Gaining Reflection from a Student

When I was a freshman at SLU I was advised to take Pre-Calculus. I vividly remember my professor, Dr. James Dowdy (who has passed by the way) and I did not have a positive experience in his class.

The class literally had around 20 students and by the end of the semester there were only 7 or 8 students left. I was really struggling in the class and wanted to drop it. My mother, however, refused with a passion to let me quit. So I continued to tread through the torture and to hear what I thought were demeaning remarks.

For a certain percentage of our grade we had to take a quiz and we could only get one wrong. If we got more than one wrong we had up to three times to retake it. Well, I failed it the first time...the second...and third time. I had one more chance to take the test and one day in class he said "if you can't pass the test then you can't pass this class." With all the other remarks he made in class about how we should know this stuff already, I felt like my efforts were fruitless and it was pretty clear that I was going to fail the class. His comment to the class set me off and I just left the class. He tried to stop me, but I said to him that what he said basically meant there was no reason for me to be in class. At that point since I had not passed it that meant I would not pass the class so why be there?

I vividly remember being overwhelmed and went to the bathroom and cried. The janitor had to leave and was nice enough not to let anybody else in. I skipped the next class, but did come in to the proceeding classes and when I came back from my one day break the students applauded me for coming back (I still can't believe they did that).

So, the other day I was talking to a student and he told me that he had Dr. Dowdy and I was like "ohmygosh, he was so hard." The student then started to tell me that he really liked him because he would say things that meant that he expected higher standards of his students. He really appreciated that about him. I sat back and thought about it. Was that true? Did he really say those things to try to push us, but I took it as demeaning remarks. So I asked the student, "did you do well in his class?" Of course (he's pre-med still) he did well.

So I realized that those who did well took his remarks as a sign of pushing them further-helping them be more. However, as a dumb-wit like me that can't stand math (esp. after that class) I took his remarks as personal attacks on how dumb I was.

Interesting as I have thought about this conversation with the student for the past two days. I always thought he was putting us down and felt that he wasn't the most supportive teacher. I wasn't use to his style. I'm glad that I can think of that experience in a new light.