Learning from Students

Lest anyone be mistaken about my attitude about teaching and students and the work  involved, I feel fortunate to have participated in such a magnificent profession for decades. Can you think of any other career in which a person actually gets paid to read, write, and share ideas with people who are in the process of laying a foundation for their lives? To be honest, there are people who are in college because of parental expectations,  peer pressure, financial assistance, and a host of other reasons.

But (with a capital B), teaching is still a tremendously rewarding career for those with the right temperament, skills, and interests. Those are attributes for another day. Today I want to spotlight the heart and soul of it all: students.

Right now I’m thinking of a near meltdown I had on I-95 coming back from a fun family weekend in GA when I learned of the brutal murder of one of my former students, a beautiful, sassy, spirited young wife and mother. We had become Facebook friends, and I enjoyed reading about her interactions with her patients, her many mission trips, and her strong faith. One day I realized I hadn’t seen any posts from her in a while and consequently checked her page. Stunned, her cover was a photograph taken at her memorial service held several weeks earlier. Although there was no mention of it, I knew who had taken her life. Cruising along I-95 nearly a year later, my niece confirmed it and gave me the horrific details.

It’s okay to care. Students are people too.

And then there was the young woman who often slept in the back of the classroom, the back right corner. Was I annoyed? Sure, sometimes, but I felt like I needed to cut her some slack. One day, she awoke, stood up shakily, and lumbered toward the door. Somewhat amused, I asked “Are you leaving us, Lola?” She turned around and announced, “No, I got to go to the bathroom.” Some people giggled, others looked momentarily uncomfortable, but others had the par for the course attitude. Lola returned, stumbled back to her corner desk, and continued her nap.

It was a problem, yes, and one I intended to address before the following class. But she didn’t return—not for the next class or the one after that.  I later learned that she had been stabbed to death by her boyfriend. True story. Someone in a night class shared that she had been awakened in the night by the screams of the student’s mother who lived in a nearby mobile home and had come home to discover her daughter’s lifeless body. The class and I had “a moment,” several of them actually, as we processed this information.

Students have outside lives that creep into the classroom.

Let’s end this on a happy note. One semester there was this angry looking young man in a morning class. His everyday look seemed to say, “Go ahead, try to teach me something.” What have I done to warrant such glares? I wondered. One day, there was a little extra something about his appearance—gloomy on top of irritated. I handed him his paper back and commented that he didn’t look very happy. He looked up at me with a doleful expression that pierced my heart and said, “Oh, Mrs. Bowers, my little puppy is so sick, and I hated to leave her this morning.” Taken aback and surprised by his humanness, I told him I was sorry. He lowered his head and said he could think of nothing else.

His puppy lived and I was reminded not to make snap judgments.

The above are just three examples that came to mind this morning, and they all have something in common. Love? Maybe love and maybe just caring and compassion—ingredients common to all decent teachers.

How When to Fold ‘Em

I can’t say for sure when it began, this feeling that it’s time to move on. I first noticed it earlier this summer at Horry Georgetown Technical College, Conway campus. I had gone there for a book signing, and since I had a few minutes before the signing was scheduled to officially begin, I went for a stroll through one of the buildings where I used spend a lot of time. My office(s) were always in that building, and for a couple of decades, that’s where most of my classes were held too.

That summer afternoon I located the office of an old friend, and as I approached the door, I saw that it was shut, and I could hear a conference call taking place on the other side. Disappointed that I wouldn’t get to chat with my former colleague, I turned away and began walking towards the hallway. That’s when I saw a young woman of about 30 looking at me.

“Ma’am, can I help you find something?”she asked.

“No thanks,” I told her. “I’m not lost.”

I realized with a little twinge that I had been working at the college before that child was even born and that I had stood in that spot on plenty of yesterdays. In fact, the doorway where she stood was outside of the office where I been interviewed by Tom Reid, the man who hired me to teach four sections of English. He got promoted and moved to a bigger, nicer office with a window view. I knew several other people who later occupied that space, including a friend of mine who held the position of dean of students on an interim basic. Sure glad walls can’t talk! They’ve have some stories to tell.

Then I went for a stroll down the main hall of the 200 building and I saw every classroom filled with high school students who are part of an early college entry program. I passed the lecture room and remembered that we used to have faculty meetings there. It’s ludicrous to think about such a thing today. There are so many employees and so many departments and so many campuses!

Gee Whiz. So many changes. Back in the day, none of us dreamed that Automotive Technology would fall by the wayside and that Nursing, Dental Hygiene, and Culinary Arts would become popular programs. There are even online faculty who never set foot on campus. Twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have known what online meant. Something straight and to the point?

On my way back to where the book signing was to take place, I couldn’t resist walking down a narrow hallway where I once had an office. There was a young woman working there who looked up as I passed by. How many hours had I spent on that very hallway and how many people had I glanced up at with that same look of, “I hope you aren’t going to interrupt me” on my face? Where were my former buddies, my hall mates?

Back at the bookstore for the EVENT, I mentioned to one of the employees that the bookstore used to be the library. She was a polite young woman who said, “Oh really?” I knew she was just being mannerly and that she didn’t care one iota about the many changes that had taken place at the college. But me? Well, I could feel the ghosts of students and employees of yesterday all around me. Where was BB these days?

I didn’t sell many books that day, but I did get to talk with several former colleagues and meet some new people. But best of all, the events of the afternoon awakened some unconscious thoughts lurking just beneath the surface. That afternoon signals the beginning of my humming some lines from Kenny Rogers’ song, “You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em….”

What about you, Dear Reader? Have you ever had feelings or inner “promptings” telling you when it was time to move on to another chapter in your life?

End of Semester

 

Another semester is coming to an end. The students probably don’t think about the fact that although we’ve been together at the same time and in the same place for nearly four months, we’ll never be together in that same way again. Quite honestly, I never thought about it as a college student either.

And now that I am thinking about it, it was of no consequence whether I saw any of my professors again. Not that they were bad people but rather that we had each fulfilled our end of the bargain and so it was time to part. That’s not to say that I didn’t learn a lot because I did…and not just about the subject matter either. In no particular order, here are a few snapshots of teachers and what I learned from them apart from the subject matter.

Dr. Dolittle taught me the importance of getting your work in on time every time. Whether your car broke down, your sister-in-law spilled coffee on your paper, or you had the flu and couldn’t raise your head didn’t matter to him. Excuses don’t count. Get your work in on time.

Mrs. Piaget awakened me to the beauty of the melodic French language, not because of the drill and tests but because of the way she said “Je suis” and “Bon jour” in such an enthusiastic way. I marveled at this lovely language and the fact that people in other parts of the world used such morphemes and phonemes to express their thoughts. There’s much of beauty and wonder in the world that you might surely miss if you’re close-minded. Sometimes it just takes the right person to kindle the spark.

Dr. Hyde  taught me that there were some unreadable, enigmatic people  among the faculty. On the last day of class, he brought a dozen or so history books to class and stacked them on his desk at the front of the room. “Know everything in your text and everything in these books, and you might pass the course,” he said with a maniacal laugh. Although we were all a bit anxious, everyone passed the course. Some people have barks worse than their barks, and you have to look, listen, and learn for keys to their personalities.

And the math professors? Well, I’ve managed to suppress memories of them. Never good in math, taking the required math courses was a necessary evil (in a manner of speaking). If you want the prize (in this case a degree), then you have to “just do it.”  

Then in graduate school, there was a guy (can’t even call him a teacher) who was so hateful that not only would he give you a lower grade than you knew you deserved, but his answer to your queries was always, “It’s not what I was looking for.” He embarrassed so many people in class that soon we stopped participating. Some people are so bitterly unhappy that they use others as scapegoats, and you have to learn to recognize this and deal with it somehow, knowing that you can do anything for a little while.

And how could I forget Dr. Honeysuckle? Not only did she enlighten her sociology students with her rich and “up close and personal” stories of traveling in Japan and India, but she also invited our class to her home to enjoy ethnic food. Decades later, I can still recall sitting in her living room as we sampled a sweet desert (imarti, I think) and marveled at the variety of people and customs in the world. Teachers who are passionate about their fields can light fires.

Everyone reading this post has had teachers. I know this because you can read. Thinking back, what are some life lessons that you learned from a teacher? I read once that John F. Kennedy said you could learn something from anybody, even if it was how not to act. Come on, share something.

It Was I

While I didn’t like being corrected for improper pronoun use in front of my 5th grade peers, it’s a lesson I’ve never forgotten.

Electronic Efficiency???

I’ve come a long way, Baby.  As I entered final grades for three of my summer classes today, I couldn’t help but remember how much times have changed.

In the not too far distant past, my colleagues and I would actually use pen and paper to enter grades, and then we’d sign each grade sheet and turn them in to the Registrar.  She and her staff would spend much of the weekend entering all grades for all classes. Now those folks busy themselves with other tasks while the faculty input grades on computers on and off campus.  Some might even do it from the Bahamas or in their p.j.’s or at 4:00 o’clock in the morning.

Back in the day, I used hard copy roll books, mimeograph machines, and 16 millimeter films that were forever flying off the reel. Today I use an electronic grade book, a copy machine, and YouTube videos. Incidentally, if one of my students majoring in Computer Science hadn’t made a teasing remark about my little black grade book, I might still be using (and misplacing) it. And about that copy machine, I don’t even have to be standing nearby; with a couple of keystrokes, I can send material down the hall or even across the street to be copied. I used to use a calculator to average grades, but these days I put a formula into Excel, and final averages are computed automatically.

As I reflect on all these changes, I’m not sure whether they’ve made things more efficient or not. For instance, I used to have several folders, one for each of my classes. Then there were the folders related to subject matter, and I had dozens of those. Recently, I peeped in a folder with “Communication” written on the tab and was almost embarrassed at the “handouts” within; they all seemed so simplistic and unoriginal when compared to the plethora of material available within seconds on the web.  Today all files and folders are on the computer or on one of my several flash drives. The nice beige file cabinet in my office serves as a repository for my purse, old test papers, outdated videos, floppy discs, framed certificates, and other miscellaneous “stuff” that I can’t seem to part with.

I’ve been at Central Carolina for eight years, and the first year or so that I was there, I relied on a cart that I pushed from classroom to classroom. The cart held a proxima and computer, and I’d always have to get to class early enough to set everything up. Things went fine unless I brought the wrong floppy. Then too, there was the ever present challenge of placing the equipment in just the right place so that no one’s sight would be obscured. Many’s the morning that I’d think,  “Let’s just go back to chalk and talk!” Today I simply walk into a classroom and bring up power point from the course resource page on the web.

Am I more efficient? Is my teaching day more streamlined? Do I accomplish more in this electronic era than I did 15 or 20 years ago? I honestly don’t know. Yes, if the system is up and running. But then again, there’s such a thing as electronic overload. What’s your take on the subject?

Extra Credit at the Midnight Hour?

Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying. I just came across something that I wrote about this time last year. The semester had been a grueling one, and  well, read it for yourself. It’s all about patience and energy and love for students, all vital ingredients in being a successful teacher. A sense of humor helps too.

“It had been a long and incredibly exhausting semester. I had taught eight classes, three of them online, on different campuses, both day and evening. Forced because of budget issues to take a couple of furlough days, I decided to take them  during the week of exams. This worked out well since exams for these days were posted online for the students to take at one of the college testing centers.  I felt a strong hankering to see my grandchildren, so I hopped into the car and drove the three hours to their house.  For two full days, I worked and played and sang with the little munchkins before heading home. Tired from the semester, the drive to GA, and the busy time at my daughter’s house, I loaded my bags in the car and headed back to SC. 

The farther I got from her house, the more reality set in. Was I insane to have taken a trip with so many job demands on my plate? How would I organize my time to get everything posted by Thursday? About that time, my cell phone rang. Although I didn’t recognize the number, I answered it anyway. Mistake. It was a student who was “freaking out” because she wasn’t sure her test had been successfully submitted. When I assured her that it had, then she wanted to know the grade. “I’m on I-95 at the moment, and I don’t have access to a computer so I don’t know your grade,” I said.

“Will you call me back when you get home and have a chance to look it up?”

“No, but I’ll make sure it’s available for you to see. How’s that?”

She seemed satisfied with that, and I made a mental note to take care of that issue when I arrived home. I suppose I could’ve agreed to call her, but with 180+ students,  a person has to draw the line somewhere. I’m still wondering how she got my cell phone number.

I stopped at a Cracker Barrel for a drink and a muffin, and by the time I was ready to leave, the sky had fallen in. It was raining cats and dogs, and I had no umbrella. Oh well, I hadn’t taken the time to shampoo my hair this morning (have you ever helped to take care of four young children after sleeping with two of them???), so a little rain wasn’t going to hurt. Moments later, I was drenching wet but in the car at last.

The phone rang again. This time I recognized the number as that of one of the satellite campus of the college. Answering it, I heard Dee Dee’s upbeat voice, “Mrs. Bowers, I was wondering if you planned to stop by this campus today or tomorrow. The students have been driving us crazy about their journals. Six or seven have called, and a couple have come by today. I finally agreed to call you to find out.” After assuring her that I’d drop them by in the morning, I hung up. I’d spend about 15-16 hours (no exaggeration)  the previous weekend reading the journals, and I was as anxious to be rid of them as the students were to get them.

The next 50 miles or so were daunting as rain continued to pelt the windshield. It was so loud that listening to music was out of the question. Gripping the steering wheel and paying attention to nothing but the road, I made it to Sumter, a city about 30 miles from home. Stressed from the drive, the calls, the upcoming few days, and the prior semester, I told myself that I needed a little retail therapy so I pulled into one of my favorite haunts, TJ Maxx.

As I turned off the ignition, I noticed a cute little car with a pretty young woman pull into the spot facing me. Recognizing her as one of my students, I waved. She got out of her car and jauntily approached my window before I could even get my stuff together enough to get out of the car. Did I mention that I had not shampooed my hair that morning, that I had already had two calls about work, and that I had just driven through one of the worst thunderstorms in the history of SC?  All I wanted to do was wander through a couple of aisles and decompress a bit before driving the final stretch towards home.

Here’s our converstion:

“Hello Jennifer.” (not her real name)

“Hi Mrs. Bowers. I’m so glad to see you. I wrote you earlier today . Did you read my email?”

“No, I haven’t checked it since this morning.”

“Oh, okay. Well, here’s what I was wondering. After I saw my exam score, I averaged my grades, and if I drop the lowest grade and figure in the journal, it comes out to be to be 87.”

“Yes, I know,” I replied. “Great job. A B isn’t an easy grade to earn.”

“But I can’t live with a B. I need an A in that course. I have to get into the nursing program, and that B can really hurt me.”

“I’m not sure what you’re saying…or asking.”

Looking desperate and completely sincere, she said, “I’m asking if there’s anything I can do to get those three points. Anything. I’ll do anything.”

Can you picture that scene? Here I am sitting in the car, trapped by a student pleading for a grade she didn’t earn. My hair is dirty, my jeans have remnants of Emma’s lunch on them, and I’m tired from driving, driving, driving in the rain. All I want to do is get into the store for my stress relief before traveling the rest of the way home. But no. Here I am dealing with a pretty, perky young woman, a future nurse, who is imploring me to reconsider her final average. Sitting there in my most unprofessional attire and stressed by the events of the past several hours (days really), I did a song and dance about how those three points were not the same as points on a test but rather points on a average of all test and assignment grades. She just stood there looking cute and dejected.

 I pulled out my trump card. “Do you think it’d be fair to your classmates to ‘give’ you points at this juncture in the semester?”

“Oh, I don’t want you to give me anything,” Jennifer insisted. “I want to earn them.”

“Have you taken any of the extra credit quizzes that I’ve offered during the term?”

“No Ma’am.”

“Have you ever posted anything on the psychology blog? Remember, that was always an option for extra credit.”

“No, Ma’am.”

“And now at the midnight hour you want to make up for everything you could have been doing for 15 weeks?”

“I see what you mean,” she replied, downcast and disappointed. “But I just had to ask. I’ve been praying about it, and when I saw you parking here just as I was, well, I thought God had answered my prayer.”

“Sorry, I can’t do it. It’s not ethical.”

I could have given her a sermon about how maybe God wanted her to be reminded of the importance of working hard along and along, but I didn’t. I didn’t have the energy.  She recovered quickly, and smiling brightly, she flounced off into TJ Maxx. After putting on lipstick, combing my dirty hair, and putting on my Rainbows, I followed her into the store.

On a positive note, I found another little anniversary gift for my husband, and I didn’t get any more phone calls or encounter any more students that evening.  Through it all, I managed to keep a good attitude, post all grades, and successfully end the semester. A day or two later while sitting at graduation, I thought for the 97th time (or thereabouts) that although teaching requires much energy and patience, its rewards are stupendous.”

Vegetarians and Rednecks

Most good teachers love their subject matter and are constantly on the prowl for a different twist, new information, or novel way to present something. My sister Ann is a math teacher, the kind who can’t eat a bag of M & M’s without trying to figure out the proportion of red to brown morsels. My friend Martha is an English teacher who is currently pondering a way to bring psychology and literature together. As a psychology teacher, I’m ever alert to “real life” situations that exemplify concepts and theories, and recently a splendid example of memory failure presented itself.

Picture this. The other evening my husband and I went out to eat at a noisy, busy, buzzy restaurant, the kind with three dining rooms and a combination of booths and tables. We were seated at a booth that joined another and were so close to the people seated there that it was almost as if we were with their party. I felt like someone was looking at me, so I turned to the right, and sure enough, there was a young man (30ish) looking at me with an unabashed stare.

“What’s his problem?” I wondered. I tried unsuccessfully to ignore the penetrating glare and finally looked at him as if to ask, “What????”

“Did you ever teach at Spartanburg Methodist College?” he asked.

“No, never,” I replied,  trying to study the menu.

“Are you sure? I went there, and you look like one of my teachers.”

“Trust me.  No, never. Don’t you think I’d remember something like that?”

This might be a good time to mention that this man was pleasant, funny, and sort of charismatic. Though chatty, he wasn’t bothering us at all.

His eyes lit up, and he said, “Now I remember! It was at Horry Georgetown Technical College! You were my psychology teacher, and we met in this big classroom, sort of like an auditorium. I was a Civil Engineering student, but we were mixed in with a bunch of other people. Do you remember?”

“Not really,” I confessed. “There were a lot of classes like that.”

He persisted. “I remember the class like it was yesterday. There was this crazy girl in there who thought she knew everything.” With rising emotion, Jeff (I’d learned his name by now), said this dumb chick was a vegetarian who had once called him a redneck in class.

“You still don’t remember?” he asked incredulously.

“Don’t be offended, Jeff. From the events you’ve described, that class was probably 10 or 12 years ago, and I’ve had a lot of vegetarians, know-it-alls, and rednecks in my classes since then.”

About this time one of Jeff’s adorable little redheaded sons spoke up and said that his father only acted this way when he was drinking. Guess it was one of those times.

“But she was so different! That dumb, crazy girl! Once when were taking a test, she hunkered down over her paper like she thought I was going to cheat. I tapped her on the shoulder and told her to save her energy because she was the last person I’d ever copy from.”

The evening progressed, and before the family left the restaurant, I learned a lot about homeschooling, motor cross racing, and Jeff’s current life choices…and some of his dreams and schemes for his family.

There’s a ton of material in this short scenario that I used in my GEN PSY classes this week. Why couldn’t I remember? Was it interference theory? The decay theory? The serial position effect? And why did Jeff remember so much? Was it the dumb chick/know-it-all that made it so memorable for him? Is that Bartlett’s sharpening effect? In any case, I loved using the example, and the students seemed to enjoy it too.

Oh, and I’ve heard that even the palest ink is better than the best memory, so from now on I’m going to be more diligent about jotting down some memorable classroom events…and the people involved in them. Thanks for the lesson, Jeff.

Jitters and Enthusiasm

This afternoon I’m going down Memory Lane to the first day I ever stepped into a classroom. It was an August morning over three decades ago. I stood outside of the classroom clutching my notes, all six pages of them. Anxious yet excited, I glanced to my right and spotted my new dean and was surprised to see that he too was giving his notes a last minute glance. Was he nervous too?

The 10:00 a.m. hour arrived, and I walked in to meet my first class. There they were, all 25 of them sitting quietly and waiting to hear what the requirements and expectations for the term were going to be. Instead of sitting in desks, they sat at tables, three per table, and as I looked at Rex, Jackie, Wanda and their classmates, my heart was pounding so loudly that I could hardly speak. The fact that I was only a few years older added to my jitters.

Somehow I found my voice and jumped into the business at hand. I called the roll, distributed the syllabus, and went over all six pages of notes scribbled on my yellow legal pad. Then I gave out some note cards and asked the students to answer three or four questions about themselves before leaving for the day. As the first person rose to turn in his note card, I noted that it was 10:20. All that work, all those notes, all that talking, and it was only 10:20! These days I go in on the first day without notes or note cards and can easily keep a class for an hour and 20 minutes.

I’m not bragging about my loquaciousness, merely pointing out that something has changed during the last 30-something years. What’s made the difference between then and now? Experience for one thing, increased confidence for another. And then, there are the willingness to learn more about my subject matter and the eagerness to find ways to convey my enthusiasm and excitement for it to my students.

As the months go by, I’ll write some more about experiences, confidence, love of learning, respect for students, and many other topics. Today I want to focus briefly on enthusiasm. I agree with Emerson and others who said that nothing great was ever achieved without it. I did a little background reading (teachers love to do this!), and I learned that the word enthusiasm comes from ancient Greek, en and theos, meaning god. Interesting, huh?

Personally speaking, I feel that enthusiasm and deep enjoyment in what you’re doing are vital for any successful career, whether it’s teaching or bricklaying or accounting. These qualities are especially important for teaching because (my sister’s going to laugh at this) you can actually change the vibration of an energy field with your enthusiasm. There can be magic in a classroom…or not. The teacher sets the tone. If she goes in with an attitude that says, “Well, here we are again. Sure hope I can muddle through this class period,” the students will pick up on it. Enthusiasm is contagious, and so is the lack of it.

As a teacher, do you have any tips for mustering up some enthusiasm for your classes? And what about any students who may be reading this? Maybe we could benefit from a few doable suggestions from you.