FOUR
Teaching Individuals
Trying to Create an Equal Opportunity Classroom
As the last chapter suggests, every student is unique, and teachers must consider the needs of particular students as well as the group’s desired goals. The biggest challenge with individuals, however, is if you’ve been teaching for a while, you start categorizing students reflexively. Over thirty-five years of teaching has informed me, whether for good or for ill, that certain types of students exist. For instance, some are enthusiastic about the course initially and then lose interest. There are also students who communicate that they already know the material, looking down on me and others who might be wasting their time. Some students struggle with the requirement to participate in class. There’s always a student who knows he should participate but continues to self-criticize as the class progresses.
A related statistical phenomenon also affects the ability of teachers to focus on individuals. In a class of eighty students, a natural distribution of students exists in which a small percentage will perform above and below the mean. The questions that I and every teacher face are, To whom are we teaching? Are you teaching to the ten smartest students or the ten who are falling behind? I find myself worrying about the students at the far ends of the continuum and assume that those who are in the middle will take care of themselves.
I want to make the class rigorous enough for those who take to the course and excel, whether because of their effort or natural abilities. I don’t want them to be bored, act bored, or send implicit or explicit messages that the course and the content are soft. There will also be those students who haven’t thought about the human dimension and the multilayered facets of human behavior. It is just as problematic to have a small number of students who always look like they are in a fog, trying to understand what a cognitive distortion is or what heuristics mean. If I’m worrying about these individuals at either end of the continuum, what happens to those who live in the mean?
To address those students who are in the statistical middle, I hold in-class simulations and exercises to assess student abilities and to mentor real time in class. In this way, I can pay more attention to those who might otherwise escape my notice. Before class, I ask myself whether I’ve created a curriculum and class plan that will attend to the needs of all the students. I try to make sure that the class doesn’t go over the heads of even a few. I hope to have the material just hard enough to keep the students engaged. I keep reminding myself not to forget those in the middle. Through eye contact, quiet conversations throughout class with students, and constant attention to the spirit of the class, I increase the probability of paying attention to all students regardless of interest or academic ability.
But there are other obstacles to the ideal of creating a class that addresses the needs of all students equally. Over the course of my career, I’ve found it useful to keep the following three tendencies in mind:
- Playing favorites
- Prejudging
- Classifying
I do each of these activities reflexively, and sometimes they hurt my ability to be fair to all. But by being aware of each of these reflexive actions, I can sometimes do a better job of focusing on the individual needs of students. Let’s examine each and how they affect the classroom.
Favorites
Let’s be honest. I believe that every professor has favorite students. Yet somehow I convinced myself that no student would be able to tell. I counted on my opacity—my teacher’s mask of objective professionalism—to hide that I preferred one student over another. For years, though, I’ve had students whom I liked more than others. I still can’t figure out not only why I prefer one student over others but with whom it is going to happen. It isn’t about intellect or looks or charisma or quantity of participation in class. It is about the essence, the soul of the person. The ones I favor feel like kindred spirits even when I don’t know anything about them beyond what I’ve gleaned from their student information cards. It’s the feeling I have when I am with them. There is a warmth, a connection that is difficult to define.
I look forward to individual meetings with favorite students more than I care to confess. I’m sure that students feel my interest in their interests, their narrative. If they don’t sense my concern, I will be frustrated. And I have no way of knowing if they know how I feel. I recognize that I need to hide who my favorites are, yet how I do so confuses me. The two or three students in each class who are my favorites seldom get the best grades; I don’t grade unfairly based on my personal preferences. But I know that they get my full attention when they say something in class, when they enter the classroom, when they meet with me.
Prejudging Students
Every faculty member begins to create a biography, a narrative, for each student. Even with little information at hand, we still are confident in our ability to understand students, to relate with them, to know what is going on in their other lives. This is another paradox: Regardless of how many times I’ve been dead wrong in assessing the psychological state of my students, I have not lost confidence in my ability to understand all of them all the time. My sense is that this belief is as true as the belief that most men have that they are good drivers. There is no evidence, but the belief still exists.
It’s not just this belief that I understand them that leads to prejudging; it’s the simple, human fact that I like some students more than I like others. I like some immediately the first time I’m in their presence, before they’ve said a thing. There is no consistent pattern in these feelings for students. It has nothing to do with students’ being brilliant, or from foreign lands, from prestigious schools, or other characteristics. As I write this, I am realizing that I do have a bias toward students from rural areas. I always want to give them the benefit of the doubt, and maybe it has to do with my preference for students who are less elegant in their language skills. And I like students more if they feel entitled or arrogant.
On the other hand, I have found myself rooting against the students I don’t like. On more than one occasion, I’ve thought, “I hope his comment is lousy so that he will be one step closer to getting a poor grade. After all, I need to force rank the students, and why not have one of the lower 10 percent of the class be him?” I also have to make an effort to listen and empathize with their “high-end” world experiences such as bungee jumping over alligator-infested waters and then chilling out at five-star hotels.
Given the way I was raised and my experiences, I’m suspicious of students I perceive are wealthy because I believe they didn’t earn their way through life. I realize this reaction is a commentary on me, on my history and my experiences. But teachers should be aware of how their own backgrounds and biases affect their views of students.
Your history, your family, and the context in which you have experienced life inform the way you create eighty different student narratives. I’ve confessed my likes and dislikes to make a point about the challenging situation in which teachers find themselves. As long as I remain confident that I possess superhuman powers of ESP, the spirit, the security, and the risk taking within the walls of the classroom will constantly hang in the balance. Not only will my ability to reach as many students as possible be affected, but the students will intuit and interpret my every movement, trying to decipher my intentions, my authenticity, my motives, and my heart. All this psychological back and forth can be taxing. The last thing I want is to have students worry about their respective relationship with me or with others in the classroom. They shouldn’t be worrying whether I like them or not. It’s natural for every student and teacher to lose concentration during the course of a class. However, students need to feel secure in their feelings about how I perceive them and my interest in them. They needn’t waste emotional energy on whether or not they are a favorite or who might be my favorite students.
Given that I know these imperfections in my personality, my psychological makeup, what advice and counsel do I have for myself and for others who on occasion judge students before all the evidence is in? First, follow the lessons taught in Alcoholics Anonymous or any other addiction-related treatment process. Get back on track and forgive yourself and others by admitting that you are normal and that you can be different. Ask for support from other faculty whom you trust and respect. Know yourself well enough to know when you are most judgmental. Is it earlier in the day? Is it later in the semester when you are searching for different ways to evaluate students? Is it when you are less prepared?
What disappoints me the most about some of my evaluative judgments is how sure I am early in the semester that I have a sense of a student’s “essence.” I remember a student whom I approached on the first day of class, asking him why he was taking the course. He told me that it fit his schedule so that he could have classes early in the week. I found myself recoiling, distancing myself from the student. Should I tell him that he is taking up the seat of someone who cares more about the class than he does? Instead, I shut down our conversation and moved on to another student.
I realized I wanted validation from students to deal with my anxieties at the beginning of a course. I wanted them to tell me how much they were looking forward to the class. I wanted them to tell me they listed the course in the selection process as their number one choice. The student who was honest with me about his desire for another early course had an uphill battle to win me over. Judgment was set. He had to prove to me that he was worthy of my efforts. He had to prove to me that he deserved my attention and the attention of the other students.
Students have shown up late on the first day, and I immediately made judgments without knowing anything about them other than their names and that they were in their second year. They could have been in an accident on the way to school. They could have been caring for sick children or had some other legitimate extenuating circumstance, but I will have none of that thinking cloud my preconceived notions. What is alarming is that I’ve been teaching for over thirty-five years. I should know better. While I’m more aware of these tendencies than when I was less experienced, they continue to affect my judgments. Still, I hope they affect my judgments now less than in the past because of this self-awareness.
I’ve emphasized the importance of knowing your patterns, since such knowledge fosters heightened self-awareness, and I believe it can moderate this judging tendency. Here’s what I’d advise every teacher to do: List those characteristics you bring into the classroom that allow you and the students to create a unique place to learn. Here’s my list:
- Memorizing every student’s name and background.
- Building sufficient trust through my interactions with students that they want to seek counsel during office hours.
- Fostering a sense of classroom excitement and using narratives that results in rapt attention most of the time. The attendance in my classes is consistently 100 percent.
- Demonstrating my care for and concern about the success of each student. Each semester a number of students write that they have never met another professor who they believe is more committed to them.
What also helps me move away from judging students unfairly or prematurely is focusing on the classroom topic through conscious agenda setting. Even when I’m tempted to judge, I remind myself of my patterns, and this helps me toward a spirit of fairness and appreciation. And even when I feel “centered” and in good shape to teach, I try to see myself from a third person’s perspective. Can I disassociate myself from myself and view Professor DeLong from a corner of the classroom, observing how the professor is interacting with the students? Do I have the ability to have conversations with myself about what is going on in the classroom in real time?
When I find myself evaluating students on behaviors that I don’t understand, I will quickly assume something is wrong or that a student is not involved in or committed to the class. If I see a student who I believe is daydreaming, I often assume disinterest from the student. I typically don’t give the student the benefit of the doubt. It is part of the human experience to judge behavior or communications that we don’t understand. We seldom give one another the benefit of the doubt if we don’t understand the situation or context. We quickly leap to judgment. Go easy on judgment. Be more curious than certain of what you see and perceive.
Classifying
Now let’s examine four common student types, and how these types affect my classroom demeanor and behavior toward these categorized students.
The Frightened Student
The farther I stand in the classroom from the student who is struggling with participation, the harder it seems to be for the student to focus. Standing too close can cause anxieties as well. One of the ways I’ve determined whether a student is struggling with participation is not only through past participation patterns but in observing the student’s body positioning—whether the student seems relaxed or stressed, appears frightened, is chatting before class begins, or is sitting silently alone. I ask myself the following questions:
- When the student walks into the class, is he alone?
- Does she make small talk with others as she walks across the class or up the rows to her seat?
- Does it feel like the student is walking to an execution rather than to a class to learn?
- Is the student willing to make eye contact with me, or does he avoid it at all costs, fearing even to smile because I might interpret his smiling as permission to call on him in class?
I have a strategy for dealing with frightened students. First and foremost, I understand that many college environments are competitive and filled with judgments. Even though the student has attended classes before, I acknowledge that this student has not been in this situation before. However, if the student makes no contact with anyone, I worry that fear is at the core of the situation. But in my efforts to encourage the student, I can put added pressure on her if I try too hard. It would be like speaking too slowly or loudly to someone who doesn’t seem to understand English well; these actions communicate that I consider this individual handicapped. I would embarrass and create more self-consciousness in this student. The best thing I can do is listen as hard as I can. I need to determine whether or not the student is making eye contact with me. Is her skin splotchy? Is the breathing occurring from the neck up? Are the hands on the desk? Are they shaking? Is the student mumbling and struggling with articulating a thoughtful idea? I often begin to breathe very deliberately, from the stomach. I breathe slowly. I smile warmly at the person and nod encouragement. I want the students to know I’m pulling for them every way I know how to support them.
When I believe a student is frightened, I move about a yard away from this individual. I talk in a less commanding, less authoritative tone of voice. I want to turn the experience into a conversation between the two of us rather than a lecture or an inquisition. I may intentionally ask the student a less complex question based on a value judgment rather than the case facts. I don’t lock eyes with the student but show passive interest while listening, since a direct stare can be intimidating. I give nods where appropriate. I slow down my cadence to create a more relaxed atmosphere. I’m like Goldilocks: not too close and not too far. If the respondent’s answers are poor and he knows it, I don’t linger. I move on. I want to distract rather quickly and engage with someone else.
But I will circle back around spatially to the student. For example, if the student is sitting on an aisle, I may stand by him later in the session and tap him on the arm deftly so that I communicate commitment to him and to our relationship.
All my opinions and suggestions about classroom positioning and demeanor apply doubly to younger faculty members. Don’t expect to be great at managing the content, the atmosphere, your boards, or your own state of mind with the grace and expertise of the seasoned teacher. Practice is crucial to teaching. As you experiment with your own comfort with physical distance from students in the classroom, know that the students will give you the benefit of the doubt as you try a few different approaches. Most important, be aware of how intervention with a frightened student is proceeding and whether you are getting traction in the process. It is your self-awareness and self-regulation in real time that will transform your experience and the experiences of the students from disasters to memorable moments of harmony.
Will I ever feel comfortable turning my back on some of the students and focusing on the students located on the other side of the room? Why is it that the closer I get to the students, the quieter I find myself speaking? My voice can turn into a whisper. Why do I find myself walking up the aisle where the student who questions my authority is sitting?
The Self-Assured Student
Students who attend graduate school are assumed to be self-assured enough to hold their own in classroom discussion. However, each student brings to the classroom tendencies, habits, and preferences for participating in class discussion. The challenge is that HBS students know that half their grade will be weighted based on participation in class. Most faculty members will ask the questions, “How has this student enhanced the discussion? How has this student brought the class to a different way of thinking?” Ten percent of the students attend the school to help them get over their fear of speaking in front of groups. They know they need to be forced into speaking. Thus, they put themselves into this type of situation.
However, some students are simply more extroverted, and they’ve learned how to survive and thrive through classroom participation. They have also learned that it’s better to create the illusion of competence by speaking up early and often. A number of the students feel confident speaking among their peers regardless of whether they know what they are saying or the quality of what is being said. Yet, they still feel they have a right to express their opinions or are entitled to air time. They are often experienced at jumping into situations where they get by with their wits rather than with their wisdom.
The other class members teach me through their behavior whether an overly self-assured student is rubbing us all the wrong way. When it feels like the student is preaching or “acting all knowing,” I find myself veering toward my pattern of getting angry. My internal dialogue goes something like, “Do you think I was born yesterday? Can’t you see that you are embarrassing yourself? How did you get through the first year of courses behaving like an arrogant jerk? What makes you think I can’t read my students?” I’m exacerbating the problem if other students know that I’m letting the overly self-assured student get to me.
What is the instructor to do with the student who wants to participate on most queries—the one who raises his hand first and may even wave it like a flag to get your attention? What do you do with the student who creates the illusion of complete confidence with the material and the context? As I write this, I need to differentiate between the arrogant student and the one who is overly eager to participate. The latter is an easier task, better handled in a one-to-one conversation. When I explain my appreciation for the student’s enthusiasm in the course, I also remind her that I need to involve all ninety students throughout the semester, that my role is like an orchestra director. If only one instrument and one player are highlighted in every piece, the orchestral sound will suffer. Instead, the conductor must make sure that all the musicians feel that they’re getting their chance to shine, and that different instruments are featured in accordance with the piece being played.
The apparently arrogant student also needs individual attention, but this is more of a challenge. The initial reaction by the instructor might be to “put the student in his place.” This can be accomplished by intimidating the student, embarrassing him, or trying to trap the student with content nuances. However, these approaches never work long term. Most student communities are self-regulating; the students themselves keep a lid on arrogant classroom behaviors through teasing, mimicking, or talking straight about the observed behaviors. If these norms don’t exist, I speak individually to the student and express my observations. I hope that the student is coming to class. I also use silence so that I don’t find myself lecturing or talking too much due to my own apprehension or nervousness in giving the student feedback about his irritatingly arrogant demeanor.
When a faculty member does give direct feedback to arrogant students, the tendency is for the faculty member to talk faster, louder, and longer. However, most faculty members don’t believe they need to give such direct feedback. One approach might be to simply state what you’ve observed, see how the student responds, and plan with the student what the next steps might be. An example might be, “Roger, sometimes when you respond, you say it in a way that makes it sound like you are sure you’re the only student with a valid comment. There is a tone in your voice that makes it sound like you are lecturing the class instead of putting forth an idea that is your opinion and not the only answer to the question.”
Enlist the student by inviting him to help solve the dilemma if indeed he feels motivated to do so. For example, one could say to a student, “I’ve observed a certain behavior when you respond to a question or when you respond to another class member. At some point I’d be happy to share those observations.” There also isn’t a need for humblebragging by stating, “I may be all wrong, but I’ve noticed something you might be interested in.” Why wouldn’t I take the time to share a perception whether it’s positive or negative?
The Comic
Some students become nervous when the tensions are too great in a class. That nervous energy prompts them to make a funny comment, a wisecrack, to relieve the tension in the room. Silence is important in teaching. In the first-year required curriculum, there will be those who only know how to respond to this environment with comic relief. It gets tiring after a time. However, these students become stuck in a pattern of communicating that probably began when they were kids.
It may have worked. But if you believe that a particular student will always try to bring humor and lightness to a teaching moment, consider chatting with that student. Challenging the student to enlarge the student’s repertoire of replies in the class is an option. Speak quietly to the person offline. I’ve embarrassed too many students by trying to “out-cute” them with sarcasm. It’s a dangerous game. Having a heart-to-heart conversation off line will enhance your relationship with the student.
The danger in not having the conversation is that over time students will expect a joke or some levity whenever the particular student makes a comment. Simply by calling on the person, I have made a decision that it’s OK for laughter or it’s OK for a lighter touch. I become boxed in myself because I haven’t previously chatted with the student. No matter what is taking place in the class, by calling on the person, I’ve signaled to the whole class that I want comic relief.
Another reason to talk with the student is to disrupt a pattern that doesn’t allow any other response by the student. The student doesn’t know how to do anything else because of the expectations that exist that he will say something that is intended to be clever or comical. Disrupt the pattern sooner rather than later. The longer a teacher waits to chat about perceptions of a “funny” student, the less students will respond the way they believe they are supposed to behave. Over time I’ve now set the expectation that I want an interlude from the direction I’m taking the class. Help the student out by dealing with the behavior before everyone is stuck in a dysfunctional pattern.
The I’m-Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time Student
Some students aren’t prepared for class, don’t do the work acceptably, and appear disengaged and disinterested. This doesn’t happen just once but is repeated behavior. As the evaluator of my students, I have a responsibility to assess how much they have learned in class. I have a responsibility to guide and direct ninety students as a collective, as a community. (I’ll use different class sizes throughout to represent varying class sizes based on class subject.) Yet there are individual requirements for passing the course where each student must illustrate to me that he can meet the expectations of the requirements of the course. If a student is ill-prepared once or at the most twice, I will speak to that person outside the classroom. I might say something like, “Is everything OK? You mentioned to me last week you weren’t prepared. How can I help?” I might add, “I look forward to having you all in for the course. If there are extenuating circumstances, let’s talk about it. But if it’s something else, we should talk more.”
If I query whether the student is really in the game or interested in the game and she says “no,” I ask if she could help me understand what’s going on. If she is blunt with her feedback, I express my appreciation that she’s shared the data. Every student has the right to sign on at the beginning of the course and sign off at any moment. I might make an arrangement with the student, requesting that she at least look like she’s engaged and committed to the course, even if she isn’t. If it’s early in the semester, I might ask the student whether he needs to drop the course. I might tell the student that I’ve been noticing that he rolls his eyes in class when others speak. I explain that it makes me uncomfortable because I’m worried about the effect on the person speaking and I’m worried about him. I might even invite the person to not come to class. But I remind myself to say it in a way that isn’t condescending or punishing or vengeful. It may only take a raised eyebrow or a smirk on my face that communicates that I don’t believe what the student is saying—or worse, that the student isn’t worthy of my time and energy.
The Conscious Classroom
Just as you can learn by rote, you can teach by rote. This is a danger for veteran teachers, who may operate almost on autopilot, relying on teaching methods and materials that they used repeatedly over the years. To a certain extent, most teachers repeat what works, and that’s fine until they start going through the motions. This is especially problematic when it comes to students.
These teachers are especially vulnerable to the behaviors I’ve described: prejudging, playing favorites, and classifying. As I’ve described, I’m acutely aware of these behaviors. Being conscious of them is a good way to keep them under control.
We’re all human, and we’re never going to eliminate these behaviors entirely. The goal should be to manage them. The best teachers don’t let their prejudging get in the way of their final judgments of students, they try to treat favorites and nonfavorites the same, and they are aware that their classifying reflex may be causing them to view a unique person in stereotypical ways.
It just takes a commitment to teaching consciously to prevent these tendencies from diminishing student receptivity to learning.