Hi everyone, this is going to be a bit of a long read but my classmates and I are really upset and don't really know what to do.
We have a tutor who has acted in a really unacceptable manner and the uni will not do anything with our requests or complaints. Some of her behaviours I think she thought were in good faith but made the whole class really uncomfortable and it seemed like she was constantly fixated on students' race which was really strange. This is an early childhood education degree. The following are only some of the things that happened over two days for our infrequent tutorial (yes, all this in only two days):
- Had an activity she described as 'let's all be aboriginal' (this had no educational value and was just us sitting there in silence and "imagining being one with the land".
- Made all of the international students sit isolated at a table away from the rest of the class and called them 'South Vietnam' repeatedly.
- Asked a girl based on her appearance, mid sentence, completely unrelated and in front of everyone why she chose to sit with her friends and not 'with South Vietnam' like she was silly for not sitting there.
- Spent the first TWO HOURS of our first class sending students outside to practice random singing and dancing, then chatted with the rest of the class about random stuff. Like her instructions were 'just make something up, someone can kick a soccer ball around while someone else dances and someone else sings a few notes here or there'. She literally would not take no for an answer when people said they weren't comfortable doing that and "performing" for the class. Again, we were meant to be learning about teaching in an early childhood setting, not doing tiktok dances for two hours??
- Continually and randomly pointed out and singled out student's heritage and asking where they're "really" from, assumed things about them because of their heritage.
- Made a show several times of stopping the whole class to "welcome" the few indigenous students to the land, acting as if we should be so grateful for HER to welcome US at random points throughout the lesson when it had nothing to do with anything.
- Out of the 100 slides we had to get through over the two days, she only ended up going through around 20. She claimed that she didn't personally care about the rest and so we would skip them. We learned essentially nothing. This was a whole session's work to be done in two days and she ignored it all.
- Called a middle eastern student "Hamas" and continued to call him wrong names despite the class correcting her around ten times. His name was two syllables and very simple.
- Was constantly late, up to 20 minutes and we would not even start to think about beginning the coursework for a minimum of 20 minutes after that. She would also take 20 minute long bathroom breaks throughout the entire day. The first part of both lessons was arranging everyone into seating based off of things like if they like soccer and what race they are.
- Called on students assuming they knew the answers to things such as "how is this done in china" to a south vietnamese girl and "what's the indigenous centre at macquarie called" to an indigenous girl. Kept calling these people out for information they didn't know based on their race despite constantly being met with discomfort and "I don't know" We are literally taught in our other units to never single a student out and assume they have all the answers about something cultural because of our perception of their background.
- Instead of teaching us how to accurately gather information from observing the behavious of children, she made half of us go on our phones and scroll instagram for half an hour while the others "observed" despite not being taught what to look for or how we're supposed to notate observations.
- Making students run across campus to buy her and other classmates coffee. When no one volunteered after she asked, she selected people to go and they would be gone for around 30-40 minutes. She would not let us start the next part of the lesson until they returned.
- Made generalisations like "aboriginals are low income" and "chinese kids are all responsible"
- When describing children from her teaching experiences and from the few videos we did end up watching, focusing on the colour of their skin which was never relevant and had nothing to do with things like their attention span or behaviours or how friendly or smart they are. Paraphrasing, but an example was "... then a little brown girl comes in with her rich mocha skin and she's hugging you and looks up at you with her big brown eyes and chocolate hair and her skin is just so dark and rich". I think she was meaning to tell us that some kids are just more social than others, but no one could tell as she just went on this tangent about a child's skin colour as if that dictates how they'll behave.
- Constantly misnaming POC students after being corrected several times, making fun of their names in class
- Would put her hands on students' shoulders or backs even if they physically recoiled away.
- Several students did not come back for the second day and several left half way through the second day because of her hostile teaching style. (This isn't an assumption, they have literally told other classmates that they felt it wasn't worth their time as they weren't learning, and that they felt uncomfortable, singled-out, and bullied). When a student brought up info, answered a question or entered a discussion that SHE INITIATED, she would shoot them down, tell them they were wrong several times, and then continue to explain 'her way' which proved them right. It was in such an uncomfortable way too, like this is an extremely awkward exchange I had with her:
Tutor: "Can anyone tell me why this thing happens"
Me: "Because of this process that affects this other thing, I think"
Tutor: "No. No you're wrong."
Me: "Oh okay!"
Tutor: "NO. You're wrong. That's wrong".
Me: "Okay..?"
Tutor: "You're wrong."
Me: "Okay! I'm saying okay, like correct me, tell me the right answer"
Tutor: *LITERALLY DESCRIBES EXACTLY WHAT I SAID BUT IN A MORE BASIC WAY and starts trailing off when she realises she's just proved my original answer right*
This happened to several students several times and made the classroom very tense and hostile. It felt like any time someone spoke it was a power struggle and she was insecure about 'losing' or being 'less right'.
I left the second day at lunch time, and was told by other students that after a talk I had been a part of that had happened in class, she openly mocked and bullied me and my perspective on indigenous matters as an indigenous student when I said "Indigenous people are just people too, if teachers are too scared that it's too difficult or sensitive to learn about their cultures they'll never ask or learn. Indigenous people aren't some scary exotic other species, you can ask them questions and if your heart is in the right place you'll be fine", because the tutor had gone on about how you basically can't ask or say anything these days or you'll get in trouble and tried to scare the whole class into not actually treating Indigenous cultures like they're worth looking into (one of our topics was literally on indigenous perspectives being valued in education).
She also has given us incredibly contradictory and vague assessment task instructions and has not responded to us on iLearn for literally over a month despite several people posting to ask for clarification as no one can figure out what she wants from us. The task was due ages ago and we are still waiting to recieve marks that we were meant to have last week (she keeps changing the date on the ilearn, which shows that she has been ignoring us for months, not just that she's somehow lost her iLearn password or something).. She also proudly told the class several times what a harsh marker she was, so with the confusion and lack of communication as well as apparently being proudly mean in her marks, everyone is incredibly scared of what she will grade us. Those students who have complained, including myself, are especially scared of punishment for reporting her behaviours via bad recieving marks.
This whole class was such a waste and literally half of the class have openly expressed between ourselves that they feel let down and uncomfortable.
Anyway, some of the students and myself submitted reports to the uni about this tutor's behaviour soon after the two infrequent tutorials about a month ago. This was basically met with radio silence for a month, until we got a response the other day that essentially said "We doubt she'll do it again, this complaint is now closed". Nothing about her uncomfortable racial remarks, nothing about her poor teaching, nothing to even say sorry that we are spending so much money on this class and have recieved no education and no support, nothing to assure us that we will be graded fairly, nothing. We're looking into appealing, but with how little the university seems to care we're not sure what to do and it feels unfair that we're having to fight so hard just to be heard.
Has anyone else had any experience with this process or a similar situation? Is there anything we can actually do, or will she just get away with this and we will get further into debt just to be bullied, ignored, and not even educated?
Sorry for the long read, I just don't know what to do to make the university care. It's not a great look for them when they ignore indigenous students who are reporting that they have been bullied by a racist tutor who can't even do her job. I'm so insanely disappointed.
Edit: I have submitted a report to the student ombudsman and am hoping that she at the very least is given some cultural sensitivity training and encouraged to reflect on her teaching capabilities, although I definitely would think it fair if they took it further than that! As much as I am very much pro name and shame, I'm not going to for this as I think I'll get in trouble both from the uni and I think it goes against this forum's rules. It's really disheartening to have DMs asking if it's a certain tutor in MQ's teaching degrees, not because people are asking, but that there are this many people in positions of authority at our university that match this description. Thanks for all your support in this, I'm just apalled that it has to go this far and us students have to put this much time and energy in just to have someone care. This was the straw that broke the camel's back with my perception of MQ as a university. Don't go here.
