Talk with the dean or counselor for this department. Then need to be aware of this professor’s unusual teaching practices. Even if he is tenured, they can still discipline or reassign him.

Sorry about your experience. Not all professors are like that (fortunately) and this yoyo is obviously enjoying their tenured stature too much. Go ahead and report it to the dean of the department. Their job is to ensure that the students are experiencing the best education, and something like this obviously doesn’t count towards it, and they certainly wouldn’t mind knowing about it. Same thing goes for professors who do an excellent job. Reward them by letting the dean know about their great teaching.

IMO there should never even be a tenured status on the educational level. There’s just too much risk of somebody not performing up to their standards if they’re job is pretty much 100% guaranteed. It easily creates the atmosphere of being able to get away with the smaller things, and as long as they don’t do anything majorly wrong then they get to keep their job.

First of all I am a teacher. It is not best practice to do something like that at all. In my personal experience I believe that at the very LEAST the teacher should be one step ahead of the student. The very least is that once an assignment has been given the teacher knows that the student may come up to ask questions about the subject matter. Regardless if the teacher has read the text many times before they should always familiarize themselves with it every year. Students see different things in the text and the teacher is suppose to encourage learning, what does it say when the teacher hasn’t read the text, not great things about the teacher. Kindergarten teachers to teachers with “doctor” in the title should have mastery in the text they assign at all times.

Did you ask what his/her inspiration was for assigning the work? Did the readings go along directly with the lecture topic, or was it peripheral? Your question is somewhat vague, not knowing the topic of the reading, the course, what you tried to discuss, etc.

I teach developmental writing, and often have students read essays out of the textbook, along with completing comprehension questions, grammar exercises that go along with the reading, etc. Oftentimes, I haven’t read the essay in advance, but it isn’t necessary for *me* – I’m there to guide their logic/reasoning skills and improve their academic writing skills.

In the end, I think your education is up to *you.* You get out what you put in. If your professor assigned you something, it must be because s/he found merit in it for *you.* It’s not up to him/her to digest it for you.

I’m surprised that you weren’t able to engage him/her in any discussion about the articles, but again, I don’t know exactly what you’re talking about.

***thanks for the update- I was intrigued. It sounds like the prof is a big poser! I would wait until the end of the term (best to avoid retaliatory grading…), and then call him/her on it. In the meantime, have fun in class! Lead the discussion, and toss questions in the prof’s lap!

I think that probably does happen from time to time when you have a teacher who doesn’t really care about what they’re teaching or just teaching in general. Don’t expect that out of all your teachers because most of the ones I’ve had really care about the subject and about their students. To help you in your quest to find great teachers try www.ratemyprofessors.com to help you find some good ones. Good Luck 🙂

He is definitely unfit to teach.

Even though he has tenure, you still should report him because they can still reprimand him for that.