Serve Your Students

For a short time when I was very little, we lived in a commune house outside of D.C.

I have no memories of living there but I DO have very clear memories of my hippie mom TELLING me we lived there. Mom was perhaps not a great hippie, more into the drugs and rock and roll than the beliefs, but I was much older before I realized that. When I was little I only knew that people were supposed to live together, help each other out, care about the environment, stand up for what is right. My vegetarian godfather who always had t-shirts from Northern Sun featured in this narrative as did his support of Greenpeace.
All of this had very clear impacts on me, especially as I became a teacher. I do believe in a more socialist model, that we should make real efforts to make sure everyone is taken care. That as a community, a collective, we (schools, teachers, students, families) should work in concert to provide the best education we can.
As I've radically changed how I teach the last few years due to people like Kevin Gannon and Jesse Stommel, and informed by teaching in Albuquerque, I've come back again and again to this idea of community and commune.

I want my students to do well in my class. I want them to feel comfortable. I want them to feel valued. I want them to feel challenged. I want them to explore. But I also want them to BE well. I made sure to mention to all my classes Thursday and Friday that they needed to take today off. That a day off was a day OFF. That having a plan and schedule for doing things was good, that setting aside time on Saturday or Sunday was good, but that they should give themselves Fridays once they got home and days off and breaks off. That their mental and physical health is important. That they need to rest. Not use it as a day to cram, or stress, or catch up, to rest. Go out in the sun. Eat some ice cream. Go home, spend time with family.

I don't think if you'd asked me several years ago if I would thought to say this so explicitly. Certainly I've always cared about my students, but I am much more clear and outspoken now, recognizing how important it is to be so. To tell the student having a panic attack in my office that I too suffer from anxiety, and asking what they do to try and calm down and how I can help. To email students if they've missed class to check in and make sure they're okay. To tell my students to prioritize their health and wellness.

Caring about my class as community also means in these first three weeks of class I did not spend a single second going over my syllabus or the course information and policies. Instead, I spent time showing my students what my class culture was. The first day we did a land acknowledgement and history of our school because the Weapomeoc Tribe whose land we're on was wiped out. In my British Lit I survey and Shakespeare class we talk about how they've never heard of them, and how narratives and peoples are erased from time. I also talk about the history of the Weapomeoc as, sadly, a microcosm for Anglo-Indigenous relations and history. In my composition courses, as we talk about the history of our school, I end with them considering what their voice is. What the context for their writing is. That I care about what their narrative is.

From day one my students know their voice matters. When they then (in my composition classes) vote on the genres and topics we'll cover in our writing assignments they also know this. Then they vote on when they want me to be available in my office. Each step focuses on them. Centers them.

As we move into the content of our composition courses they also see this in how the class is designed. We go over a mentor text, using it as a model for the work we'll do. In class we do the work giving them time to research and think, and rethink, with me there walking around to answer questions, listen, intervene and clarify. They also get used to working on their own, then sharing in groups and pods, listening to other's ideas, offering feedback. I offer no feedback or guidance here. It comes organically out of their work, and builds on the class culture I never had to artificially construct.

And this is a big thing to me. With schools starting the last few weeks I've seen a lot about reviewing the syllabus, ice breakers, and whether to lecture or do class activities. I have been struck by two things in watching all these conversations. The first is that rather than being genuine, honest, and building a class community, many activities seek to pretend to do this but are really just methods of control that disguise themselves as student centered policies. The second is that many of these conversations are presented as absolutes and totally out of context. How can you make a decision about how much lecturing or activities you have to do if you haven't met your students yet? Or see how they're doing with the current topic? Why are you teaching the same course each semester when your students aren't the same?

I hear a lot that my ideas, what I do in the class, seems interesting but that people don't have the time to do this. I hear you. But first, if you're a teacher, you do what's best for students not what's easiest for you. Second, it's really not more work. Last week I was explaining to another professor how I do grade conferences. They asked how I had time to read the assignments in a grade conferences. I share my explanation here.

• Grade conferences are check ins for the first two low stakes assignments, feedback on how to proceed, a chance to answer and ask questions. Only the conference for the major writing assignment is summative.
• By the time they sit down to conference with me I already know what they'll say. I've watched them choose ideas, discard some, draft language. I've listened as they justify their choices to their groups, note their feedback, revise. I've read their notes and drafts. Because their class time is workshop time, it frees me up to walk around and observe all this, listen, and offer feedback, because I'm not the focus.
• Students learn to prep for these conferences, what notes and information they need to present at these conferences.
• So by the time I do see the final project I've already heard from them what topic they chose and why in a grade conference. I watched and heard their process to get there in workshops. I saw their outline in another conference, and watched their process to get there, what sources they chose and why, what questions they answered, how they organized their information.

When students ask me "how long does it have to be?" and I answer "as long as it has to be" I am not being glib. They understand because each of them chooses their own topic one person's answer will be different from anothers. They learn to think about how the genre, topic, audience, purpose should inform their answer. I don't leave them with no help, but I tend to ask them questions, refer them back to our mentor text, ask them to research. We just finished week three and already they're able to apply these answers, showing that they're transferring skills from one thing to another.

My Brit Lit I survey and Shakespeare classes have similar approaches with slightly different scaffolding because they're upper level classes. The first major assignment both have is a presentation. Which is not really a presentation. They don't have to stand up in front of the class or dress up. Instead, I call it that because they use PowerPoint or Google Slides to organize and share their information. I also call it that because this focuses on a visual aspect. They can choose any topic they want related to our class. No limits. This totally freaks them out. I tell them I'm willing to sit down and talk to them and work out ideas, but their choice is totally up to them. In class we've talked about what's expected of this, and some have been told very specific things about presentations- big images, only a couple of lines of text, have to explain things. We've talked about how that's not really accessible, how they should incorporate that, and I've shared how academics use presentations. We've talked about how citations are different in a presentation, not necessarily a works cited, but providing titles and hyperlinking where they got things from. They have similar conversations as the composition students as to how their presentation has a specific purpose, will be as long as it has to be to accomplish that purpose, and how there is no one answer.

In these classes we also spend a lot of time working in class. They looked at several different translations of Beowulf and had conversations about why translations matter, and did some close readings. The Shakespeare class did some close readings of Macbeth, with us doing one together, then them practicing these skills. What I tell all my classes is that we do this because for me, if it is important for them to learn something then I need to see them do it, see where the misconceptions are, be able to fill gaps, answer questions. If they're doing work at home I can't see these things. So my composition students do almost all their work in class and my upper level classes do enough practice in class for them to feel confident completing things on their own.

This is part of my class culture because they know I am there to teach and help them. That they will be given space to work at their own pace on their own interests. My students know I care about them in a hundred different ways.
I haven't answered a single "it's in the syllabus" question because I don't have to. They know there's no attendance policy but being in class, on time, is important because we do all the work in class. They know it's important to prep for grade conferences, but if they can't be there that day, they just need to schedule a different time because we've talked about that. If a student is working on something else in class or isn't there, there is no policing and fussing. If they start to apologize or justify I tell them that everything is a choice, they just need to be aware choices have consequences, and then I walk on to help the next group, listen to the next conversation.

I am not putting in extra work. I spend a few hours on the weekend prepping for my classes. I look at the week by week syllabus, I think of what students need for that week based on the previous week, I add resources to the syllabus, and plan what we're doing on our Class Notes Google Slides. That's it. I don't take grading home because we do the grade conferences in class. I actually think I spend less time lesson planning because I think in broad strokes, flexible enough to add something if students need it. So I think about what skills we need to cover, where we need to end up and the rest is up to what happens in class. I frequently write notes on the board, or explain things not in the plan as things come up. I also think I probably put less work in because I've centered all the work in class. My students do the same amount of work as my comp classes did six years ago, and that many other classes do, I just reframe how we do the work.

Look, none of this is magic. I am not special or unique because of these things. All of this is easy to replicate. I base things on two thoughts:

1. What is best for students not necessarily easiest for me?
2. What is my pedagogical reason for doing X?

A common critique of edu celebrities and many books that claim to teach you how to teach is that the idea of best practices, sharing what works and why, has gotten perverted. To understand why MY best practices work you need to understand that my students are mostly first generation, that their skill levels vary, that they may or may not have had things explained to them in a way that is accessible. You have to know that I am a first generation student who things working in how to college tips are just as important as MLA style. Best practices have become a checklist of things to replicate totally divorced from their context. So when people implement them they're probably not serving their students best because they're not asking what their students need and why they need this practice. Each semester, each class, teachers should be asking and observing what their students need and why and how best to give them this. One thing my class set up allows is the time for me to do this, implement this.
While not my field, too I think these lessons apply to accommodation and anti-racist policies. If you realize having access to class notes, resources, helps everyone- the single mom missing class because of child care, the athlete, the working student, then you realize it costs you nothing to make the things you're already prepping available to them. If you center your students, value their voices, then you stand for your students, integrating anti-racist policies into the fabric of your class.
By starting my class with how things are a matter of perspective and context, I immediately orient my class around uncovering narratives that have been ignored and erased. Then our mentor texts in composition, and our readings in the survey and Shakespeare class bear this out. We don't read diverse texts we read representative texts. I counter assumptions they may have about English literature, providing a variety of perspectives and viewpoints, placing what we read in larger global contexts.

I know that few PhD programs teach their students how to teach. At some point I need to update this, but this resource outlines how to plan a class, sketch out assignments, think about what you want to accomplish. I think too that if you ask your students what they need, and truly listen, you'll find that they'll tell you. You can then build your class culture from this.

My students attend class because they know we do the work in class. If they're late, they're considerate when entering, and ask classmates to catch them up, because we've talked about how otherwise they're disrespecting the work we do here.
My students don't plagiarize because the class isn't designed to. Students plagiarize because they don't know how to cite, or feel stressed and pressured. Neither happens in my class.
Students don't have to justify absences but know if they miss more than a couple classes because I care that they're okay.
I tell them to take breaks, come see me, offer tissues and granola bars, and cocoa butter, because I care about them.
I tell them to write what they want because I want to hear what they have to say.

So I encourage you to ask your students what they are interested in, what they need, and then listen when they tell you.