Hi Teach !! Just wanted to ask. Did the kids commission that or did one of the parents find it by accident? So happy --you are happy !! Teachers, parents, clergy. All so very important in our lives. My "fav" teacher died 3 weeks ago. I had her in the 11th grade. She was 85 when she died. You would not believe the outpouring of love from her 25 years of students. She brought every book we read to life with her knowledge and enthusiasm. The Scarlet Letter never had such a good Hester !! Congrats and I know you will have bright and fun students next year, as your personality will bring out the best in them. Cece

I've got some catnip in a hanging basket in the backyard, that I cut and give to Frankie and Chloe on occassion. (I've only recently gotten to the point where the neighborhood cats don't come to are yard and mark, so I don't want to put catnip in the ground. Attractive nuisance for cats!) The thing is that he is not as interested in catnip. He likes it, and it makes him mellow. But he's wild for the penstemon, and it makes him hyper. To each his own stimulant, I guess. Gin makes me throw up, but my best friend has to carefully ration herself, or she'd drink the whole bottle in one evening.

Ohh, same boat as you, only last year. What a tough time being a parent, no? Finally resigned myself (with a little support from DH), that if I/we didn't hear from DD, it was a probably a good thing. DD was busy, had work to do, making new friends, adjusting to living with 2 roommates (DD is an only child), and everything else that comes with going away to college. Also, the college DD attends, requires all incoming freshmen to do a First Year Seminar which pairs the freshman with mentors in groups. The upperclassmen (mentors) do things like meet informally on a weekly basis to answer questions about adjustment to college life, have bi-weekly dinners with the peer group, make a point of checking in on a student who seems may be having trouble, etc. Also, a mandatory first semester class was FYS, which was all about adjusting to college life. That class is held by the professor assigned for each major. DD went in undeclared and stayed with her FYS advisor through her entire freshman year. DD's professor/advisor had his entire group of freshman and peer mentors come to dinner at his home ~ a farm he shares with his wife. Nice BBQ, bonfire, music, get to know you, casual social thing. So nice of him to do so. DD declared a major at the end of her Spring semester. Now has a different advisor. DH & I were very glad the school mandated this FYS, as we feel it was sooo important that there was some support provided to every freshman as they moved to a new chapter in life. A safety net, if you will Had we heard from DD everyday, it would have been an indicator that she wasn't acclimating, or at least not trying to do so, if DD was still so "wired" to me/us. Would say I got a few texts, not many. Calls, less than texts. First time home was only 2 weeks into the Fall semester. DD had a "mini-meltdown/pity party" about the dorm room, how hard her classes were, how much work, yada yada. Well, as I wasn't the most sympathetic audience, I had a sit down with DD and let her vent, but then I asked DD if she would like to trade places with me, or with any of her high school classmates who weren't fortunate enough to have gone away to college. I think the light bulb went off for DD. After our discussion, it seemed as tho she had gotten it, and truly appreciated having the opportunity to be away at school. By the end of the Fall semester, DD couldn't wait to go back from Christmas Break. Thankfully, it all fell into place and worked out well. If you feel your DS is not isolated, and otherwise seems to be doing well, then I would just try to wait for him to communicate. I tried to sit on my hands, so as to let DD get into her groove at school, only texted if necessary, and responded to the texts DD initiated. I knew she was adjusting okay after the first few months, and I am confident in my relationship with DD being very strong at its core. I figured if she needed me, she would call or text. I also did some baking, sent her favorite cookies along with a mid-semester care package. While recently on vacation visiting family (DD is now a sophmore), I asked about a another family member whose DD is the same age as my DD, and who is now attending her sophmore year at college away from home. I was curious how much communication went on between that student and her mom/dad/family? Well, the person to whom I was talking had taken said student to her college orientation, as her parents were both working that day. The speaker at orientation told the parents (mine wasn't the parent), that if you aren't hearing from your child, send them a text or email, or even leave a VM on their cell, that you are sending them $$, or do they need anything? See how fast they respond. LOL. So, we just tried a little experiment after this vacation conversation to see if the advice was good advice. Heard back immediately from DD. We laughed so hard about how true that orientation speaker was. So, there is something to that particular strategy. Fall break isn't too far off. My DD attends a private college, so they have a fall break next weekend, but most big universities don't have the mini break, first time home will be Thanksgiving. Just wait till you see the difference in your DS. It was amazing watching from afar, my DD change into an independent young woman. HTH.

Different perspective here- I'm a 3rd year veterinary student. We do teacher evaluations as well and have also rated teachers very well on the standard questions yet given them a poor overall rating. However I do write WHY I didn't rate them well. I have no idea what subject you teach or what your teaching style is, and am only offering the reasons that I have rated a teacher poorly despite all the standard questions being good. One teacher read, word for word, her powerpoint presentations. Yes, she'd ask questions of the class (hence a good rating for engaging the students) but to any student who read the notes beforehand the answer was invariably in the next slide. I rated her well for subject knowledge, engaging the students, lecture notes, and presentation but failed her as a teacher. Why? I was one of the students who read the notes prior to lecture. I had a question about one of the slides that was not explained later in the notes. So I asked. The teacher said that she had to get through the slides- ie reading to us. This was in my 2nd year of vet school and I can assure you that every single person in my class was perfectly capable of reading the slides and notes for his/herself, myself included. I politely explained that I had already read the entire lecture and my question was not answered. She repeated that she had to "get through the material." At which point I packed up my books and left the class, never to attend any of her lectures again. If a teacher cannot satisfactorily answer a legitimate question, especially from a well-prepared student, not on the basis of not knowing the answer but in the interest of reading to the class, I cannot call her a good teacher. This was a veterinary immunology course, and the section I had a question about was in the molecular aspects of an immunologic response. I know she knew the answer- I later found it myself in the book she wrote! But the fact that she couldn't answer the question in class (it would have taken a minute or less) because she was too busy reading her presentation to the class just irked me to no end. I also rate any teacher who reads to us low, because again, we can all read quite well. A second teacher who I rated overall poorly despite high ratings for the standard questions taught a course in such a way that it was a complete waste of time. This was a veterinary nutrition course, and she spent several lectures on having us identify types of straw and grain. She also went over the definitions of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins and what types of foods were sources of these macronutrients. A prerequisite for vet school is domestic animal nutrition, and if we hadn't learned the macronutrients by college it was taught then. The veterinary nutrition course was supposed to help us choose appropriate diets for various clinical conditions, but we barely touched upon many of the most common clinical conditions (heart disease, liver disease, etc). So I had to fail the teacher for teaching things that were too basic for veterinary students. A European History teacher in my undergrad career spent most of his time analyzing our attack on Iraq (it was started at that time). Which was very enganging and informative, but I didn't learn much about European history. Failed the teacher for not sticking to the subject matter. I had to fail an honors English course teacher for not teaching to a higher level but instead assigning more "busy work." We learned the exact same things to the same level as my non-honors classmates, but had to write more essays and that type of thing. She only graded us on grammar and sentence construction, not our ability to write good essays. I am about to fail a very enthusiastic poultry TAU (a hands-on course) teacher for just overdoing the whole thing. He had our poultry medicine professor come in and give the exact same lecture that we had in our poultry medicine course (not a hands-on course). That was a total waste of 2 hours. He had us visit a pathology lab and they gave us a tour that included such useless things as how they enter submissions into their computer (as if we care) and showed us the PCR equipment. We had to take genetics as a prerequisite for vet school, and we had to RUN PCR ourselves, so looking at the equipment was a waste of time- we used it before! There were so many more incidents of repeating things we had already learned or otherwise wasting time that I won't go into. Again, he'll score well on the standard questions but rate poorly overall because if there's one thing I hate more than wasting time, I can't think of it right now. I'm not saying that you were guilty of any of these things. It's a shame that your students didn't give you any idea on why you didn't score well overall. It may be a simple matter of teaching a boring subject. It may be that because you are new you were not aware that the students already learned what you were teaching. It could be that they didn't do as well as they expected and took it out on your evaluation. I know people who do this and I do not agree with it at all. I don't know how to find out what went wrong. Perhaps now that the grades are done, you could try to contact some students and see if they can offer any suggestions. Learn the material from any perequisite courses and avoid repeating it if possible (I know many teachers do not control what is taught). Good luck.