The last week I noticed that I was starting my classes of 30 with 5 students. Students were then coming late, up to 30 minutes of a 50 minute class, if they showed at all. I received a couple of emails about absences, and telling me to send them what they missed. A student took a phone call in class. Another Face Timed during class.
I admit my kneejerk reaction was to be mad. I felt disrespected. I was upset. I felt like all the work I'd done for five weeks about class culture and community was a waste of time.
Because I'm new here, I asked my upper level classes about it. They had a couple of things to say- the first was that I should do what other teachers do and give a pop quiz the first five minutes of class as punishment. And then they said that it sounded pretty typical of a first year class. As I told them punishing and policing wasn't my thing, I started to recheck my assumptions.
The first thought I had was that last week was week 6 of the semester. The point at which the novelty wears off, the workload of classes has sunk in, and homesickness is an issue. It's right before midterm exams, so stress, and work can seem to or start to pile up.
The next thought I had was if I was going to build my class around NOT policing behavior then I needed to NOT police behavior. Which meant too, I couldn't get upset about it. The simple fact is, we do the work in class. Attending class is valuable. They got to design their own assignments, pick their own topics. They choose and argue for their grades. I've done everything I can to make my class personalized, interesting, and engaging. But if they're not there, it may not have anything to do with any of that. I need to be secure in that I've done all this. I need to support my students who are there, and not stress about the rest or let it be personal.
In my composition class we spent the first month slow walking a lot of things. There's a lot of culture building as well as skill building to create together. We grade conferenced on our first major writing assignment, and while there's always with this the "I get an A no matter what" for the most part, the stuff I'm doing this semester, the new stuff, the approaches, all bore fruit.
But in light of my reflection, I am doing a couple of different things. I've been creating detailed class notes and making them available online. I've always liked the accommodation, and providing resources for students to be able to refer back to. BUT, this past week I wondered if by doing this I was signalling to students that they didn't need to attend class because they could just read the notes and not come to class and participate in the workshops and in class activities. Now, this ultimately will affect their grade as 75% of their grade is the low stakes assignments, and showing up for class. BUT, in first year composition I wasn't necessarily sure they were thinking that way.
So at the end of the week, I did not do class notes.
A student asked where what they were doing today was on the notes, and I explained. They stopped, and thought, and said "yeah, that sounds fair." I'm hoping too that peer pressure does some work here. We've talked about how being late, interrupting class, not coming, affects our groups, our discussions, our workshops. We've talked about how these behaviors disrespect the work we do in class. Now, with no displayed class notes, if students are late, they're putting a burden on their classmates who were there on time and working, and I've already seen some peer pushback on folks coming late and expecting others to catch them up.
Likewise, I have pushed back on being asked to reteach what I taught at the beginning of the class. I didn't do it in a negative way, or in an angry tone. I just explained we already covered that.
I'll tell you, I'm not sure about any of this. I did feel less stressed at the end of the week. I think it's a balance between being clear and teaching new students what's important and how to negotiate things in a way that is not punitive. But it's still a form of policing I think, so that's what I'm not sure about. We'll see. I'll adjust as needed.
This week and next will be a little odd because midterms start Thursday, run Friday, then next Monday through Wednesday. I don't give tests/midterms, so I cancelled class. I explained why, explaining that I knew they did have classes that had midterms, and were perhaps stressful, so I was hoping this arrangement were help relieve some of that. Instead I asked students to sign up for a conference time to meet with me about how they're doing. Not everyone has, most have, and that's a choice. I also told them I'd have fruit and snacks in case they needed/wanted a place to just chill for a bit.
Another shift I made this week was in my Brit Lit survey and Shakespeare class. These are small classes, and in both, like the composition classes, I've spent a lot of time teaching the skills they need and that the rest of the semester will build on. I tend to run these as seminar classes, which means they're pretty dependent on them coming to class prepared, having done the reading, and with things they want to talk about. This doesn't always work out.
So, I tried to think of what I could do to help. SO, since our close reading is out next big assignment, I posted some notes on how to prep for that in our classes. And I brought back a revision of something I used to do in my survey class. I created discussion boards in Blackboard for every class where we're discussing a text and asked them to take a picture of their notes for class and upload them. I figured this will do a couple of things. I gave them a model for taking notes. I'm asking them to be accountable. Class discussions will be more grounded in the text and I can see the notes and see what gaps or misunderstandings there are in order to better teach next class.
In all my classes, when I make changes or decisions like this, I am always explicit in explaining why to students so they don't think they're arbitrary. I always explain the pedagogical reason, what gaps or needs I'm trying to address, and where I want us to head. I hope that this conveys to them that I'm listening and paying attention to them. I hope it lets them know that I'm a reflective teacher, and provides a model for them for what that looks like. I hope it lets them know that I will always give them the tools they need to be successful in my class.
It's the same approach I've tried to apply in my actively anti-racist teaching in the survey and Shakespeare. I've tried to lay out things clearly, let Scholars of Color scholarship speak, actively point our the racist arguments of scholars that we're fighting against. I'm trying to contextualize the arguments, the history, and then laying out the better way. These classes are hard for me, and I often say to them, "I'm not sure if this is the right language, or way to talk about this, but bear with me." I tend to speak slower on these days, working my way through, taking detailed notes, following them more closely than I'm used to. Because it's important to get right. I need to make sure I'm tracing arguments they can understand, and frame things in an actively anti-racist manner. The Shakespeare class is focusing on this more than the survey. But in both classes, it's going well. I think. They seem to like the discussions, tell me they're learning things. Making connections. As a white teacher in a class of majority Black students, I am aware every day of what is at stake with my teaching, how much is riding on me getting it right.
We'll see. I can reflect, and tweak, and make different choices, but it's a lot of moving parts and I'm still learning a lot about my students and the culture on campus.
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