Another sleepless night. A few days ago, I read my end-of-term student evaluations. As has become all too familiar to me recently, too many were disparaging, hostile and hateful. I haven't slept much since.

Over almost 30 years of teaching English to native and non-native English users, my student evaluations have been predominantly positive. Students have considered the painstaking care I put into lesson planning, teaching and facilitating, and to the one-on-one attention I give them. When critical, they've offered useful insight into making improvements.

Of course, I've had my share of unflattering evaluations, regardless of how much blood, sweat and tears I've left behind trying to nurture students' success. The castigating evaluations are demoralizing (and baseless) and unfortunately, a key component of teachers' annual evaluations.

I began teaching in my current program in January 2013. In my first year in the program, my supervisor and a curriculum supervisor each visited one of my classes once, even though I've always had — and make no secret of having — an open-door policy. The supervisors' written evaluations of those visits were positive. However, when I received my annual evaluation, I didn't fare as well in large part because so much weight was placed on student evaluations and comments.

In the student evaluation survey we used then, there were no self-reflection questions asking students to assess their role in their own education. Sadly, the program does not include systemic critical reflection components.

As education programs move to a business-rooted paradigm that identifies students as customers and teachers as customer service representatives whose job it is to satisfy customers' needs, too many students have increasingly come to feel entitled to good — if not excellent — grades as a matter of course and not as a result of their intrinsic motivation to learn.

In a recent meeting, one of my supervisors — with no irony or jest — referred to students as customers. Yet another supervisor told me that our program is "nothing but an English factory." With that perspective, can anyone blame students who do not embrace the learning process or avail themselves of the many resources for which some of their tuition dollars pay?

For some students, a paid year or more in the U.S. is a time not for academic endeavors — as is the stated purpose of their enrollment in our program — but for taking advantage of the many (nonacademic) freedoms most Americans take for granted.

Recently, a colleague showed a number of us an Internet video of one of her students crashing a professional soccer game in a state 1,500 miles from here. The student tweeted the exploit he and another one of our program's students enjoyed while he told his instructors that he was "out sick." There is no end to such stories.

Certainly, this sense of entitlement and the pervasive eschewing of personal responsibility are not limited to non-native students. Before I moved into teaching ESL, I taught English in a number of traditional settings, and I saw many students' attitudes shift from being committed to education to expecting to get (as opposed to earn) "good grades." That shift coincided — not coincidentally — with administrators adopting and applying the business paradigm to an educational institution, where the focus became on grades and not learning.

Addressing the issues

Troubled by students' evaluations and supervisors' confidence in and acceptance of them, I began to consider how to address the issues raised by the evaluations. I revised and administered a copy of a student self-assessment form, focused on student responsibility, that I'd used previously.

I showed the form to my supervisor and suggested that the program adopt something akin to it, perhaps replacing the existing questionnaire with one that required self-reflection. Unfortunately, I was told that while I could continue to administer my own self-assessment questionnaire, the program was not going to consider any changes to the current survey.

Another step I took was to ask the supervisor responsible for writing my annual evaluation report to coach me. As the co-designer and co-coordinator of our program's peer coaching protocol, I know the value in having a peer coach with whom to share concerns and experiment with ideas and of whom to ask questions.

We agreed that she would make at least six unannounced visits to any of my classes she chose over the course of a seven-week term, and we would debrief during the term as needed and thoroughly at the term conclusion. At our final debriefing, my supervisor offered that she "loved" how I teach vocabulary, and she saw nothing untoward in her surprise visits.

I also began to require students to meet with me to discuss their academic status. The conversations revealed a variety of telling insights. Of the stories, two were common:

• Some students intentionally failed because, had they succeeded, their home countries would require them to return, and they did not want to.
• Others did not care about their academic success because they had been accepted to undergraduate programs and "didn't need" our program.

I took copious notes, which I shared with my supervisor at the term's end. Finally, I chose to develop and implement a new student self-assessment survey.

Developing a new method

Research is replete with the value of critical reflection and self-assessment for academic improvement. By definition, critical thinking and critical reflection are forms of self-assessment — one students and teachers can use to make the necessary adaptations to their learning and teaching strategies and processes. As Gibbs and Habeshaw noted 25 years ago, "Students learn well when they take responsibility for their learning."

Over the course of spring 2014, I had students conduct self-assessments of their academic work and a self-assessment to address students' personal responsibility for their academic success. I intentionally asked students to write their name on their survey because traditional student evaluations are anonymous, and I believe that anonymity allows students to excoriate their instructors. However, I did include the following, "If I did not have to put my name on this assessment, my answers would be different," and a follow-up that asked students to explain their response if they answered "yes."

In one class, students and I discussed why I wanted them to complete the survey, and all students understood the reasons. In my other two classes, I had students respond in writing to the question, "Why do you think I am giving this self-assessment questionnaire?" and students attached their written responses to the questionnaire.

One student wrote, "She wants to know what do we (sic) think about ourselves and our expectations." Another student wrote, "Debra wants her students to take this self-assessment because she wants the students to know the reasons for their good or bad grades in this class." A third student wrote, "Debra wants us to take this survey because she wants to know if we are honest, if we know that our successful (sic) is because we earn (sic) that grade due to our effort and hard work (sic) not due to she like me (sic) or she doesn't like me."

Here are links to the self-assessments. There are some differences between the two as one course (EAP152) was for graduate pathway students and two courses were for 300-level (low advanced) listening and speaking students (AE8300). Grades in EAP152 are A-F, while grades in AE8300 are satisfactory/unsatisfactory.

Assessing the responses

I purposely administered the questionnaires immediately prior to students completing the course evaluation because I wanted them to have their critically reflective responses fresh in their minds when responding to the course evaluation.

What I learned when I read students' responses to my questionnaire at times surprised me for their candor and for their inability to appropriately answer, but I wasn't surprised by some students' bold sense of entitlement.

One of my 300 students was a disengaged but bright party boy who failed the course with me as his teacher the previous term and who was known in our program for his disinterest in academics and his nasty attitude. He had been absent far more than our program's maximum allowed number of absences, failed his midterm exam and his midterm presentation, and did no work. Yet he wrote that he expected to earn a satisfactory course grade.

One 300-level student candidly explained why he did not care if he earned a passing grade, "After this term ends, I will leave INTO CSU without coming back." It is not infrequent that students who have been admitted to degree programs at CSU or elsewhere show no interest in the courses in which they are enrolled because they know they are leaving.

Some of my graduate students' responses added confirmation to my observations that some students have a sense of entitlement. To question No. 12, "If you have not asked for your teacher's help, explain why," a graduate student responded with an answer that demonstrates he does not understand a simple sentence: "To make sure if I do correctly to revise my final paper."

Though this same student acknowledged that he had not attended every class, had been absent more than four times, had not completed his work according to the syllabus instructions, spent only one hour/night on his homework, and did not work his hardest to succeed, he wrote that he expected to earn a grade of "B."

Another graduate student — who did not have at least one of the texts until a few weeks before the course concluded — acknowledged that he had been late more than four times, had not always come to class prepared, had not prepared his work according to the syllabus instructions, and spent only one hour/night on his homework, but he believed he would earn a "C."

I learned from his academic advisor that the student believed his command of English was much too good to even be in the course. Indeed, to question No. 24, "If I were to take this class again, I would ______", the student answered, "not take."

Both graduate students earned failing grades. When the latter student learned of his failing grade, he came to see me to beg for a passing grade. When I would not change his grade, he asked me, "What am I going to tell my father?" I answered, "Tell him the truth."

But perhaps the most troubling of all was the graduate student who I discovered had plagiarized much of her final research project and who thought she'd earn a "B" for the course.

Other students were far more realistic about their development — or the lack of it — in their courses. It came as no surprise that the EAP152 students who were rarely (once or twice) or never absent, rarely or never late, who came prepared, who studied for class at least two hours/night, and who met with me regularly not only earned passing grades but earned A's or B's. Even more significantly, they demonstrated command of the material. And 300 students who had similar records of good-to-excellent attendance and study habits earned grades that demonstrated they met the learning objectives.

And then there was the student who confirmed every belief I have about the value of self-assessment. He affirmed that he had not attended every class, had been absent more than four times, did not complete all of his assignments, was not prepared for class, did not prepare his work according to the syllabus instructions, failed his midterm presentation and midterm exam, had not been meeting with his group to work on the final presentation, and had never asked me for help.

Yet he wrote that he expected to earn a satisfactory course grade. Curiously, however, the student responded to question No. 24 with, "No absence. No excuse. Or you will probably fail as me." When asked to answer why I wanted students to take the self-assessment survey, he wrote, "Because it will let good students know they are successful due to their hard work and recognize lazy students such as me realize (sic) that I fail cause (sic) I didn't do well in this term and it's totally my responsibility. I deserve it, reasonable."

The day after I administered the self-assessment, this same student emailed me:

Dear Debra

I have finished the course evaluation.

Honestly, I didn't do my responsibility in this term. I really know what you did and the way you taught to students is for helping them to be successful. Actually, I realize that I didn't understand you and what I did until now reflect I am a lazy students (sic) or a liar who just told he would try his best but seems never did it. I know the fault is totally mine, thank you!

Needless to say, I was flabbergasted by the student's message, and I responded to him:

Dear XXX,

Thank you for your candid message and your willingness to do the hard work of self-reflection/self-assessment. It is a formidable step toward improvement and success. I hope you will apply what you've learned from this experience to all the courses you take from now on and to your life in general.

Best wishes for great success,

Debra

What have we learned?

What have I learned from these self-assessments? What have students learned? What have my supervisors learned?

I've learned that students can be honest with themselves about their roles and responsibilities as students just as I confirmed my suspicions that entitled students are not a figment of my imagination. From now on, I will administer a self-assessment survey at the beginning of each class, another halfway through, and a final one at the course conclusion.

That way I can have a clear sense of how students understand their roles and responsibilities, can intervene as necessary to clarify their roles and responsibilities, and can monitor how their responses change as the course progresses. Along the way, I can address the concerns students raise. I'll adjust the questions to fit the time during the term that I'm administering the questionnaire.

Additionally, I'm advocating for programmatic changes grounded in best practices research. Such changes would include formative assessment and critical thinking and critical reflection components.

What have the students learned? Other than what I've learned from their responses, I do not know, but I like to think that, if only for a brief time, students have become critically reflective. Perhaps that critical reflection will last beyond the exercise of self-assessment in my courses.

What have my supervisors learned? That is the toughest question to answer. Following the frequent feedback of disgruntled instructors who also have been demoralized by ugly anonymous student comments, the student evaluation was renamed the end-of-course survey and was changed to require students to sign their names if they write comments, the rationale being that students who sign their names will take responsibility for what they write.

Supposedly, anonymous student comments are not given the same weight as those that are signed. Unfortunately, however, there remains no programmatic critical reflection component. Also, though portfolios and e-portfolios have been widely regarded as one of the finest assessment techniques for years, our program does not use them.

Perhaps, when our current curriculum revision/semester conversion process is complete, administrators will heed best practices research and, among other changes, institute portfolio assessment, which demands self-assessment. However, the conversion process is not due for implementation until fall 2015.

Perhaps administrators will look again at the end-of-course survey and see that best practices offer many options for viable assessment. Perhaps, too, administrators will look carefully at the many best practices approaches to performance evaluation, including 360 assessment and assessment of supervisors by faculty and staff.

Nearly 50 years ago, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) — in its Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities — asserted:

It is accordingly appropriate that the faculty role in the evaluation of administrators be especially focused on faculty interaction with administrators directly charged with the oversight of the educational program, of students, and of such personnel matters as salaries, promotion, and tenure. If the faculty exercises its role responsibly, such administrators will more likely see the faculty as a resource to be drawn upon, not an enemy to be combated. Faculty members need to point out to administrators the specific expertise they can bring to evaluation and emphasize the value of their years of experience.

Maybe — just maybe — our program will move out of the assembly-line era of education and into the 21st century.