Re: [Phys-l] Class pictures

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

Sometimes my memory can work very well, but usually not.  I had a pair of
identical twins in the same class, but I immediately noticed they were not
really identical.  They were actually mirror twins in appearance.  One was
left handed, had a genuinely warm smile, and was also somewhat LD.  The
other was right handed, had a tight smile, and was known to get better
grades.  But IE equalized the course and at least at the beginning both
twins did equally as well.  I usually could tell them apart, but other
students, Noooo.

Unfortunately professors can get away with some outrageous treatment of
students.  There was one language professor who was well known for
propositioning females and then rewarding or punishing them with grades.  A
female professor I met in the 70s proudly said she had never passed a black
student.  But I also witnessed hostility toward the only female in my
undergrad program.  She was one of the most brilliant students in the class
and was warm and very natural.  I was shocked to hear another student's
comment about what he wanted to do to her because she said a dreadful test
was not too bad.  He would never have said anything similar about the top
student who was a male.

You don't have to know student names to show interest in them.  I always
tell them that I have a disability that makes remembering names difficult,
but they still are amazed and sometimes annoyed when I don't know their
names.  I joke that I only know it on alternate Tuesdays, but not this one.
There is a point where you can no longer butt your head against the wall,
and you give up.  I gave a lecture course where I was friendly with the
students, and they thought I was the neatest thing since sliced bread.
(there is no accounting for idioms).  Pictures help, but they are not a cure
for my disability.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

> Our university takes student pictures for their library cards, and then
> makes
> all the names and pictures available by course and recitation section to
> instructors.  This was always VERY helpful even though a few students
> would have
> changed their appearance for some reason or other (I remember trying to
> figure
> out which student was the female with the shaved head, and discovered it
> was my
> dentist's daughter).
>
> Something else I did was ask students (on the syllabus, and also on the
> course
> web site) to send me an email telling me about themselves: where they grew
> up,
> what they were majoring in, interesting places they'd traveled to, jobs,
> hobbies, career plans, etc.  Not everyone responded, but some wrote
> mini-autobiographies with lots of unexpected details, especially some
> memorable
> female students.  I would respond to these, making connections with my own
> life
> when possible (as when someone reported having spent a summer in France
> near
> where my mother grew up, or when a student expressed an interest in
> forensic
> science and I put her in touch with one, who was the wife of a colleague).
> Many
> students told me they'd never had a professor who showed much personal
> interest
> in them, and I heard some troubling stories about how some female students
> had
> been treated by their professors.