Pre-Season InCivility

Another season of incivility has already begun, nearly four weeks before the quarter begins.    I doubt that students consider the impact of their pre-season demands.  I doubt that the concept of incivility crosses their minds.  

Regardless of whether they realize the impact of what they say, their pre-season demands become  my challenge to redirect to more socially acceptable norms while avoiding  appearances of being patronizing, condescending, disrespectful, invalidating, or otherwise disparaging of the student.  None of these effects are what I seek, but they are all to easy to stumble across in the strained world of professor-student relations.  

E-mail, by its very nature, is part of the incivility problem.  E-mail makes it all too easy to press "send" before rereading, proofreading, or even  thinking about how what is being said will be received.    The lack of face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact makes it rather easy to say more than should be said and to do so in a harsher tone than is wise for the objective of the communication.  Further, the number of students who have not discovered the value of using an appropriately professional greeting at the end of a business related note is on the rise.   A simple "Best", "Kind Regards", or some such end greeting can go a long way in softening the tone of a letter or offsetting a faux pas in the content of an e-mail.

A few of my pre-season e-mails will invariably address me as Mrs. Wilson or Miss Wilson.  While I am not particularly attached to my Ph.D., what I hear a student saying with a misplaced title like this is that he or she does not yet realize that the appropriate use of titles is a part of professionalism and that even professors, sub-human as they are, are professionals.   Alternatively, I hear that a student does not yet realize that even women teaching in technical fields at major universities have Ph.Ds.   

Once in a while, a student will comment on my doctor of philosophy, as if I should have a doctor of engineering.   Some will even go so far as to ask me how I ended up in engineering after getting a degree in philosophy.   I have not yet figured out the polite way to point out that Ph.D. stands for Doctor of Philosophy and even those males over yonder in the other offices have Doctors of Philosophy rather than the (apparently more respected) Doctors of Engineering.

At least one student each term will kindly inform me in the pre-season or one to two days after classes have started that he or she purchased a plane ticket in the months prior that allowed return to the classroom a week after classes start.  He or she will see little issue with asking me to spell out in a one-to-one, personally crafted e-mail what has been missed during this avoidable absence and how any assignments may be made up without any loss of grade or learning.

I will also have students who would like to file time-conflict petitions that allow them to take two classes with almost identical time slots.  More often than not, I am expected to make special arrangements (translation = more work, more preparation, more teaching) for these students to take both classes at once.   I am also expected to understand that the student can learn everything that the ordinary student can learn even when attending 50% or less of the classes.  I am expected to agree that yes, my teaching is of significantly small value that vastly reduced attendance will have little to no impact on student learning.

I will have other students who ask me to define the workload for them in such a way that it becomes OK to take the class.   While these students could read the course web pages and get a reasonable estimate of the workload from the information contained therein, I believe they ask anyway so that I will become wisely convinced to reduce the workload already determined and thereby provide validation of (their) 21-credit workload as an acceptable way to manage the undergraduate experience.   

Other students will want to take the course without a pre-requisite because of an undocumented experience that afforded the student the appropriate knowledge needed for the course.   I will almost always regret over-riding the pre-requisite because not only will the student be frustrated with his performance in the course but he will blame me for poor teaching.  Apparently, the Ph.D. allows me to magically divine what prerequisite piece the student did not know, and my overwhelming commitment to teaching allows me to quickly integrate the knowledge gained from student mind reading into my teaching for one student's benefit.   

In the pre-season, in the middle of the rush to prepare for the new term, these incivilities stream in, some born of naivete, some from disrespect, and some from entitlement.  Invariably, one or more balls I have in the air will fall to the ground, a request will go unmet, or a preparation made imperfect. 

That is the nature of pre-season chaos.   

The Off Season, Part 2

Like so many fellow Americans, I am so very often tantalized by technology...

When the pressure to teach is not lurking two inches from the top of my head, it is so very easy to be tempted to try another new technology as the panacea to my teaching woes.   It could be clickers, electronic textbooks, on-line problem sets, new lecture capture software, nifty electronic tablets made just to better the ordinary teacher, and so on and so forth and so on.  

In retrospect, I have to wonder if I had dispensed with technology altogether from the very first, what would I have done with the extra time and would I really have been the worse for it in my teaching?   I know such a thought approaches sacrilege in this society, but it is true that the student expectation for technology in the classroom has been on the rise for over two decades now, and the time invested in such technology by the teacher has climbed steadily alongside.     

It is not just a matter of mere time that would be saved by the absence of electronic mail. Electronic mail is akin to water torture.  It continues with its drip, drip, drip into my Inbox 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Many students expect not only that I will answer all of it but that I will answer it quickly and if I do not do so, I will be responsible for whatever was not known as a result of the failure to respond to the student.   As the drip, drip, drip into the Inbox continues, however, the mail bell (notification) takes the place of concentrated, extended deep thought on such non-essential things as pondering the larger pedagogy and diagnosing student misconceptions.  When did we get so obsessed with technology that answering the third rendition of "What's on the test?" from a student became more important than understanding what the student was likely to misunderstand on said test in the first place?

And web pages are not much better, akin to  running the fingernails down the old fashioned chalkboard.   After spending a long hard day preparing lecture notes, class activities, homework, tests, and a laundry list of other precursors to entering the classroom, I close my book, my notebook, and my eyes late in the evening, only to have them (the eyes) shoot back open again in panic.  Alas, I am not finished!  I must update the web pages with all this material as well.  I cannot expect that students will come to class and ensure they have all necessary materials. Thus, I must run a parallel and redundant preparation program via the world wide web, in the hopes that somehow  the student will find the necessary information to do what's expected in the course. Whatever happened to the student taking full responsibility, talking to friends and peers or even coming to office hours to round out his or her understanding of class logistics?   Regardless, in that moment of panic and weariness, when I think all is done when it is not, the reminder to update the web pages for the expectant student sounds just like fingernails raking down an old fashioned chalkboard.   

Of course, my view on technology is not one-sided.   But, just like electronic mail often gets in the way of the time and focus necessary to go deeper with my conventional foundation of teaching, so does electronic mail often get in the way of using technology to improve teaching rather than to pacify students.   Some technology steamrolls other technology just as it does my attention, my time, and my deeper thoughts.   And no technology, however fabulous or cutting edge, is any good in my teaching if I have not invested the underlying thought and pondering necessary to structure a course to support learning rather than only liking what I teach.  

Yet, in the off season, I succumb to society's fascination with technology.  I begin to believe that if I only I invested the time to understand the new lecture capture software, the new clickers, the new web tool…. if only I did that, my teaching would suddenly turn a corner into a paradise of both student learning and liking.   On an even better day, I'll believe that I can curb the use of electronic mail, limit the fanciness and functionality of web pages, so that I can release further time to teach, deeply, thoughtfully, and prayerfully.

Yes, right.  Enough of the philosophizing and waxing the ideal.   Now, where did I put that software I just bought for our next term?  Where's the tutorial?  Ah yes, it's all in an electronic mail here, somewhere.    

The Off Season, Part 0

Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) are returned to most faculty within six weeks of the end of the previous term.  In a quarter system, that means SETs come rolling into my not-so-eager hands during mid-January, mid-April, and mid-July of each year.   A golden rule of surviving to the next term is to never (and I mean never) read SETs during an active season of teaching.   Such a behavior is prone to tipping the scales, one way or another, to a point where humble teaching with a pure spirit becomes an impossibility.  

That leaves the off-season for reading and perusing SETs.  Another of my golden rules of teaching is to begin the process of reading SETs, however thorough or superficial such a reading may ultimately be, with a glass of wine nearby.   To protect against the toxicity of these things, I also keep the rest of the bottle nearby, within arm's reach in case an emergency arises.  As I open the envelope, a feeling of dread coursing through my veins at an ever-increasing pace, I will read the "numbers" sheet first, where the efforts of my heart are reduced to a single sheet of cold, clear, and impeccably accurate numbers.   

If the numbers are great, I will feel elated for a few brief and memorable moments.   But, then the feelings of being an imposter will quickly roll in, smothering the elation with feathers of shame.  I will know that this time, I was simply a fake.   This time, I have cleverly tricked students into liking my teaching, when the reality is that I am only fooling them.  The roller coaster of up, down, and in between numbers in terms gone by proves the true nature of my teaching.  While I may get lucky sometimes, no truly good teacher has such a large standard deviation as mine in her statistics profile of SETs.    As I peruse the great numbers, I will swallow the glass of wine and reach for another before cautiously proceeding to the yellow pages that follow.  The yellow pages are those with handwritten comments from each student regarding the details of the good, bad, and the ugly in my teaching.    I won't get any further work done that evening.

If the numbers are good but not great, I will first feel relieved.   I will neither feel a fake nor will I feel a failure.  I will feel delightfully ordinary.  Then, I will remember that when my colleagues of higher professorial rank and other promotion & tenure folks review these evaluations, nothing but the best numbers will go without comment.  As I remember this reality, the dread will creep back onto my radar, but it will do so slowly, with no accompanying rush of adrenaline.  This form of dread and deflation is manageable.   I will swallow the glass of wine and not reach for another.   I'll go on to the yellow sheets with the glass in my hand.   I may even get further work done that evening.  My husband may even see me smile again during such an evening.   If the numbers are good, life is almost good.  

If the numbers are horrible, the tears will immediately creep into my eyes before I can control my emotions.  If I'm lucky, I will have already been "invited" into the associate dean's office to discuss these evaluations.  The associate dean means no harm; she only wants to protect me from fall-out from the horrible numbers.  But, the shame starts anyway at the time she meets with me and by the time I open the evaluations, I have had time to adjust to the trauma of it all.  If I am unlucky, though, and no one calls me on the horrible evaluations before I open them, I will cry for quite a while before I move onto the yellow sheets.  I will want to quit teaching.  I will finish the glass of wine and move on to at least one other.   I won't get any other work done that evening.   

Regardless of their magnitude, after I am done scanning and absorbing the numbers, over-rated statistics that they may be, I will move on to the yellow pages in the SET package.  These contain handwritten student comments, those that detail the experience as perceived and reported by the students (in all objectivity, of course).  As I flip through the yellow pages,  I will filter out the bayonets, the knives, and the geese… from the rest.  

The bayonets are the comments that can shatter my morale and vaporize my motivation for an undetermined amount of time into the future.   One question on the yellow sheets asks students to hypothesize what could be done to improve future offerings of the course.  Responses like "Remove this professor from the university" qualify as bayonets.  These are the comments that tempt me to crawl under a rock for twenty odd years or more.   

The knives are the comments that are not only off topic but unnecessarily personal and simultaneously, do no one any good in future teaching effort (e.g. "She's not funny" -- What does my success at humor have to do with learning?).   I will try to discard the knives without further ado, but their residue lingers. They wound for no good reason.   

The geese (and wild ones at that) are the comments that tempt me to change the course or the teaching in the next offering (e.g. "More homework problems would be helpful.").  From past experience, however, I know that if I add more homework problems, the next round of yellow sheets will offer something like "Too many homework problems". Chasing wild geese like this can lead to an inordinate waste of preparation and pose an immense distraction from the real work of teaching. Tempting as it is, I drop these wild geese into the 'maybe, but probably not' bucket and move on.  The geese frustrate for no good reason and I will frequently doubt these dispensations to the maybe bucket.    

The rest of the comments are a combination of reasonable suggestions I should follow, suggestions I don't understand, and suggestions that bear no further classification.  From these, I simply try to find the one or two remaining useful nuggets that can improve the next offering of the course, my teaching, or both. 

At this point, having sorted through the yellow sheets, it really doesn't matter what the numbers said. Most of the bottle of wine is now gone.  

Such is what it takes to survive SETs, even when read during the off season.   

The Off Season, Part 1

The Off Season is that all too short time when I am neither teaching nor preparing nor recovering from the present, future, or present class(es).   

While I do a lot of thinking and reflecting during the off season, I also manage to concoct at least one dream for the future of my teaching career.   The dream will have little to do with reality but will nevertheless contribute to an ever-growing fantasy in my inner world where teaching goes well every single day of the term and students are both grateful and enlightened by the teaching experience I create for them.  It's a world where I can reach all students and all students know my heart and learn from my words.  When the season of teaching begins again, I will be immediately and  humbly reminded that my fantasy world is indeed far distanced from the reality of teaching.  

My fantasy world is a place where…  for the outstanding students, I can offer  something via the privilege of teaching them that they could not have learned or received on their own.  The offering may be simply the right affirmation of their abilities offered at the right time.  It may be the smallest of insights that allow them in their self-driven study to round out and perfect an understanding of the most complex concept.   It may be a small piece of global reality that prompts them to apply their dedication and smarts to make the world a better place.

My fantasy world is also a place where… for the worst performing students, I can offer insight into their abilities that makes them no longer worst, but talented in a unique way which traditional classes do not exploit.  I can have at least one moment with each of these students where I can figure out how they think, understand where the thought process has gone awry, and redirect it to the light bulb waiting at the end of the problem solving tunnel.

My fantasy world is also a place where… for the average students, I can know who they are well beyond a score near the mean on the most recent test.   For these students, I can see, understand, and feed back what makes each student special and offer unique encouragement through that insight.

My fantasy world is a place where all students feel valued, where all feel capable of learning, and where each knows something about who they are that makes them a unique contributor in this massive, complicated world but also a humble servant to the global problems that go along with the complexity. In my inner world, students can learn from me and I from them.  

Just as important as what I do and what I say, my fantasy world is also a place where I pray for all my students every week, with a heart that does not resent or reject their behavior, but simply seeks to grow beyond it.   

Of course, my fantasy world is a place where I have time to do all these things and more.    And this would be the #1 reason why it remains just that… a fantasy world!