<p>This guy totally lost it when a student yawned in his class: Quick</a> Takes: November 17, 2010 - Inside Higher Ed</p>
<p>He gets a 1.8 rating on Rate Your Professor, so it is no wonder there was some yawning going on. </p>
<p>Not exactly quality teaching.</p>
<p>The guy has classic anger management issues. He blamed the yawner for his outburst. When will folks learn that the only behavior you have control over is your own? It also makes me glad that Cornell is not my kids list. I know it is only one teacher, one moment in time, but the guy has issues.</p>
<p>I agree. Apparently, this is not a one time event for this guy. From RateMyProfessor:</p>
<p>“Mark talbert should be fired from the hotel school. He is not helpful at all. When I was taking an exam he yelled at us for not saying “bless you” after he sneezed. He is also very unprofessional. All I remember from one of his lectures was him talking about hidden sorority web-cams.”</p>
<p>I am sure he is thrilled that his completely inappropriate outburst has gone viral. Of course it will be someone else’s fault. :rolleyes: Hopefully he isn’t tenured and this will get addressed by his department. If he is this abusive in class, heaven knows what he is like behind closed doors with students or family.</p>
<p>This professor sounds really emotionally unstable. I wonder how hard it would be to have him dismissed? </p>
<p>On a funnier but somewhat unrelated note my father, who also taught at the college level, had a great line: </p>
<p>He said it did not bother him when students looked at their watches to see how much time was remaining during his lectures. He said what DID bother him though was when students would shake their watches to see if they were still running!</p>
<p>You call that an outburst?</p>
<p>I’ve seen a lot worse – both in classrooms and on the job.</p>
<p>This certainly brings up a memory that I’d rather forget from my kids’ experience in high school. The Honors English teacher in ninth grade (we only had Honors, not AP here and Honors is the top level at this high school) had many strict rules and I won’t get into them all here (by the way, each student had to be addressed as Ms. or Mr. Smith, not by first name in her class). One of her rules was no yawning in class. If a student yawned in class, the ENTIRE class was made to run a mile around the track. I am very against consequences for an entire group for what one person has done, not to mention that the consequence is too heavy for something like yawning. I recall my D was quite displeased one day when she was forced to run the track since someone in the class yawned and she was wearing Birkenstock sandals that day (hey, it’s Vermont!) and is an athlete and didn’t like having to risk injury.</p>
<p>Not an outburst but he is a bit of a horse’s ass</p>
<p>^ I agree</p>
<p>I had a professor who used a great deal of profanity and when a student commented that she felt it was not necessary he replied “I don’t know about you but I don’t leave my genitals outside of the classroom when I walk in the door.” Over 30 years later and I still remember that guy and he was nuts. That comment stuck in my mind to this day. This professor at Cornell must expect a certain level of decorum in his class and he went off when he was not seeing it. I know my sons sent this to me about two weeks ago and thought it was pretty funny.</p>
<p>I would be afraid to take his classes.</p>
<p>Loud yawning???</p>
<p>That Cornell professor obviously did a <em>fine</em> job of modelling decorum for his students :rolleyes: </p>
<p>My older s had a 5th grade teacher who did something like what soozies kids teacher did. She demanded that students turn off the little “beep” that many digital watches made on the hour (this was about 14 yrs ago). Some poor student either didn’t know how or forgot to, and the watch beeped. She went off like that Cornell professor, threatening all the students to “turn in” whoever it was whose watch beeped. She intimidated the snot outta these poor kids and then refused to let them have their break time outdoors that day. Made them all sit there in silence. How absurd.</p>
<p>That Cornell prof’s behavior was abusive. Plain.and.simple. Unacceptable. He has power over those students and tried to threaten them with it. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.</p>
<p>He did lose it a bit, though frankly I’ve seen worse. But to me it seems like he was provoked. </p>
<p>That was not a normal yawn, it was a deliberately over-loud, public “hey classmates isn’t this guy boring” yawn, which was overtly disrespectful. And judging from the prof’s comments this was not an isolated event; he says “I’ve been hearing it in this room, like, regularly”.</p>
<p>At that point it’s not just a matter of expecting a certain level of decorum, it’s more like are you just supposed to stand there with some 18 year old twerps being deliberately and publicly disrespectful to you, and just take it?</p>
<p>How would YOU stop this, if you were the prof and victim of this type repeated student conduct during your lecture, without going a bit ballistic?? Assuming you took it that way, as I think the prof did and, listening to it, I do.</p>
<p>I had a calc professor in college who told the students to ask questions, that we had an exam the next class. Kid raised his hand to ask a question, and when called on and asked the question, the prof went into a tirade about how we did that in class, he wouldn’t go over it…from that day on, no one ever asked him a question (I figured out the class was a loss, and taught myself the material, especially since the professor’s English was horrible)…next semester, 2 kids signed up for his class, word got out…</p>
<p>"…next semester, 2 kids signed up for his class, word got out… "</p>
<p>and presumably that was before the internet age, where possibly the worst thing you’ve ever done in a classroom can be plastered all over Youtube.</p>
<p>I am with monydad on this. The prof couldn’t have heard it if it was a genuine yawn done with minimal discretion.</p>
<p>It seems others see it this way also, here are two posts from The Chronicle Forum:</p>
<p>"I got the impression that it wasn’t that students were naturally yawning, but that one of them did the exaggerated ‘I’m bored’ yawn, which was meant as commentary and as a distraction.</p>
<p>But, yes, the professor did go a bit overboard though apparently this disruptive ploy had been ongoing from prior class meetings. Might explain why he acted the way he did. One incident can seem like overreaction; numerous incidents mitigates his reaction somewhat. "</p>
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<li>and- </li>
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<p>"I’m not sure this is such a big deal. I’ve had to point out to students that their behavior isn’t acceptable. I haven’t always been particularly nice about it.</p>
<p>Asking other students to rat the person out may be going a bit far, and threatening to go to the “bad side” is a little goofy. But taunting the professor should have some consequence. And he has a good point in noting that 99.5% of students knew better than to behave in such a way.</p>
<p>He didn’t really “lose his temper,” and he kept his control overall. Again, I don’t see why this is a big deal. Then again, I’ve worked for some bosses in the “real” world who would not have even pretended to exercise the decorum this professor did if confronted with such rude behavior. "</p>
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<p>I agree.</p>
<p>After listening to story after story from my DH about lack of respect, lack of decorum, lack manners by the college students he teaches, I am not surprised. An adult should certainly be able to stifle a yawn so as not to disrupt the people around him/her. It must have been pretty loud and obnoxious for the professor to hear it in the front, since people were indicating it came from the back of that large lecture hall. I have a problem when one student’s behavior distracts the whole class (and I don’t mean because of the prof’s comments). My DH’s pet peeve is students who sleep in class - funny, that wouldn’t bother me because it doesn’t disrupt the class. But coming in late, leaving early, texting, cell phones ringing, talking, making rude noises (such as a loud yawn) would annoy me because it distracts the students and the professor. I certainly would not condone that response if the students were in K-12. But these are adults who should know better!</p>
<p>Maybe this guy is really boring. Maybe he is not a good teacher. That does not justify rudeness.</p>
<p>Funny thing - one of the most popular professors at DH’s college is known to rant on and on about social and political issues and how unfair some things are. He throws things, uses profanity and non-pc terms. But students think he is cool because he does that. So I guess it is ok if someone exhibits that behavior while raging against the machine (and BTW the subject he teaches is not in those areas). We just don’t want them reacting to rude behavior from their students.</p>
<p>We also have to remember he has to manage 200 kids. Anyone can be far more democratic if dealing with only a few. With 200 to 300, one does have to exercise some authority over the class to be effective in the classroom.</p>
<p>I may be overanalyzing but the fact some kids volunteered to point the back of the lecture hall as the source makes me think students were also disturbed by this one kid’s bahavior and wanted it to stop.</p>
<p>I found this a distraction, but an “outburst”? Not even close. The worst he said was (and I paraphrase) if you don’t want to be here, or you’re too tired to be here, don’t be here.</p>
<p>Hardly worth going viral and for me, it just shows how far we’ve gone down the rabbit hole when we are more concerned with our kid’s feelings than their accountability to their behavior. We wonder why there is a question of resilience?</p>