Professor called out a student for doing homework from another subject in her class. Instead, she got called out on her evaluation: ‘We are ADULTS’

Kate Sheppard (@k8sheps) teaches history at an undisclosed STEM-focused university. After calling a student out for focusing on an assignment during her lecture, the professor alleged that the student later called her out in a midterm evaluation.

“It’s rough—teaching first-semester freshmen,” Sheppard told TikTok. Although she’s been teaching for fifteen years, the professor said it was only her second time teaching a first-year class. She’s had her fair share of troubles, and while some teachers deal with unsafe working environments, Sheppard had to contend with one student’s behavior.

“A lot of it has to do with entitlement. So, I am sharing this a bit for college university instructors to commiserate a bit, but also, hopefully, for students to learn from,” she added. Sheppard explained that her class had about 40 students. They could move their chairs around freely. Then, she noticed one of her students with his back to her. He had his headphones on and his head down while Sheppard was leading a discussion.

“We’re having a discussion; we’re all supposed to be engaged in the discussion. This discussion is not only helpful for understanding the material but also for knowing what to do on the exam,” Sheppard said. She didn’t tolerate the student’s behavior and walked over to him.

She added, “This is a history class that I’m teaching, and so, very few of them really actually want to be there. They are told this is not actually that important for their jobs. Their jobs are gonna be like, ‘solving tomorrow’s problems,’ but if they don’t know what yesterday’s problems were, how can they solve tomorrow’s problems?”

She tried to discipline the student as a professor

Nevertheless, Sheppard walked up to the hunched student and asked him what he was doing. With his headphones on, he didn’t hear Sheppard. When she asked again, he finally replied. She alleged that he didn’t look up and responded, “I’m doing my math homework.” Then, she told him to leave the class. Sheppard said that if he needed to do the homework, he was free to leave.

“He didn’t leave. He sat there, took his headphones off, but he kept doing his math homework,” Sheppard alleged. She said there was nothing she could do about the student, so she carried on. However, during her midterm evaluation, Sheppard said the student gave her negative feedback.

“Somebody needs to talk to her about respecting the students. And in complete honesty, if your paying for the class, who cares if your paying attention or not? THE STUDENT IS PAYING FOR HER TIME. If they choose to waste it, that is their own problem. We are ADULTS, not kids,” the comment allegedly said. Sheppard emphasized that the student wrote ‘your’ instead of the grammatically correct ‘you’re’ in the comment. She called the student’s behavior “rude and entitled.”

Sheppard said that even if the student is paying for the class, they still need to listen and learn. She added, “If you’re adults, behave like an adult. Adults don’t go into professional situations like work or class, and very clearly, turn their back to someone who they’re supposed to be paying attention to and do something else completely different.” Sheppard said that she also got other comments from students, with one telling her to be “less political,” even though it’s a history class. Another allegedly told her to “loosen up a bit” on book readings. But Sheppard isn’t the only college professor struggling with her new batch of students. Another professor said her student mistook a peer evaluation for a midterm exam, leaving her stunned.

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