This quarter was a challenging one for me. I changed jobs and have a baby on the way, so I was struggling a bit with the class I teach part time at ITT. It is a new course, only the second quarter it has been offered, and some of the materials provided to me were … lacking.

I did something this quarter I’d never done before: out of sheer frustration for a lack of an answer key and very vague questions on the assignments, instead of the relatively strict grading I usually do, I on more than one occasion gave out 100% grades to those who turned in their homework. I felt bad about this because I felt like I was losing my integrity and doing those students who were turning in quality assignments a disservice.

But I digress. This post isn’t about what I felt like I failed at this quarter, it’s about the nice surprise I got when I looked over the student survey responses. Almost all of the responses (11 out of 14 students responded) marked “Strongly Agree” to the instructor based questions (e.g. “Can he control the class”, “Is he approachable”, “Does he encourage participation”).

And, the icing on the cake were these three comments, which literally made me smile.

Its nice to see that instructors still care about the students.

Excellent instructor. Looking forward to having Mr. Moldvan for future classes.

Edit: The “almost” in the title is just so I don’t jinx myself. I’m sure at some point in my teaching career I will receive a bad response, but (fingers crossed) it hasn’t happened yet.