My mother is a serial entrepreneur and has worked in retail for many years. She often says that the toughest thing about her line of work is the demand to always be “on”—to be perky, pleasant, enthusiastic, and accommodating at all times. Now that the new quarter is under way and I find myself teaching again, I’ve been thinking a lot about the similar pressure for instructors to be “on” when interacting with students.

The last time I taught, multiple students noted in their evaluations that I seemed annoyed and impatient when answering their questions. It came as a bit of a shock, particularly since my previous round of evaluations had turned out so well. After a healthy dose of denial, anger, bargaining, and depression, I traced my steps and recalled a few instances in class when I was visibly frustrated with students who weren’t keeping up with a tutorial. I also knew I’d been particularly bad about reminding students if I’d already answered the same question multiple times, and I had probably mentioned more than once that certain mistakes on the assignments could have been avoided by reading the assignment instructions more carefully.

I usually find that I’m in a great mood for the first few weeks of the quarter. I answer repetitive questions with glee. Students who don’t follow directions don’t keep me up at night. Nothing can dampen the feeling that I’m living my dream of being a professor and that I’m single-handedly changing the world. But the honeymoon doesn’t last forever. Like a Starbucks barista at the end of an eight-hour shift or a J. Crew salesperson who has just been asked to fold the same twenty pairs of pants he just folded two hours ago, the normal wear and tear of the job begins to drain my reservoir of patience. Eventually, it gets harder to answer the same question five times with a smile. It gets more painful to grade assignments in which students disregard the rubric I so meticulously and lovingly constructed. By the end of the quarter, it can be difficult not to take things personally that have little or nothing to do with my abilities as a teacher.

When I reflected more on what went wrong during my last term in the classroom, I realized I wasn’t just in a bad mood. I had also brushed off a critical task that I had performed the quarter before: asking my students for feedback before the middle of the term. The first time I tried it, I worried that surveying my students would draw attention to my lack of experience. I didn’t want to seem needy, but I was even more afraid of waiting until the end of the quarter to find out what my students really thought of me. So, I gave them an incredibly simple survey with only two questions:

1. How challenging is the course so far? (This was a multiple-choice question.)
2. Do you have any suggestions on how I can improve the course? (This was an open-ended question with a comment box.)

This survey was helpful in two ways. First, I learned that I was flying through my software demonstrations and needed to slow down. Second, I showed my students that I genuinely cared about them and wanted to make the course the best it could be. While I can’t say that my little survey made all the difference in my evaluation results that quarter, I feel certain that it played a significant role. When I taught again, I was a bit overconfident, having passed the last quarter with flying colors. I meant to ask my students for feedback but never got around to it. I told myself the students wouldn’t complete it, that I should have done it the week before, or that I should wait until next week. It was always the wrong time to ask for feedback, and before I knew it, the opportunity had slipped through my fingers.

This quarter I’m determined not to make the same mistake. I’ve already asked my students a few simple questions and their responses have helped me correct a few small problems that would have magnified over time. I made sure to include a question about my attitude and patience level, and I plan to offer the survey again to help me snap out of any funk that might set in as the quarter progresses. Asking for feedback early on also goes a long way to foster goodwill. Because I teach in a creative discipline, I have to offer a lot of criticism to help students improve. I can tell them all day long that they shouldn’t take this criticism personally, but giving them the opportunity to critique my teaching helps me lead by example. It also gives the students a chance to blow off some steam before the final evaluations, and I’d much rather get the worst over with early and in a survey that no one has to see but me.

Surveys can be conducted through Blackboard, but it can be difficult to convince students that they are truly anonymous. DePaul employees have the option to use QuickData, our home-grown tool that allows faculty to create surveys by completing a few simple forms. Because these surveys can be taken from any computer and don’t require students to log in, faculty might find they get more frank and honest feedback. For instructors outside DePaul, Web-based survey tools like Survey Monkey and Survey Gizmo offer a similar promise of anonymity. Of course, giving students the freedom to say whatever they like about their instructors has its downsides. However, I find it’s better to embrace this early in the quarter when there’s still time to do something about it. Hopefully, the result is a better learning experience for everyone and fewer disgruntled students venting several weeks’ worth of frustration in a course evaluation that will be read by department heads.

My students aren’t really my customers and I don’t like to think that I’m obligated to put on a happy face at all times and serve them like a Ritz-Carlton concierge. However, I do think student feedback is essential if I’m going to become a better teacher. When this feedback comes only once at the end of the quarter, it’s easy to feel defensive and powerless. That’s why it’s so important to ask students for regular feedback. It might make me seem a bit needy, but that’s an adjective I can live with, and I know my mom would agree. But just to be sure, I think I’ll send her a survey.