Is it such a bad thing for a student to feel comfortable enough with a teacher to share their personal problems? —Lori Rupert —When Seeking Comfort is Selfish (Continued) (Kaleidoscope )
This question sparked a good discussion on one of my students’ blogs.
I’m not sure I’m striking the right tone in my comments over there. Typically when I comment on a student’s blog, I try to pose open-ended questions that are designed to keep the conversation going, rather than designed to convey my own specific personal opinion. But in this particular instance, I’m conscious that I can’t just give general philosophical answers, since the question is coming up in the context of my own specific classroom, and naturally the students are curious about what I think.
I am of course interested in my students’ welfare, and I want to appear accessible and helpful. The sisters and administrators at Seton Hill regularly speak of service and love, not in a general sense of “I love teaching!” but a specific personal sense, drawn from the school’s roots as a Catholic institution.
Last year I had a student who worked on a family farm. When the nuclear holocaust lays our civilization to waste, this student and his family will survive while I scour the radioactive landscape searching for discarded cans of SPAM.
So I’m very conscious of the limitations of my training. I’d like to think that my training in English literature gives me a good insight into the human heart, and prepares me to be a good listener and storyteller. Yes, I’m older than most of my students, and so I’m probably a wiser about some things. Yet they see me mostly in a completely artificial situation, where it only looks like I am smart because the subject matter is so narrow.
I do plan to introduce a few online composition exercises in my basic comp class, but I found that during the first few weeks, a significant number of students were overwhelmed by the technological demands (get assignments from the online syllabus at this URL, submit assignments to turnitin.com, check your schedule via campus service A, get a list of peers who are in your class via campus service B) that I’m glad I put it off for a while. Still, I’m conscious that there’s not nearly as much community in my two basic composition classes as there is in the other classes (in which my students all have individual weblogs).
I would agree with Dr. Arnzen. In terms of my dissertation research question on how blogging with your class helps to generate a collective sense of efficacy (in composition skills) for the instructor and students, I think you expressed it quite well: “I’d like to think that my training in English literature gives me a good insight into the human heart, and prepares me to be a good listener and storyteller.” The rhetorical triangle between the text, the students, and the teacher has worked well in your blogs to help students gain a belief in their ability to write well, peer-edit and revise their essays.
That’s so true. Thanks for your reflections.
No, you ARE smart. You have earned a PhD and have been entrusted to instruct the field of English, and that’s no easy-minded task. (I also don’t think you’ll be scrounging for canned meat after the apocolypse, but scrounging instead for wireless access to the internet).
Directly on Lori’s point, though, I think your role as ‘advisor’ is as significant as your role as ‘teacher’ and that’s where the waters get a little muddier — or where your hands get dirtier — when it comes to a student’s ‘personal problems.’ No one teaches advising. You master it from being in the role over the years. And you’re doing just fine. If a student who isn’t your advisee — or isn’t in your major — wants to share personal problems, and it’s not something you’re comfortable sharing, then you might steer them to a more appropriate place, however (perhaps that’s obvious, but perhaps it isn’t obvious to students that their advisor is where they should be going for help when they don’t know where to go… advisors have more context if they’re doing their job right, and can steer a student to appropriate resources with a better roadmap.
Fascinating stuff to consider. Teaching is such a multi-faceted job.