can we have an honest discussion about foreign profs?

Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN · Jun 24, 2013

I think there are bad professors/educators and it has little to do with their nationality....they are just poor teachers. YOu need to learn to navigate around them.

bsartor · Jun 25, 2013

I agree with the PP. I'm a non-Hispanic person living in Miami. My professors have all been from Puerto Rico, Haiti, Colombia, Cuba..etc... They all have had very thick accents (to me). But they have been some of the best professors that I have had. Sometimes it seems like education is taken for granted in the US. I've had an Haitian professor tell me that we do not study/work as hard as they do in other countries. With that mindset, I have learned to appreciate the more "difficult" professors.

Similarly, my husband works in lab with scientists from all over the world: Haiti, Italy, France, Spain, New Zealand, Japan etc... Not only did they have to become extremely fluent in English, they had to learn perfect grammar writing scientific articles in a non-Native language. If they can do all that, then I tell myself that I can definitely manage a professor who sounds just like Sebastian from Disney's The Little Mermaid (true story).

Bouncyball · Jun 25, 2013

I have had plenty of American professors who just read the slides. Race has nothing to do with it.

GabbyT23 · Jun 25, 2013

Every foreign professor I've had, I've struggled with. The majority of the time it had to do with their accents, not necessarily their teaching method. Just being honest. I've had Russian, Indian, Haitian, and Filipino instructors. I actually enjoyed taking statistics with my Filipino instructor but when he began speaking at a rapid pace, GAME OVER. The great thing about him though, he was completely aware of the situation and took no offense when students asked him to repeat something or to slow down. Some of my other foreign professors didn't take to kindly to being asked to speak clearer or constantly repeat themselves...Trust me on this one, I was dangerously close to being thrown out of a class because of it.

GabbyT23 · Jun 25, 2013

So. School is what you make it. You will pass as many classes as YOU decide to. Quit blaming what country the professors are from or what accent they have. EVERYONE is racist to some extent, but peekaboo! Yours is showing.

Racism? Really? All because she doesn't like/agree with the teaching methods of her foreign instructors? Good Lord....

mclennan, BSN, RN · Jun 26, 2013

Racism? Really? All because she doesn't like/agree with the teaching methods of her foreign instructors? Good Lord....

Yep. Racism. It does still exist. Sorry.

priorities2 · Jun 26, 2013

Racism? Really? All because she doesn't like/agree with the teaching methods of her foreign instructors? Good Lord....

OP was generalizing to all foreign profs (read the title of the thread), not just hers.

GabbyT23 · Jun 26, 2013

Quote from GabbyT23
Racism? Really? All because she doesn't like/agree with the teaching methods of her foreign instructors? Good Lord....
Yep. Racism. It does still exist. Sorry.

I'm not disputing the fact that racism exist nor am I sure where that was implied. What I am saying is that pulling the race card out in this instance is a bit of a stretch.

Tinker88 · Jun 26, 2013

2 interesting articles on this matter:

http://www.uwosh.edu/facstaff/alberts/research-publications/docs/Foreign%20Profs.pdf

UTEP Students Complain About Professors' Accents | KTSM News Channel 9 | News, Weather and Sports | El Paso, Las Cruces, Juarez

GabbyT23 · Jun 26, 2013

I finished my first semester of nursing this past spring & I had two foreign profs, one for pharmacology & one for intro to med surg - arguably the hardest classes of 1st semester. One prof was Indian and the other Chinese.
I earned a c in both classes...
But in pathophysiology, health assessment & clinicals, I earned As. I had American profs in all three courses.
This is a recurring issue for me throughout my college career. I excel when I have American professors but I struggle when I have foreign profs. In microbiology, my prof. was Japanese & had a thick accent. I passed his class with a low C. I had an American lab professor for the lab component & I earned an A.
I feel as though in the classes that I have foreign profs, they don't lecture as well. It has little to do with the accent & more to do with the way they lecture. They just read the slides...I can do that on my own! And I dont like being read to AT ALL. My American professors are more engaging & approach lecturing differently. Anyone else run into this issue?

It is clear from the original post that the author was talking from his/her own experiences and not generalizing. That is why the author is asking others for their input--to see if this is a reoccurring issue like it has been for him/her. The title of the thread is certainly misleading but I don't see any indication of racism or prejudice in the OP.

dirtyhippiegirl, BSN, RN · Jun 26, 2013

I guess you could argue that many non-Western models of teaching encourage rote memorization and fact recall -- and if that's how you were taught, that's probably how you will teach. Also, the nuances of "conversational conversation" are the hardest to pick up of any language. We had an ESL - Chinese? - student in one of my nursing school groups who had a very, very thick accent. She knew that people struggled with her accent and found that the easiest way to overcome that was to prepare for presentations by reading the slides over and over again.

overthecliff · Jun 26, 2013

For the love.

Good teachers are good teachers and bad teachers are bad teachers. Has nothing to do with - as you put it - being foreign or American. The best instructors I've had in my pre reqs have had accents. You might want to take a long, hard look at where that perception is coming from because when you are dealing with patients many of them will be "foreign."