How to teach college #19: Happy thoughts

Most of these are things I dreamed up and consciously started doing in response to a teaching challenge. This one isn't; this is a pattern I noticed in myself, and made some decisions about, because it can be a hard one to get right.

First thing: you don't belong in teaching if you don't get attached to your students. I read blogs and other public writings of far too many professors who describe their students the way prosecutors describe defendants. It's wall-to-wall condemning, with no trace of patience or balance. They often repeat that they're just venting, which is not much of an excuse, given how thoroughly the venting hypothesis has been debunked.

That's not a call to put on a fake smile and lie to myself (or yourself) about students who are hard work. Some get on my nerves and test my patience, especially the ones who behave in very selfish ways, or are unkind to their classmates. And in hallway conversations with my colleagues, I do my share of complaining about specific episodes. But anyone who teaches has to keep those frustrations in perspective, and balance the unenjoyable moments with the good ones, and even with the big middle that's not necessarily wonderful, but not terrible either. Students, especially emerging adult college students, are a work in progress, and what I see is not their job-interview, meeting-the-parents, best behavior. I get the messy version of them that pressure and exhaustion brings out. And when I keep that in mind, and also remember what the messy version of me was like at that age, it helps.

But the pattern I noticed in myself was how my enjoyment of specific students shaped up. It's a bad idea and wrong to play favorites, but it's impossible not to have favorites. But there's a weird little split in the set of my favorite students, and that distinction has something to do with longevity in this profession. But there's also a danger that I have to be very careful to steer entirely clear of.

First things first: my favorite kind of student to teach is not the smartest student who gets the highest grades. I believe this line appears in at least one of my previous posts, but I've had students in class to whom I could just give the textbook, and fifteen weeks later ask "What did you learn?" and they'd do fine. They're smart, they're capable, and sometimes they're downright likable. But my only role in their college experience is to confirm how smart they are and record the grade, which doesn't flex any of my teaching muscles.

My favorite kind of student to teach is someone who has a measure of grit, determination, a work ethic, and curiosity. It's also nice if they're level headed and dependable. Most of all, I enjoy it if what I teach is honestly difficult for them, but they have the intellectual humility to ask for help and make use of it. I've had a few over the years, and they're a scruffy looking lot with fairly low GPAs, and sometimes personalities that aren't very compatible with mine, but their attitude and work habits are wonderful, and I write them glowing recommendations. The recommendations have to be carefully crafted, because I have to make clear to a prospective employer that my former student might well struggle with things, but that they struggle excellently, and they grind down challenges with good old fashioned hard work, not making excuses, not blaming anyone when they get stuck. When I have a student like that, I have a blast teaching them. I don't always view them as pleasant company, but to my teacher brain, they're caviar.

But they aren't my happy thoughts.

I'm borrowing the term from Peter Pan, and especially from Hook. I've had about a dozen students in the twenty-eight years I've done this who were such positive influences on me that I looked forward to classes that they were in. It's hard to pin down just what it is that makes a student my happy thought, because some were hard workers, some were likable, some were teachable, and one or two were even extremely smart students with a 4.0, despite what I wrote above. I've never had more than one at the same time, and I've gone several years between them. But when I have one, they're the best treatment for burnout I can think of. On the days that teaching is frustrating and absurd, I can say to myself Yeah, but because I do this job, I get to hang out twice (or three times) each week with the particular student. And sometimes at the end of a really rough day, I say to myself but next Thursday (for example) I've got class with the student.

Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if this creeped you out.

I wouldn't blame you if you read the above and thought I was doing a terrible job of maintaining boundaries. But bear with me, because I'm far from finished. I am equally aware that maintaining boundaries is absolutely essential, partly for my job security, partly for the well-being of the student (about which more pretty soon) and partly just because it's the right thing to do. And for that reason, every time I realize a student of mine is a happy thought, I get absolutely ruthless with myself about not playing favorites, not overcorrecting and cracking down on the student, but steering a straight course between those two infractions. It makes me teach a lot more mindfully, gauging how that student is getting called on, answered, receiving assignments, getting leeway, and how that compares to all their classmates. Because I do a lot of strenuous mental work when that situation arises, I actually think it's a pretty healthy exercise that makes me look carefully at my treatment of all my students.

But most of all, I do not tell the student. I don't tell them at the time, and I don't tell them after they graduate.

I don't tell them at the time for the same reason I talked about in Bushnell's chapel earlier this year. As though we didn't have enough society-wide relational pathologies already, there is a worrying trend of adult children cutting off contact with their parents. There are a lot of different causes in individual cases, but one fairly new stressor on the parent-child relationship compared to previous generations is that parents more and more are telegraphing to their children that the parent's happiness depends on their view of their parental success and the child's closeness to them. It is not healthy for children to feel that they are responsible for their parents' happiness, and where they know that they are, the relationship very often can't survive that kind of pressure.

So, am I saying my relationship with my students is parent-child? Nope, nothing remotely close to that. But one element teaching has in common with parenting is that my role is to shelter my students, to give them safety to screw up in productive and constructive ways. I do have high expectations of my students, and I think healthy parenting also involves having some expectations that stretch and grow the child appropriately, but I also try with all my might to make clear to my students that if they blow it, if they suffer a setback, I will work alongside them to figure out what the best next step is.

I have plenty of students who have low academic self-efficacy, who tell me "I've never been a good student," and will take the slightest imaginary clue of failure as confirmation of what they, and probably other people, have said about their intelligence. I'm used to that problem, and trying to counterbalance it and help them believe in themselves goes with the job. When I see signs of progress, it's wonderful. But the last thing I need to do is emotionally hamstring students at the other end of my roster by giving them the thought, I am all that stands between my professor and terminal burnout. That's a kind of pressure they don't need. They have to believe that if they have a bad day, if they downplay a class with me to pay attention to other pressing needs in their life, if they size up their interests and decide to change major or drop a minor, that they're not somehow letting me down.

Incidentally, if you're reading this, and you're a current or former student of mine, don't bother asking if you were one of my happy thoughts. If I truthfully answer yes to some, then I have to say no comment to the ones who weren't, and we're just not going down that road at all. Assume I was fond of you, and leave it at that.

So the management of feelings of attachment to students can be a fussy and nuanced pursuit. Having favorite students is like pooping; it's inevitable, but best not discussed. And among favorites, the ones who are fun to teach are not always the ones who are just plain fun to be around. The latter group are part of what makes teaching fulfilling, but if they knew that they were, it would put damaging, distorting pressure on them, so I quietly enjoy the timespan when we're close, I tell them goodbye when they graduate, and I get back to work.