Sing-Foong Cheah

Sing-Foong Cheah had a rough time of it during her first semester at SFSU. I was sometimes frustrated with her teaching as she tried, not always successfully, to accomodate herself to teaching students at SFSU. She unfortunately had not acquainted herself with the prerequisites for the class and occasionally expected us to have had material we hadn't had, though she backed down whenever we objected. Still, this was frustrating when it happened because it synched up with the students' general consensus that she had unrealistic expectations. And occasionally, as a new teacher, she would get incredibly frustrated with our collective poor performances in exams, for instance, and do things like berate us about what were we doing with our lives and why weren't we studying harder. In the process she managed to alienate a lot of students in the class, even though I think the real motivation for this was a real despair on her part that we weren't all taking this topic seriously and many students in this class just seemed to have given up.

As someone who took the time to go see her in office hours, I saw a different side of Sing-Foong, a concerned and helpful person who really wants to be a good teacher. And sometimes in class, she was excellent--using real-life examples, bringing in newspaper articles to illustrate chemistry concepts, going over concepts step by step. She is clearly developing as a teacher; it is not clear to me when she will become a great teacher, and it may not be right away, but I genuinely believe she is headed in the right direction. And the ultimate testimonial is that when I was in next semester's O. Chem in the part where O Chem reviews Chem 113 materials, I was substantially better prepared than other students who'd had other teachers. Do the work, don't get intimidated, and try to let her stormy periods blow over, and you'll do fine.