Should I email her in a few days to talk to her ?

[adel9216]

Hello,

I had kind of a difficult interaction with a female student a few days ago on Zoom.

I had a public speaker that is unilingual anglophone. I hired a translator to French. It wasn't the best option, but it was the best option I had. My departement even helped me with this process. First time trying this.

The student kept complaining during the entire presentation in the chat about the amount of English in my course. But it is not true. Most of my readings and content is in French. I added one movie to the course syllabus (non mandatory) because it is an excellent and recent movie done on the topic of the course, even though it is in English (with French subtitles). The movie was not tested on the exam, but I encouraged the students to watch it for their personal benefit. There were two readings in English as well in the entire syllabus.

I was surprised by her comment, because I told her that even though I am at a francophone university, and teaching at undergraduate level, people in university may encounter readings in English more often than not. Academics are expected to read English. She also mentionned that there were some misinformation taught in the course (which is not true). I asked her three times if we could speak about this at another time, because the presenter was presenting. I ended up saying "I'm pursuing a PhD, I think I am qualified to teach this course." I was irritated.

I don't know if it was the best way to approach this, but she stopped answering after that. Should I email her to come back on this? Or should I just let it go ? I tend to care about my students for real, but I thought it was incredibly disrespectful to comment during an entire presentation about my ability to teach. Most students are very happy with my teaching and the things I present to them, they sponanously email/write to me to say so.

How do manage those micro-conflict situations?

[dismalist]

Should I email her to come back on this?

Hell no!

You said your stuff. Student can return to this if she wishes.

Speaking with Tricky Dick: Tough 'em out! :-)

[mamselle]

Non. Elle manque d'intelligence.

Tout le monde doit en avoid plus d'une langue.

Laissez-elle a cote.

M.

(Mes apologies d'avance pour des fautes de grammaire...)

[Parasaurolophus]

Definitely let it go. I think that the more you engage on this issue, the more likely it becomes that she'll complain to the OQLF. (Entirely without justification, but they don't give a toss about that.)

As you said, the reality of higher ed there is that some material is and has to be in English. There's no getting around that.

[Caracal]

I don't have any experience with the language issues, but I've had students with some weird political grudge and this sounds pretty similar. The best way to deal with these kinds of people is briefly explain yourself, as you did, and move on. You can't persuade people like this because they don't want to be persuaded, they want to be aggrieved.

[the_geneticist]

I'd say don't contact the student.  There is no point in engaging with them any more than you already did.

[Morden]

The student kept complaining during the entire presentation in the chat about the amount of English in my course. But it is not true. Most of my readings and content is in French.

I agree with the consensus not to engage with student further about the incident at this point. However, I doubt you have heard the last of her. Begin to note down times and examples of further unprofessional conduct on her part along with your responses. You might need it later.

[adel9216]

She emailed me to apologize. Apology accepted. End of story.

Thanks everyone for your input!

[ergative]

I'm glad this worked itself out!

In the future, if someone is being disruptive during a presentation, you might considering adjusting the chat settings. I don't know what platform you were using, but in Zoom you can set it so that participants can chat to the host only. That means that grumpsters like this woman won't disrupt other people's ability to focus on the presentation, but people who have genuine questions can send them to you and you can make sure they're addressed during Q&A.

[traductio]

I'm glad the situation resolved itself.

I can also attest to the immense challenge of finding readings in French. I teach at a large, bilingual university in what I have to imagine is the province next to yours (it won't be hard to guess where I teach!), and I teach in both English and French. There are key readings that Francophone scholars must cite in English because they haven't been translated (and thus that students must read in English in order to know the key ideas). I have not found a satisfactory solution to this problem.

One word of caution, though. This approach --

I ended up saying "I'm pursuing a PhD, I think I am qualified to teach this course." I was irritated.

-- is risky. Some students see appeals to the authority of the degree (or to your own authority, based on the degree) as an invitation to question the authority of the degree. That is an argument that can only be lost. You will never convince someone of the value of a PhD if they don't already see it as valuable, especially if they think professors are spiteful, navel-gazing, egg-headed nerds.

I recommend instead relating the reading (or speaker or film) back to the course -- "The reason you need reading X (or speaker Y or film Z) is that it presents ideas you'll encounter later in the semester, in reading A," etc. That way you shift the justification from your own authority (which the student might question) to the course structure itself.

(Interestingly, most -- but not all -- of my Francophone students are bilingual. Some, however, are resolutely monolingual. But on the English side -- heaven help me if I ever gave a reading in French. My students who study in English, including most of our international students for whom neither English nor French is the first language, rarely have French skills at all.)

[mamselle]

Tant pis!

M.