Tag Archives: pedagogy

What a Life

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Anyone out there? Anyone? Yes, still alive. Do note however, that I did not go so far as to say, “Alive and well.”

But there’s enough negativity in the air without me adding to it, so today I’m all unicorns and rainbows.

I just wrapped my semester of teaching first year writing and a course titled “Multicultural Perspectives in Classrooms”.

I’ve only told the inner circle, of which you are now a part, that it might have been my last rodeo.

So let’s fast forward to Grace, a first year writer, and the last day. Grace is a black belt in tae kwon do. In her paper on social infrastructure, she wrote beautifully about her tae kwon do studio where she grew up and now teaches.

There are two types of students, those genuinely seeking an education and those simply wanting certification. The later sacrifice curiosity for figuring out “what the teacher wants”. Other “tells” are how they tune out their classmates and focus intensely on grades. Not their fault I have to remind myself. Our factory model of education tends to socialize students to prioritize product over process, but I digress.

Grace was all education from the beginning. Her eyes locked on mine from the jump. Near the end of the last class, an informal day of peer editing small groups, she asked, “Do you have any more advice for us?” I thought that was sweet, since I understood her to be saying she didn’t want our time together to end.

Flashback. December 1993. Guilford College. Greensboro, NC. The end of my first college course, a small senior seminar. I waxed philosophic for probably ten minutes using as many ginormous words as I could muster. Reminding my students of all they had been blessed to learn under my tutelage.

At the very end of the sermon, a hand. “Ah,” I thought, “Josh is going to thank me for changing his life.”

“Dude! You have a pierced ear!” Josh’s observation inspired his classmates to chime in on why the hell I had never worn it to class. Things quickly spiraled down. In the end, no one thanked me for the sermon or for changing their lives.

Back to Grace. Still haunted by Josh, in response to her question I said, “No, not really.” The look of disappointment inspired me to add, “Well, just keep doing exactly what you are and you will flourish.” Weak, I know.

An hour later, I was making a quiet get-a-way. As I entered my car and looked across the parking lot to see if I could pull out, there was Coleton, Hudson, and Lily walking side-by-side in my direction. All three of my first year writers smiled at the surprise interaction. I lowered my window and asked whether Coleton, wearing short sleeves in December, ever gets cold, and we made some more small talk. I had no idea they were friends outside of class, a class whose theme was “The Art and Science of Human Connection”. Obviously, they had connected. “My work here is done,” I thought to myself.

During that final week, after recycling a quarter century of paperwork, I texted the Good Wife, “My take-away. I’ve done a lot of good work. For a long time.”

Then Makida, a talented young writer from Ethiopia, wrote me. “I wanted to let you know how grateful I am for the incredible impact you’ve had on my first semester. It’s been almost six years since I had a teacher who made me love learning as much as you have; my 7th-grade chemistry teacher was the last, and he has always been a special figure in my life. You remind me of him in the best way, with your encouragement, kindness, and ability to bring out the best in your students.”

And Jordan. “Thank you for providing a space of enlightenment and discomfort for my brain this semester. I feel as if I had the ability to grow a lot.”

And Emma. “I’ve had a hard time putting my appreciation for you and your class into written words. This was my last semester at PLU, and I feel so grateful to have had a chance to learn from you before my undergraduate journey came to an end. I typically struggle in humanities classes because I’m not a very talkative student; but something about the way that you structured your course made it easy for me to participate and engage. You have an accepting and approachable energy that makes your students feel comfortable having brave conversations in class. . . . I’ve taken a lot of difficult classes at PLU, but none of them challenged me in the ways that this course did. I came into this semester thinking I knew a lot about education from my mom, but I never realized just how much there was to learn. You said on the first day of class that the skills we would learn in EDUC205 would be useful in many different careers and areas of our lives. While I still don’t know if I’ll ever teach, I know that I’ll use the lessons I learned in your class to make an impact on the world in some way. I think that regardless of their vocation, everyone should take a class like this. The multicultural introspection and reflection that I experienced was more valuable to my career as a physician than any biology course I’ve taken in my time at PLU.”

These messages made me want a do-over with Grace, but it was too late. In hindsight, my advice to her and her classmates would have been to pursue work that does more than provide economic security. Find work that enables you to make a positive difference in others’ lives. Work that enables you to express your values. Work that is mutually rewarding. Do that, and you won’t consider it work.

My Complicity in Civilization’s Decline

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I like to think my teaching makes a small positive difference in the world. That my students learn new things they deem meaningful, that they become a bit more curious about the world, and incrementally more caring towards others. Most enjoy my decidedly informal approach towards teaching which has been shaped by Quaker education principles and Ira Shor’s teaching (Critical Teaching and Every Day Life and When Students Have Power).

That aside, Molly Worthen, an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina, has me rethinking my three decades as an educator. In a New York Times essay titled “U Can’t Talk to UR Professor Like This” she argues that the teacher-student relationship depends on a

“special kind of inequality” and that insisting on traditional etiquette is . . . simply good pedagogy.”

In the end, she impugns professors like me for being on a first-name basis with students who are all adults.

Worthen:

“The facile egalitarianism of the first-name basis can impede good teaching and mentoring, but it also presents a more insidious threat. It undermines the message that academic titles are meant to convey: esteem for learning.”

Worthen leans on a math professor friend who argues,

“More and more, students view the process of going to college as a business transaction.”

The suggestion being my type of classroom informality is the reason students. . .

“see themselves as customers, and they view knowledge as a physical thing where they pay money and I hand them the knowledge, so if they don’t do well on a test, they think I haven’t kept up my side of the business agreement.”

A pretty heavy trip to lay at the foot of classrooms like mine.

“Values of higher education,” Worthen explains, “are not the values of the commercial, capitalist paradigm.”

So faculty like me are to blame for the corporatization of higher education, but that’s not the worst of my offenses. Worthen also states that professors should take the time to teach students how to relate to authority figures not just as preparation for a job.

“The real point,” she explains, “is to stand up for the values that have made our universities the guardians of civilization.”

I never realized it, but ultimately I guess, by encouraging my students to use my first name, I’m complicit in civilization’s decline.

I don’t begrudge Worthen her formality, but I don’t understand her stridency. Who knows why she can’t accept the fact that teaching excellence takes many forms. Tucked in the middle of her essay is one paragraph that resonated with me:

“Alexis Delgado, a sophomore at the University of Rochester, is skeptical of professors who make a point of insisting on their title. ‘I always think it’s a power move,’ she told me. ‘Just because someone gave you a piece of paper that says you’re smart doesn’t mean you can communicate those ideas to me. I reserve the right to judge if you’re a good professor.’”

Worthen writes about “esteem for learning” without acknowledging what most undermines that, unrelenting grade grubbing. I believe the more formal faculty are, the more likely students are to “give them what they want”. Passivity is so engrained in students by college, any hope for a genuine questioning of authority, especially the professor’s, requires an intentional informality. Forget the guardian of civilization bullshit, I just want students to speak and write more authentically. Passing on using my formal title is a means towards that end. It isn’t a panacea for heightened student authenticity, but it’s not the root of all problems in higher education or Western Civilization either.