, disabled, working multiple jobs while trying to complete a degree. We don’t have extra time.