How do you stop dwelling on one negative course evaluation?
I just got my student evaluations, and I’m having a surprisingly hard time with one of them.
I’m an adjunct instructor, and the overwhelming majority of the feedback was extremely positive and complimentary. There were some genuinely kind comments that I’m really grateful for.
But there was one review that basically said I provided too many resources and sent too many emails. Some of the criticism was actually pretty actionable—I can see that I may have over-communicated or given students more material than they needed, and I’m going to think about how I can streamline that.
What I’m struggling with is that some of the comments were also just… unkind. And despite having a whole pile of positive feedback, this is the one review I keep replaying in my head.
I know, intellectually, that one negative evaluation doesn’t negate all the positive ones. And I don’t want to dismiss criticism just because it’s uncomfortable. I want to be able to separate the useful feedback from the hurtful delivery and actually learn from it.
For those of you who teach—especially adjuncts—how do you process this?