I must admit that I’m a little nervous about encountering an “uncommonly traumatic kind of CI” on my student evaluations. I don’t have any reason to think that this may actually happen, but I’m hyper-aware of the fact that my students stare at me for three hours a week. What if they comment on my frizzy hair? The fact that I tend to wear the same shoes every day? What if I had a booger? Am I the only one who thinks about these things?
I really liked the fact that this chapter addressed classroom problems that are caused by students, by instructors, and those that are the result of both students’ and instructors’ bad vibes feeding off of one another. I have been very lucky this semester, I think, because my students and I get along really well, and we respect one other enough to avoid most of the problems mentioned in this chapter. Except for one student. For the first half of the semester, she talked to the student next to her all through class, rolled her eyes any time I asked the class to do anything, and basically made me feel like I was teaching at a middle school. After our first conference, however, all of that stopped. When she talks in class now, it’s to add to the discussion, and I haven’t noticed any eye-rolling. I’m not sure what happened; maybe I just became human to her after we had a conversation. I will definitely be taking Boice’s advice on having conferences early in the semester next time.
I agree with you Heather in a lot of ways. I think to some extent students don't know what to make of us in the first couple of weeks in school. Despite our appearance, they know we are TAs and not tenure faculty. We, in this sense, are a new experience for them. Not to mention, the majority of our students are freshmen, meaning college as a whole is a new experience to them. They really aren't entirely sure how to act in the classroom. Although common sense says that our classroom really shouldn't be any different than any other, there are still those few who just can't help themselves from creating those CIs.
ReplyDeleteI, too, had one particular student who was determine to infect the other students in the classroom. He never wanted to participate. He would either be talking in the back corner or sleeping. And, when I would provide several gentle reminders of our classroom expectations, he would shut down. When this occurred, I simply had to remember some good advice I was once given, which is "Wear them down with Kindness". Now, this suggestion is not to mean that discipline is never needed because sometimes it undoubtedly is. However, with this student I could tell he was just not going to be receptive. So, I decide to take a different approach. I used the feedback on his paper to strike up a friendly conversation and stressed how I was willing help or explain details of our class in more detail if he was struggling. And, for some reason, it worked. He came and saw me in office hours. He emailed me with questions. And we were able to work out a happy solution. It was a nice end that I wasn't entire sure we were going to be able to come to, but, with students, sometimes you just have to give them the benefit of the doubt.
I agree with you, Heather, that conferences are really helpful in establishing my "human-ness" for my students. I'm a pretty withdrawn person, which translates into a classroom-self that tends toward the "aloof," as Boice puts it. I'm just too shy to want to open up to my students or engage with them easily. Sometimes they interpret this as evidence that I don't care about them. However, in conferences it's a lot easier for me to open up to students, because of course it's one-on-one. I can initiate the little interactions that put people at ease at parties, like small talk- which is something I'm not good at in the best of times, so never mind doing it with 20 people at once. After my conferences, though, I noticed my students seemed friendlier with me, and were more willing to talk in class.
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