Becoming a disciple of Jesus turned my thinking upside down in many ways, including the image of myself as a professor at a medium-sized, regional state university.
The pre-pandemic Faculty Commons discussion group on the book “A Grander Story” resulted in a shift from seeing myself as a professor who happens to be a Christian to seeing myself as a Christian who is serving God through my work as a professor.
But the Covid19 pandemic so radically changed the nature of this past school year that I wasn’t certain how people were experiencing me: as a Christian, as a professor, or as an older widow with no family nearby to help should I become ill.
I praise God that I remained healthy during the school year, but at the end of the year came one more hurdle – the unavoidable and inevitable Student Evaluation of Instruction. I was unsure how the students would view my handling of their classes.
There has been an ongoing debate among teaching and learning scholars whether the student evaluation tool can accurately assess teaching effectiveness at the best of times, let alone during a pandemic. The online publication “Inside Higher Ed” addressed this quandary in an April 2020 article, “Evaluating Teaching During the Pandemic.” The article indicated widespread anxiety among faculty and explored whether faculty evaluation procedures should be changed or suspended because of the pandemic. I dreaded what the results of my Spring 2021 semester student evaluations might be.
I read the student evaluations with fear and trepidation. Beyond the standard list of survey questions that gauge preparedness and effectiveness, where I was relieved to fall in the upper range between the “strongly-agree to agree,” there was an unexpected gift in the area for student comments.
I was startled to see the word “kind-hearted” appear in comments. I also received notes and personal emails at the end of the semester thanking me for my kindness. This window of insight into my spiritual growth as a Christian from an unexpected source was a true blessing, if unintended outcome of the evaluation.
Galatians 5:22-23 (NIV) reminds us “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
Amid the pandemic disruption of hybrid classes, masks, social distancing, online instruction, and student quarantines, it’s amazing to me that the Spirit, bearing fruit in my Christian journey, was imprinted so strongly for students to remark on it.
Even though this evaluation of my spiritual growth was unexpected, it is a welcome gift from God, giving me insight into my journey as a disciple of Christ who happens to be a professor.
Judith Curtis
University of North Carolina at Pembroke