Professor
Heather Dallas
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - This review is for math 73SL. When I applied to a CalTeach course, I was under the impression that we would be learning what it's like to teach in a classroom. In Dallas's class it felt more like we were learning how to work at the Curtis Center rather than learning how to be teachers. Dallas was unorganized, frustrating, and impossible to get in contact with. During seminars she was nice and friendly, and made you feel like you knew what you were doing. But her instructions for assignments were never clear, and nothing got graded until week 9 (come to find out I had misinterpreted the instructions, although early in the quarter when I asked during class what she meant by them, she confirmed my interpretation was correct). Anyways, the person who (finally) graded the homeworks wasn't even Dallas, it was a math specialist from the Curtis Center (not anyone related to the class whatsoever). Dallas is impossible to reach via email, doesn't check the discussion board, and mentioned once at the beginning of the quarter that she had office hours but never brought it up again (and it wasn't in writing anywhere). I wasn't able to attend office hours due to class conflicts, and if you can't go to office hours you basically can't talk to the professor. She always goes over time for seminar, so if you have a commitment afterwards it's not like you can stay after class to talk to her. And her assignments for our quarter-long project were so disorganized, we didn't know what the end result was supposed to look like until week 10 (leading to us having to change a bunch of our work last minute). Overall, this felt like a boring high school class with a poor teacher who doesn't want to be there.
Fall 2020 - This review is for math 73SL. When I applied to a CalTeach course, I was under the impression that we would be learning what it's like to teach in a classroom. In Dallas's class it felt more like we were learning how to work at the Curtis Center rather than learning how to be teachers. Dallas was unorganized, frustrating, and impossible to get in contact with. During seminars she was nice and friendly, and made you feel like you knew what you were doing. But her instructions for assignments were never clear, and nothing got graded until week 9 (come to find out I had misinterpreted the instructions, although early in the quarter when I asked during class what she meant by them, she confirmed my interpretation was correct). Anyways, the person who (finally) graded the homeworks wasn't even Dallas, it was a math specialist from the Curtis Center (not anyone related to the class whatsoever). Dallas is impossible to reach via email, doesn't check the discussion board, and mentioned once at the beginning of the quarter that she had office hours but never brought it up again (and it wasn't in writing anywhere). I wasn't able to attend office hours due to class conflicts, and if you can't go to office hours you basically can't talk to the professor. She always goes over time for seminar, so if you have a commitment afterwards it's not like you can stay after class to talk to her. And her assignments for our quarter-long project were so disorganized, we didn't know what the end result was supposed to look like until week 10 (leading to us having to change a bunch of our work last minute). Overall, this felt like a boring high school class with a poor teacher who doesn't want to be there.
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