Learning to Love One's Students

Nearly two years ago, I attended a panel at the APA Eastern hosted by the American Association for Philosophy Teachers. The topic of the panel was how to deliver a teaching demonstration during a campus visit. (An overview of the panel’s content can be found in this post on the APA Blog.)

While attending that panel, I was struck by what David Concepción said about job candidates. He said that the best candidates had three crucial features:

1. They are experts in their discipline – that is, they know the subject matter they are trying to teach.
2. They are experts in pedagogy – that is, they know what teaching techniques work and they know how to implement good teaching techniques in the classroom.
3. They love their students. This isn’t anything as idealistic as brotherly or familial love. Instead, it refers to taking genuine enjoyment in interacting with students and having an appropriate empathy and compassion for them as people.

David mentioned that virtually everyone who gave a teaching demo had the necessary expertise in their disciplinary area and often also had sufficient pedagogical expertise. But it was rare to see people who genuinely loved their students. He also stressed that he thought this was the most important characteristic of a good teacher.

I eventually got a chance to speak during the Q&A and said something like the following, “David, you mentioned that you regard loving your students as the most important trait of a good instructor. How do you cultivate that trait if you don’t have it?” It felt like an awkward question to ask, but from the reaction of those seated around me, many had been wondering the same thing.

There are some who have an innate love of teaching and can forge powerful connections with their students quite easily, but not all of us are like that. It’s not that we come to graduate school and just hate teaching or loathe interacting with students – usually, it’s because our expectations regarding what we’ll teach our students and how they’ll react are grossly unrealistic. For instance, when I started graduate school, I assumed A-level students would be producing work comparable to what I produced when I was an undergraduate. I realize now that was a ludicrous assumption: I was a philosophy major, and I went onto graduate school in the field – that alone means my ability level was well above the typical A-level student in most philosophy courses.

There are also times when student interactions strain our patience. Answering email inquiries about issues addressed in the course syllabus is a particular pet peeve of mine. We also probably all remember our first significant grade dispute where a belligerent student seems to have a complaint about literally every comment made on their exam. Occasionally, you also have to deal with cases of plagiarism – a tedious, sad, and stressful process for both you and the student. And perhaps most significantly of all, no matter what you do, it seems like a portion of your students just don’t give a damn about your class. They attend reluctantly (if at all) and fiddle with their phones for the entire class period or do something that similarly reflects disengagement (e.g., not participating in group activities, listening to music through headphones). All these things add up to a simple reality: for some of us, it’s really hard to love our students.

Despite all that, I suspect that David is right in thinking that it’s one of the most important features in a quality instructor. So how did he answer my question? How do we learn to love our students if we aren’t innately disposed to do so?

What was most interesting about David’s answer is that most of it concerned what not to do. He highlighted a number of tendencies we have to view our students as inferior or worse – annoying, stupid, irresponsible, and so on – because of the quality of work they produce. Making such judgments hinders our ability to really care about our students and enjoy interacting with them in the ways necessary to teach well.

David spend a considerable amount of time condemning student bashing, drawing in part on a short article by John Gottcent written in 1999. (The article is titled “On the Time-Honored Tradition of Student Bashing” and can be found in volume 8, issue 3 of The National Teaching and Learning Forum.) I would define student bashing as the process of disparaging student work during the grading and evaluation process. There are moments when we can’t help but laugh or be puzzled by what our students write – that’s probably unavoidable – but using our students’ work as a basis for tearing them down in the eyes of our colleagues is not so involuntary and much more harmful. David characterized it as the academic equivalent of bullying. When we engage in this practice, we are making fun of our students for their intellectual inferiority and doing it behind their backs.

I imagine that student bashing occurs at all levels of instruction, but graduate students are particularly susceptible to it. As a teaching assistant, you will probably aid the professor of a large lecture class along with a few others and be saddled with a large amount of grading. Grading is not fun, and grading bad student work is even less fun. Student bashing is tempting because it makes the process a little more enjoyable, it can serve as a kind of bonding experience among the teaching assistants (at least if everyone participates), and it makes you feel intellectually superior to others – no small benefit in an environment where your work faces constant scrutiny and criticism.

All that said, David was right to condemn the practice. Putting aside the obvious point that it just seems disrespectful to your students (and unethical on those grounds), it is professionally counterproductive because it cultivates pedagogical vices that one should avoid. The practice encourages you to see your students as flawed and inferior and to view their work as lacking merit or value. If you make this a habit, it can seep into your interactions with them and the way you teach in the classroom. These attitudes are not consistent with trying to love your students.

Such negative judgments are also probably unjustified. There are certainly some students who do not prioritize your class appropriately or do not care about doing well in it, but it’s a mistake to characterize the majority of students that way. Such a perception is not consistent with reality. Many of our students are struggling to make ends meet, trying desperately to manage a full-time job with their studies. Others have significant disabilities that hinder their learning experience but that they do not disclose for fear of the social stigma attached to being viewed as disabled. Some are in a similar situation regarding a mental illness, and others are just struggling to cope with a failing personal relationship or a difficult family life.

Of course, avoiding the pitfalls mentioned above is not enough to cultivate the desired disposition. David made two further suggestions in his presentation that may help:

• Be learner-centered. An instructor who is learner-centered approaches each class by asking what the students need to be asked, what needs to be done with them, or what needs to be done for them if they are to learn as much as possible on a given day. Approaching pedagogy this way requires a significant amount of concern for your students’ needs, so it facilitates caring about them.
• Be humble. In part, this means that you acknowledge when you make mistakes, but it also means that demonstrate a willingness (through your actions and not just through words) to improve your teaching and a belief that you can do so. Exhibit curiosity about pedagogical matters, and solicit student feedback about what they think works best or what doesn’t.

Based on my own experiences, I would also add these suggestions:

• Make an effort to interact with students outside of class. Be available for office hours frequently, and always be available when you say you will be available. Require students to visit your office hours as an assignment or encourage it with an offer of a point or two of extra credit. Getting to know them a little outside the context of your classroom goes a long way toward viewing them as the multidimensional human beings that they are.
• Avoid shaming students for what they do wrong. It’s fine to be a tough grader and to impose harsh penalties for lateness or a failure to follow directions, but that does not require trying to make students feel bad about their mistakes. You’re not in position to know why those mistakes were made, so resist the temptation to make such judgments. Remember that students are people just as we are and that all people make mistakes now and then.
• Assume that your students have interesting things to say. Do not approach class discussion like you already know everything that’s going to be said. It’s hard to love your students when you’re indifferent to what they have to say. Instead, expect your students to be creative and expect to learn something new about the subject matter during discussion.
• Remember that your class is not the top priority for most of your students. A typical student in an undergraduate philosophy course will be taking 3-4 other classes, majoring in a different subject area, and participating in a few extracurricular activities. Students are not all philosophically minded academic hermits, and your interactions with them should reflect that fact. Be mindful of their circumstances, and do not be dismissive of the interests they have that go beyond your course.

I imagine that many other items could be added to this list – feel free to suggest some in the comments – but those are the things that have worked best for me. Following these guidelines and making a conscientious effort to care about your students and enjoy interacting with them can make a big difference. Of course, it it still takes a lot of time and effort to cultivate the proper disposition, but that’s no different than trying to cultivate any other virtue.

The good news is that even for those of us who are not naturally inclined to love our students, trying to do so is not a lost cause: habituation can get us there eventually.

 

Acknowledgment: Thanks to David Concepción for feedback on an earlier version of this post.

Comments

[Skef]

I know this isn't on-topic, but I think a nuts-and-bolts summary and/or discussion on teaching demonstrations would be a good thing. (Though searching the site, it looks like you tried to get one going in 2013 and no one responded.) This is a topic that one finds much more meta-level discussion about than object-level discussion.

I've heard that some schools insert people into an existing class while others don't. A one-off class is kind of a strange thing. Does the university generally pick the topic, or does the applicant? Some kind of basic "in philosophy, this is what a teaching demonstration generally involves" summary would be a useful resource.

[Amanda]

Hi Skef,

On all my interviews my teaching demonstrations were in real classes. Some let me pick the topic and others gave me the topic.

Trevor great post! One thing I try to remember is that given most students lives, there is NO reason they should care about my class much. I need to MAKE my class the sort of experience that they can't help but care about. Another thing I notice is way too many grad students are too hard on students, and expect them to be like the instructor was as an undergrad. But as you say those of us who go to grad school are very UNLIKE the average student. I try to be easy going with excuses, late assignments, and so on. My job is not to judge my student on how they live their life but teach them philosophy and then assess what I taught. Some professors pride themselves in hard grading. However, if students don't improve much throughout the semester, the problem is with the instructor.

[recent grad]

This is a very important post. I can't emphasize enough how toxic resentment is to my teaching--both to its effectiveness and to how enjoyable it is to me. Whenever I start to resent my students--for their phones, their work ethic, their anti-intellectualism, their inability to follow instructions, etc.--my teaching becomes a chore and the students begin to disengage. It is only when I have compassion for them that I find myself in a place where the course becomes worth my time or theirs. So I will be coming back to this post in the future.

[tracker]

David Concepción's article on how to read philosophy is gold.

I concur with Amanda's point that we need to MAKE our classes matter to the students (although we all wish our students were just like us...). One book I'm reading now, Creating Significant Learning Experiences (L. Dee Fink), is a nice How-To guide for doing just that.

[Lauren]

On teaching demos: I had three of these last year. One was for a pre-existing class with an assigned topic, one was for a pre-existing class where I got to choose the topic, and one was for a made-up class full of students plus faculty on the topic of my choosing. So, with my limited sample size, I would say there is no one way that teaching demos are done.

[Skef]

Lauren: Did you find that the different situations called for different responses or emphases? My guess would be that an existing class is about the same regardless of topic, but the made-up class would be weird for the lack of any existing dynamic, and might need a lot more ice-breaking to get anywhere.

[Chris]

Thanks for a great post!!

Here is a technique I have used to generate empathy for students who may fall short of expectations or make my class a low priority: I try to think of similar areas in my life where I have chosen to take something which is objectively quite important, and make it a low priority for some reason.

For example, at various times for me, this has been the case with my finances, my diet, my exercise, etc. Even though the bank sends lots of updates (= the syllabus), I don’t read most of them and call the bank with questions which I am sure were explained in their materials. Even though health is of great importance, I sometimes skip exercise (= course assignments) for a few week, and then try to catch up.

This helps to remind me that I am not that different from my students...

[Trevor Hedberg]

@Chris -- one of the main points against student bashing made in that article by John Gottcent is that it's hypocritical. He argues that many of the same complaints we lodge against students could also be lodged against faculty members. Remembering that can indeed be a helpful strategy for empathizing with our students' circumstances.

[Derek Bowman]

"Remember that your class is not the top priority for most of your students. ... Be mindful of their circumstances, and do not be dismissive of the interests they have that go beyond your course."

This is an important point, but we should note that it cuts both ways. Acknowledging our students' other commitments need not mean cutting them slack on deadline or course requirements. It can instead mean recognizing (and helping them to recognize) that poor performance in your class is not a moral failing and may not be all that important to them.

Thus enforcement of the rules can be presented in a matter of fact way that is perfectly consistent with caring about and even liking the students as individuals.

Similarly, while it's certainly true that if (all/most) student don't improve that may reflect poorly on you as an instructor, some students may not improve simply because they have (perhaps quite reasonably) chosen to give your class less attention than would be required to improve.

[Amanda]

Hi Derek,

I agree with you about not all students improving. I have a different view on deadlines and the like. I believe the world is better if we all cut each other slack on this. I know in the world of professional philosophy there is rarely any consequence for missing deadlines, at least in my experience. A number of employers are becoming more lax about this as well. And I think this is all for the better. An easy going world is a better world in my opinion. In addition, I just don't see it my job to judge students on things other than philosophy. There is a limit of course. If students consistently miss deadlines without any reason that won't fly. But basically on a first pass I give everyone a pass. I am not suggesting all instructors should be like me. And I make clear to my students the slack I am giving them would not be given anywhere. I believe we should each teach in accordance with our own judgement, and students benefit from a variety of styles. However I just wanted to offer my reasons for my own strategies.