In Defense of Students and the Joy of Teaching, Even Now

The last two weeks have been deadly in America, the worst being the slaughter of fourth graders in Uvalde, Texas.  I cannot get the images or thoughts of what happened out of my head. I feel like I did after the horrors at Sandy Hook; intense, prolonged grief, mixed with anger at those who refuse to pass the necessary gun laws to help prevent such killings and at those who vote against legislators they believe will take their “gun rights” away. So, better to lose the lives of children than their precious guns, which of course they wouldn’t “lose.” Do I have that right? These are the same people who say they want to “Make America Great Again?” Really? And the same ones who seek to take away a woman’s right to abortion while more children continue to be shot? There’s just no bottom to the sea of irony and it saddens me deeply.

I teach and have done so for many years. Other than voting, teaching is the only thing I can use to defend young people. These are students, who since Columbine and the Virginia Tech shootings, know how vulnerable they are, even in a classroom. There seem to be no safe spaces and yet, the classroom is the only one I can provide.

Teaching has been my life-long commitment. My service.

We recently had graduation at Barnard College, which included the classes of 2020 and 2021, who came back for their belated ceremonies. The event reminded me of the joy I take in students and how I’ve never felt happier teaching than in the last two plus years. That saId, it’s been stressful with the mutating Covid virus, an unjust war in Ukraine, and the catastrophic impact of climate change. Time seems to be running out. We’re all uncertain about the future and what it might become, even if we have one. And so my students are uncertain as well.

Many teachers have been complaining about less-than-stellar performances by their students due to disinterest, absenteeism and indifference. Jonathan Malesic’s recent opinion essay in the New York Times lamented the deteriorating situation where, with the pandemic and remote/hybrid teaching, there is too little effort by higher administration in colleges to set expectations for students. It seems anything goes. The same essay took up the entire cover of the Times’ Sunday Review: “Welcome to Pandemic University. COLLEGE.” Further down on that same page in eye-catching bold it read, “Late assignments, failed exams, sleeping in class. Even back in person, college students seem to have lost the desire to learn.”  Someone forwarded a post to me from Common Sense by William Deresiewicz titled “We Aren't Raising Adults. We Are Breeding Very Excellent Sheep: Our elite college graduates know how to imitate, but they don’t know how to be independent.”  

Yes, at Barnard College we have some of the same problems. Some colleagues who teach large lecture classes, especially in the sciences, say students don’t show up, as if attending class is merely an option. But this has not been my experience.

In the weeks leading up to graduation, reading term papers that were the culmination of the semester’s work, I found myself moved by the quality of my students’ essays. They were deeply thoughtful, full of independent, critical thinking, with arguments firmly grounded in the literary texts, as they explored the readings and built on difficult conversations we had during the semester. They worked so hard. In fact, the term papers I received since the pandemic began have been some of the best in my five decades of college teaching, which started at the University of Illinois. Sure, there are  always outliers, but the majority of my students astound me. Teaching has been an inspiring, reassuring experience.

With Covid and increased stress on young people, we are encouraged to “take care of” our students (no professor would’ve thought of such a thing when I went to school), to cut them slack for anxiety or their desire for extensions for papers. We post on our syllabi “wellness” resources. As my friend in the English Department put it—a teacher who has long had an ardent following—there has been an increasing infantilization of our students, who nevertheless long to grow up. It’s a hard balance—demanding excellence yet supporting them when they feel most vulnerable. And how could they not, given the world they are inhabiting? A couple of years ago, a wonderful talented first-year student was shot next to campus in a robbery. A year or two before that, one of our students was killed by a mudslide in California that covered a number of houses. 

I’d rather err in the direction of caring, keeping in mind the physician’s motto of “do no harm.”

As a “first gen,” all my schooling was through public education and it was excellent. Moving to Barnard in 2004 from the University of Illinois was an unexpected gift. Teaching at an institution I could never have attended (or been admitted to), I know I am privileged teaching at a liberal arts college where all the students take their work seriously (no fraternities and sororities).  I realize my experience teaching these days is not the same as those at different types of colleges. But I think it is worth sharing.

The first day of class, I tell students I expect their attendance, but that I’m not the police—they are adults, and if they choose not to attend regularly or work to get as much as they can from my class, they are wasting over $50,000 a year—either their parents’ money or the debts they will carry. (A few drop my course.) I also tell them that teaching is a conversation: our conversation with what we read and with each other (whether in class discussion or in papers that I respond to with comments). As for grades, they will get what they earn. No disheartening “curves.”

My teaching has changed over the years, though it has always been student-centered. I gave up on exams as worthless—I want my students to read, think, and write thoughtful essays, not to give me facts that show they’ve read (not understood) the course material. They write essays, even for midterms.

My students asked for specific “paper topics” or “prompts” for short essays. They were unhappy, feeling at sea. But they have grown used to my method. It gives them freedom to use their minds, but also requires them to take responsibility. There’s a life lesson as it relates to liberty.

All the papers they write have choice included. Each person creates the topic of their term paper. I want it to be meaningful to them. Life is too precious, and precarious, to not do something meaningful. I do not train them to be sheep. Rather, I say, “write papers that enable you to grow, to take your own step forward, knowing that you have moved beyond the place where you started.” Such assignments make them feel strong, creative, smart and capable. Thus, most students end the course knowing they have done something that matters. 

I teach “older” literature, with an eye to the present and its concerns. I do not shrink from hard topics, such as suicide, something that has been a plague among young people. During this semester in my Milton course we were reading the passages in Paradise Lost where Adam, after the Fall, does not want to live, and he and Eve consider suicide and abstinence so as to not prolong misery or the human race. But then I pointed out that Adam and Eve, after sinking to the depths of despair, choose life. The meaning of that wasn’t lost on anyone.

My students know I care whether or not they do well. I care when they are suffering. I say what I mean; I have few filters. Being rigorously intellectual does not keep me from being open emotionally, perhaps more than many professors. Are they anxious? Yes, but I too have had a life-long war with worry. For some colleagues, the boundary between the professional and personal is impermeable. But when you are teaching the humanities in these difficult times, surely it is possible to combine intellectual rigor with kindness, compassion, and empathy.  That is “engaged pedagogy.”  We create institutes, centers, and programs for that. My pedagogical tools may be different, but my diverse students thrive and succeed, sometimes beyond what they thought they could achieve. 

Empathy, the basis of conscience, a concern with justice, can be fostered and encouraged; it can be modeled, but I’m not sure it can be taught.