The Hamster Wheel of Teaching While Female

Updating all of my materials for online instruction and posting them all to my campus’ course management system has made me think about how exhaustive my course materials need to be, and about all of the forms of student support I’m expected to provide.

Meme from Imgflip

Here is an incomplete list of all of the steps I need to as I prepare a class. I have to do this for each class, each term. This includes more “normal” terms when I teach traditional, in-person classes.

• Make sure the information is on our course management system, so I can show that expectations for each assignment were clear and were readily-accessible.

Do this so that no one in class can say they didn’t get the directions.

• Also explain all of the directions in class. Remind students in every class of what upcoming assignments are due and of what to do for each assignment.

Do this so that people who didn’t read the directions on the course management system can’t say that I never told them what to do.

• Write out each assignment step-by-step, so that students have an outline to follow. Write detailed directions for each step, with hyperlinks to other assignments students should use, and with links to other resources they should go to if they need more clarification. Make screencasts where I explain how to do something and show how to do it on my screen and attach those to the bottom of the assignment. Write under that step that there is a screencast at the bottom of the page to help with that step.

Do all of this so that I have a leg to stand on if students say that they didn’t know what was expected in their written lesson plans.

Also do this so that I’m less likely to have to argue with students who claim I just don’t understand lesson planning in their content area. Or so they won’t be as likely to complain that I’m not making enough of an effort to understand the way they think about writing lesson plans.

• Write a detailed rubric that makes each part of the outline have a point value. Write detailed grading criteria that explain, in detail, the difference between an A and a B, a B and a C, etc.

Do this so that I’m less likely to have students complain that they didn’t know how the assignments would be graded.

Do this so I will be somewhat less likely to get accused of grading bias — although it will still happen.

• Create homework assignments with specific reading questions.

Do this so that students can’t skip the homework, or can’t say that they didn’t understand that the “required reading” was actually required.

• Create homework and in-class assignments that each require students to do a part of the bigger Lesson Plan assignments. Spend hours each week checking students’ preparation work and providing feedback.

Do this so that it’s harder for students to say that they didn’t know how to do the major assignments, or that they hadn’t gotten any direction or feedback about what to do.

• Provide objectives, specific directions, and standards, and assessment criteria even for small assignments.

Do this after students complained that the purpose of the assignments wasn’t clear, or that it wasn’t clear how I was grading their homework.

Do this after students complained that an assignment labeled “Reading Questions,” and where the directions told them to read the linked document, didn’t say that their answers needed to respond to the assigned reading, so therefore they think it’s unfair that they got graded down for writing answers that had nothing to do with the assigned reading.

• Provide a 20-page syllabus that clearly outlines policies for every contingency — coming late, missing, class, missing work, late work, leaving during class, leaving class early, spending a class doing other things, what kinds of absences I’ll excuse and what kinds of documentation I’ll accept, and what “excused” means and how even an “excused” absence can impact their grade. Include in the syllabus a whole page or two about how to use the course management system.

Do this so I’ll be less likely to accused of being arbitrary, unfair, biased, or for not providing specific enough information about expectations.

• Include in the syllabus a whole page about why I will not honor requests for extensions or re-grades during Finals Week. Clarify that “the word ‘finals’ means ‘final,’” and that finals week is not the time to start a negotiation process about what grade they want and what they need to do to get that grade. Include a specific policy about when I will have meetings during finals week and that people who request multiple meetings about the same issue will have to wait until the start of the next term.

Do this because I won’t be able to meet my campus’ grading deadlines if I don’t have a specific policy about why a few people can’t eat up all my time when I need to be grading their classmates’ work.

• Check attendance each day, AND make attendance worth 5% of the course grade, and have a policy that I fail students who miss more than 20% of the classes.

Do this so students can’t say that they didn’t know that attending class was important or required.

Do this so that I have a record of how many classes students missed, so that it’s harder for them to blame me for not providing them with the information they needed when the real issue was that they missed class.

Do this so I‘m less likely to be required to find time in the last few weeks of the term to “catch up” a student who missed 2–3+ weeks of the term. By the way, missing a day here and missing a day there is the WORST pattern of absences because people with sporadic absences end up having a fragmented understanding of the entire course. It is not possible to “catch up” someone who is in this position — particularly not in the last weeks of the term, when the student is overwhelmed and does not have the bandwidth to start learning everything they missed over the past 2–3 months.

• Keep track of tardies and deduct them from attendance grades.

Do this because I go over announcements and upcoming assignments at the start of each class (see above) and the people who frequently arrive late tend to be the same people who later complain that I never announced important information and that I had never communicated what assignments were due when.

Do this so I have records that allow me to discuss patterns of behavior that a student might not have been aware of, and so I have a record in case an issue goes to an administrator.

• Have a policy for excusing absences so that students who had a major illness, injury, family, or other documentable emergency don’t get penalized because other students won’t go to class or turn in assignments unless it’s specifically attached to a grade.

Do this because it’s the right thing to do. And so I can’t be accused of unfairly penalizing someone for being sick or having other extenuating circumstances. But having to constantly clarify the policy and what “excused” means and keep track of documentation requires still more time and labor.

• I make myself as available as possible. Pre-COVID-19 I was often in my office for five or more hours a day. I also constantly respond to email — often right away and almost always within 24–48 hours. Now I’m just online all the time.

I do this because I know that students essentially expect me to be on call.

Despite all of this, I still brace myself for the complaints:

• Some students will say that my clear directions and policies still weren’t clear enough.
• Some students will say that so much clarity made the assignments and syllabus too long, so they didn’t read them.
• Some students will say that some other professor had allowed them to turn in work late, re-do assignments, miss class, etc., and so they had just assumed that I would do the same thing. Some students will rely on their assumptions they bring in from previous courses, and on what other professors said or did, instead of listening to me and believing that I was going to do what I had SAID I was going to do in my syllabus and during multiple classes.
• Some students will say they didn’t get the feedback I’d written because they didn’t take the time to go back to the assignment in the course management system and read the feedback I’d provided to them (the expectation to do this is one of the things explicitly stated in my 20-page syllabus).
• Some students will say that having the information on the course management system, hearing it in class, and providing comments with personalized feedback still didn’t give them the information in a way that responded to their specific learning needs or learning styles.
• Some students will complain that I was never available because they went to my office once and I wasn’t there.
• Some students will ignore my syllabus policies and ask to re-do assignments or get grade changes. Many students who then hear “no, that’s not my policy” will respond to that with a longer, more impassioned plea about why they really, really, need me to make an exception for them. If I still say no, they will ask to meet with me. If I meet with them and say no, they will ask to meet with me again. They will keep sending emails and asking for meetings, hoping to wear me down until they finally get a “yes.” If that doesn’t work, they go to my administrators and try to get them to pressure me to do what they’d requested/demanded. It usually works, and the administration usually requires me to schedule yet another meeting with them.
• I prepare for students who didn’t even follow assignment outlines or rubrics to ask for regrades. I prepare myself for anger or tears if I remind them that my syllabus says that I don’t do regrades and that I told the class this in the first week and throughout the term.
• I prepare for the students who will ask/expect me to tutor them to help them catch up on work they didn’t do or classes they missed — during the last week or two of the term when time to do that is nonexistent.
• I brace myself for the students who needed me to re-explain assignments that are on the course management system and that we review during each class and who still complain on my course evaluations that I hadn’t explained assignments clearly.
• I brace myself for the other students who will complain on my course evaluations that I spent too much time in class going over assignments and basic instructions.
• I brace myself for the students who I had spent hours helping, but who will still put on my course evaluations that I hadn’t been available every time they had needed me, or that I hadn’t helped them enough.
• I prepare for the students (often but not always male) who essentially question my “right” to teach the course, or to assess their work. The ones who will demand that I prove my qualifications and then endlessly question them even when I do.

I make additional preparations.

I plan extra office hours into my schedule to deal with all of these students and the issues that wouldn’t be issues if they followed the policies in my syllabus and did the assignments for the course.

I prepare myself for the people who then take it to the administration. While some professors might think using a course management system is clunky or onerous, I love that it provides a preserved record of what was in every assignment and of how I responded to each student’s work. I like emails because they provide a written record of my interactions with students. For in-person meetings, I keep a spreadsheet so I have some kind of record of when the student and I met and what we discussed. I create enough documentation so that I can create a paper trail of almost all of my interactions with each individual student. I do this so that if they later accuse me of never giving them clear information or of never clarifying what they should do or of never helping them, I have a record to prove that wasn’t the case.

The behaviors I’m describing are not from all students. The vast majority of my students are delightful and working with them is a joy and a privilege. What I’m describing comes from a couple people each term — on average. But it is frequent enough and constant enough that my teaching constantly has to evolve to anticipate and accommodate their behavior, and so that my job is more stressful and time-consuming than it should be.

Even that is not always enough.

I usually have an administrator question me anyway. Or I might even get dragged into a grievance hearing despite a whole folder of documentation. Or have a male administrator (or less often a female administrator) say that if the student felt that my instruction hadn’t been clear, I should take extra steps to “fix” the problem. Anyway, it’s less work for administrators if they put the whole issue back on me and tell me to fix it. Couldn’t I just let the student turn in the assignment late? Why can’t I just re-grade an assignment that someone failed? Why is that so hard? How much time are you really going to need to spend? (Answer: usually an hour or more for each case.) Yes, they know it’s not in my policy, but couldn’t I make an exception this time? Thanks, great. I’m glad I could solve the problem. Please shut the door behind you on your way out.

As a female faculty member, there is no clear point where I can show that I have done everything required in my teaching contract. When expectations were never clear and when additional expectations were always implied, there is certainly no way for me to show I’ve gone above and beyond. For female professors, “above and beyond” is the baseline. And even with that, there is always something else people can say we could have or should have done. For female professors, there is never an “enough.”

It seems different for my male colleagues.

Over the eleven years I’ve been a professor, I have started to notice that my male colleagues almost never have 20-page syllabi. Some have two-page syllabi that simply state when the class meets, when their 1–3 hours a week of office hours will be, and what to read for each class session. Male colleagues can give a few large assignments and tests a term. Often those don’t need to have rubrics or assessment criteria because they can give holistic grades and rarely, if ever, face demands to account for every point deduction. Many of my male colleagues rarely give formative assessments to prepare students for larger assessments. They certainly don’t need multiple formative assessments each week, with objectives or standards or outcomes attached to each one. They may provide little or no feedback. I get the feeling they would think doing that is crazy and a waste of their time.

I’m getting the impression that my male colleagues don’t have to have as many meetings with students to explain their grading or policies, and that they are rarely expected to provide exceptions. I have a hunch that if my male collegues do have a meeting with a student, they are not pressured to have one or more additional meetings about the same issue. Men are allowed to say “no.” Men’s “no” is heard as a “no” and not as “keep pressing the boundary by explaining more vehemently why you really really NEED this and why they will be responsible for ruining your entire life if they don’t do it. Cry if necessary.” When men grade students’ work, the grade seems to be more likely to be trusted as a legitimate measure of the students’ effort and mastery of the content.

My male colleagues don’t seem to have to do as much work to prove that they are qualified to teach their classes and assess students. Their grades seem to be more likely to be accepted without an argument and without endless requests to let students re-do any assignments with low grades on the basis that some part of the assignment was “unclear” because the directions weren’t completely spelled out, the directions were too long so the student didn’t read them, there was a typo on the second page, or the student claims they hadn’t known to apply information and feedback from previous assignments and classes. Male colleagues seem to be allowed to rely on the implicit norms and standards of academia, rather than being expected to explicitly spell out each expectation and then put it in multiple formats, repeat it multiple times during class, and then personally explain it to several students — multiple times and in multiple modalities if necessary — because it’s not fair to expect students to check the syllabus, read their emails, check the course management system, or to always hear and remember what the professor said.

I also get the feeling that my male colleagues get more choices. Some choose to put a lot of time and energy into innovative teaching and into working with and responding to students. Those male professors are often recognized across campus as being teaching superstars and are frequently tapped to share their expertise with the rest of our faculty. Other male faculty might choose to do a more “basic” style of instruction with lectures and tests, or with class discussions and written responses (not that there is anything wrong with doing that and not that these are not useful instructional strategies). This choice is allowed and is not criticized. Making this choice then allows them to prioritize research and publications.

I am not, in any way, calling my male colleagues slackers, or saying that their work is not sufficient or that their practices are not effective. I am not blaming them for differences in gender expectations that are implicit or systemic, but that they did not cause. Instead, I am asking why the “basic expectations” for female faculty seem to be different, and why, for female faculty, “above and beyond” rarely seems to be a choice and almost never seems to be enough.

It isn’t just that the bar is higher for female faculty, it’s that there seem to be entirely different bars. There are higher expectations for female faculty in terms of availability and clarity. To the extent that students have different expectations of male and female professors, their teaching evaluations will always reflect those implicit biases. As with other professions that rely on the intellectual labor of assessment and feedback, working as a woman can suck.

Meeting all of these expectations has significant costs.

For female professors, these vastly different expectations take time. The level of documentation, specificity, and responsiveness I feel required to provide simply to avoid getting as many complaints or requests to “fix” perceived problems that would probably not be problems if I were a male professor takes weeks of additional time each term. While I am creating exhaustive syllabi and courses where all information is online and hyperlinked to preparatory assignments, video support, and models, my male colleagues can be churning out several additional research papers. In academia, research counts as much (often more) than teaching and course evaluations. This can put female professors in a double bind, where they might get penalized on their course evaluations for not being specific, available, or responsive enough if they prioritize research and publications, but where they can also get penalized if the time demands of doing everything students and administrators expect of female professors causes them to not have a productive enough research agenda. Or they can try to “do it all” but have no life and not sleep. Then they are told this is what they chose and they should take responsibility for their choices.

Even discussing this is difficult within academia.

There is also a reason why I’ve been writing this with hedges like “it seems like,” or “I get the feeling that. . .” Another difficulty about working in academia is that the claims I’m making here are hard to substantiate — even when they are well-documented. Everyone’s content, course structures, and teaching expectations are different. People with the same job title can actually be doing very different jobs, in departments with differing expectations. There are few, if any, chances to directly observe each other, look at each other’s materials, or to discuss course evaluations. Differences in teaching styles tend to be defended as “academic freedom.” As such, even blatant gender inequities can either go unnoticed, or be rationalized as having other causes, or as being a personal choice. We are also a profession of overachievers, and so any attempt to discuss differences in workload or expectations can come across as calling someone a “slacker,” and can be triggering for other faculty. Often it is easier to avoid the conversation altogether and let the people who are negatively impacted keep bearing the costs in silence. Who wants to be “that person” who is always starting contentious conversations that are either going to get dismissed, lead to deflection or blame, or lead one to get labeled as a malcontent? Even many administrators have no desire to open this Pandora’s Box.

Earlier in my career, when I would post on public forums on this topic on Slate or other sources, other male faculty would ask me, “What’s your problem?” Then they would explain that I “just” (I HATE the adverbial use of “just” because it’s NEVER a “just”) need to establish clear boundaries. Or win students’ respect. Or have a clear policy and stick to it. They would mostly conclude that I needed to do my job better and that if I was having these issues, there must be something wrong with my teaching. Or that maybe this profession wasn’t for me.

Meanwhile, female faculty in my almost all-female department would extol the need to be “flexible” and “accommodating,” and to “do what it takes to meet students’ needs.” Even if doing so drastically increased my workload (with no additional compensation) or meant that I essentially ended up being on call all the time — which is NOT the way to have a productive research agenda — let alone a healthy life.

All of these are still more iterations of what women in formerly male-dominated spaces face. We come up against the double bind of being told we either need to try harder or that we’re trying too hard. We’re told we need to do more. Or, conversely, that we need to prioritize better and do fewer things to be more efficient. Or be more responsive and caring. Or have better boundaries and be more focused on our professional goals. The sometimes stated and always implied expectation is that we need to figure out how to do it all and just (there’s the adverbial “just” again) make it work. Because that’s what women do. If you feel like the treadmill is going too fast, get in better shape, make your stride more efficient — or maybe you shouldn’t be on it. Never mind your male colleagues who respond to meeting requests by saying they can’t do Mondays because Mondays are their research days, or that they can’t do that meeting after 5:00 pm because it will interfere with their trivia night, or that they can’t do Friday afternoons because that will interfere with their weekend plans (not that there’s anything wrong with any of those things).

For years, I’d known I wanted to be a college professor. But what I hadn’t realized was that what I’d really wanted was to be a male college professor. I wanted to teach and do research, not be on a hamster wheel of continuing trying to prove that I am qualified and that I’m doing enough in an environment where ever-escalating expectations means that there is no clearly-defined pathway to professional success.