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:
- They are experts in their discipline – that is, they know the subject matter they are trying to teach.
- 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.
- 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.
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