Wednesday, January 25, 2012
The specificity and requirements of the subject is perhaps as important as the relative inclinations of the instructor and the students when one thinks about the pedagogical tools or goals that one wants to employ. What is needed is a space where discussion can happen - a discussion that promotes and seeks answers to the why and how instead of merely answering the what. (I guess that this is important for me because this had motivated me to move into Cultural Studies from my traditional English Literature background.) I would like to balance a discursive inquiry with a kind of productive empiricism. The third thing that comes to mind is a political engagement (Guess that would be no surprise since Robin introduced me as a traditional Marxist.) These would be my intellectual goals for my teaching endeavors. That said, I need to learn to be a more confident teacher. And I need to learn how to calibrate authority with an approachability without which instruction cannot be imparted.
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Ah, the approachability thing is important! I have something of a difficult time with this. I've had students comment on evaluations that they thought I was only somewhat approachable, or they weren't sure they could talk to me about things, even though I've always said up front that I WANT to talk to them about anything to do with the class. Other people have also said they don't find me approachable, and I think it's partly that I don't typically look really cheerful, regardless of how I feel inside. Because I'm not smiling, students don't want to talk to me.
ReplyDeleteI believe the real issue here is that in our society, we typically expect women to be cheerful and smiling often, and that we can talk to women because they're "nice." I've had many experiences with men (strangers) telling me I should smile, for no particular reason. Why? I believe they're uncomfortable with women not being visibly "nice," and they are trying to assert male dominance and remake the world they encounter to fit their gendered assumptions of image and behavior.
So how do I handle this as a teacher? I want my students to talk to me, and to believe that I want them to talk to me, but I don't want to have to smile all the time in order to convince them of this. I have become much more conscious of what I'm doing with my face when I'm teaching, consciously performing "the nice teacher" in some ways. But I definitely have a problem with this performance. I haven't sat down with my students and discussed it. Maybe I should. But maybe that would be giving up too much power and making myself too vulnerable (and ending up with bad evaluations, oh noes!!1). I could save the discussion to the last (or second to last) class? That brings it closer to the evaluation time, with all the trouble that can ensue there.
They usually think I'm 'approachable,' but I'm not sure that's a goal for me. It's a given in the consumerist market that informs universities; we 'should be approachable.' Well, we shouldn't be off-putting. But I'm not their dad. Or their buddy. Or their shrink. I'm their TEACHER, and that's the role I want to negotiate.
ReplyDeleteTrickier for me: I want to be liked. And I know that I have to FIGHT that need to be liked. It messes up the transference.
The late Janet Spector (Womens Studies) said that she wants them to know that (1) she likes them (2) she's interested in what they have to say (3) she wants them to do well. And you have to MEAN IT. I can't improve on that.