In Praise of Students

I once visited a teacher's class that did not go well. We talked afterwards and we both knew it was weak. A month later I visited and it was a much better class. I asked him if he could pinpoint the difference and what had happened in the last 4-5 weeks. I was surprised that he could answer so quickly. He did not hesitate to say that the difference was in his own attitude. He had previously looked at his students as objects, things to make him look better. He stayed frustrated when they did not act like he thought they should so as to maximize his performance. Then he realized what he was doing and decided that he didn't care how he looked, he only cared about their learning. Things changed almost overnight for him.

So what do you see when you look at your students? In the worst case scenario you could see the enemy, those that oppose you each day and tend to make your life miserable. Of course there are days like that, but if that's really how you feel then you should polish up your resume and look for other work. If not, misery will be your constant companion as you attempt to teach. The other end of the spectrum is to see nothing but soaring scholars winging their way towards life long successes. Both extremes are misleading.

Here is what we really see: we see people, young and old, just like us who have questions and wonders and worries. They have a whole life outside the classroom.They grow and develop at different rates. They are anxious and are trying to find their place not just in the classroom but in their culture and social circle. They don't want to fail. No one starts out to fail and our students don't either. Even if they can't articulate it, they want to succeed, they want to do well and they need to do it with pressures on them that we may or may not be aware of. We are instruments to either help or hinder them.

There are many books in my library about teaching and I've read them all. Some I've read a second or third time. One of those is What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain. He has a whole section concerning what the best teachers expect of their students. If you are not expecting anything of your students other than just showing up you are hindering the learning process. Expectations stretch us and having high expectations begins with the attitudes of the teacher and what she sees as she surveys the students.

Here are a few thoughts from the book. I'm inserting them without comment so that you can just think about them as they come. Where do you see yourself in these quotes?

• "The best teachers tended to look for and appreciate the individual value of each student."
• "Students will be buoyed by positive expectations that are genuine, challenging yet realistic, and that take their work seriously."
• "The best teachers tended to set high standards and conveyed a strong trust in their students' abilities to meet them."
• "Trust in the students depended on the teacher's rejection of power over them."
• "They looked for the diamonds in the rough, took all their students seriously, and treated each one with respect."
• "The very best teachers had a deeper vision of ultimate quality that left them with a strong faith in their students' abilities."

I know that I have both hit and missed each one of those standards. And I think that time and experience and age help us all move towards the goal of seeing and treating each student with respect. It is interesting now to see former students who are adults and parents and see the goodness in them. They really were diamonds in the rough and they got polished up and now shine. The shine was hidden when they were 15 or 16 but it has come out now. When I have seen certain students I am grateful that I never said what I really wanted to say in a fit of frustration. For those to whom I actually did say what I was thinking I am embarrassed. I think the students have long since forgotten it, but some of those things have stayed with me.

If you are like me at all you will realize that we need to be slower to judge and quicker to embrace the goodness that is present in the students that come to our classes. Some of my very good friends are former students. My life has been enriched by them and I always hope it has been a mutual relationship.

The Written Word and the Rewritten Word

We cannot learn new things unless we can connect them to something we already know.  That's why we use metaphors and similes and analogies in our speaking.  If someone is trying to get you to eat frog legs and you have no idea if you will like them or not because you don't know the taste or texture and have never eaten them, the person says "Don't worry, they are just like chicken."  Now you have something to link it to and can make a better decision.

In trying to help students learn something new, we have to do the same thing - get them to see it in light of something they already know.  Scripturally the idea of a 'broken heart' is initially confusing. But if you say "Remember when you had a new pair of shoes, or a baseball glove, and it was very stiff?  You had to break it in - soften it up and make it useful to you.  That's what your broken heart is to God: it is softened up and useful to Him."  Or you could say "If your heart is full of pride it needs to be broken, drained of all pride, then allowed to have the Master Healer fix it so it is pointed to Him."  We understand those things and can then build on them for more knowledge.

A very helpful way to assist students gain new understanding is to get them to rewrite passages that are problematic.  Here are a couple of ways to do it:

1. Define Words - I can't believe how many times I've heard teachers read passages of scripture that contain words that I'm confidant not one student understands and that they should understand in order to learn what the passage is saying.  In the well known story of David and Goliath, I Samuel 17, we read in verses 4-7 of Goliath's size and the weapons he was outfitted with.  In an average class, how many will understand "cubits", "five thousand shekels", "greaves", "target of brass", "weaver's beam" or "six hundred shekels of iron"?  You can solve that challenge by having a dictionary in class so that someone can look the word up, or use the Bible dictionary available in most sets of scriptures, or have them use their electronic devices.  Understanding words is very helpful to understanding context and principles.  Sometimes if it is just one word I will hand a student a dictionary and tell the class that there are 3 definitions for this word.  We are going to listen to all three and then you decide which one fits best in the context of this passage.

2. Translate - Don't think of translation as just language to language but also as idea to idea, from a less understandable form to a more understandable form.  So if we read this passage in II Chronicles 20:20 - "Believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established; believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper." - they will all understand the words.  There are no surprises there.  But do they understand the meaning of the passage?  I'll say "I need a translation for this passage" and they will start to wrestle with it and eventually come up with something more understandable for them.

3. Seven Words -  In preparation one day I happened across an idea that I have come to call "7 words".  I thought that if I could get students to rewrite a verse of scripture in 7 words it would help them boil down the essence of it so that they could understand.  Why seven?  There is nothing special about it, that's just the number I landed on.  It could be any number you want but seven seemed to have some appeal. Almost every time I do this with a class someone will shout out "I did it in 3 words (or some other lower number) and I have to explain again that the object is not the fewest words but the exact number of words.  It could be a sentence, or a phrase, or just a string of words, but it has to express the meaning of the passage. Working with a precise number of words adds discipline to the activity.  Once they get the idea, they all seem to like to do it and it will often turn into a little competition to see who can come up with the most creative and accurate way to boil down a verse. It can be done with difficult passages but it works just as well with more common passages.  Here's an example from D&C 45:33 - "earthquakes come, hearts harden, men kill others."

Inviting students into the text with an assignment to dig in and get a little messy with it makes class livelier, and makes for better learning.

I Love Teaching, But Must I Also Love The Students?

I walked into the first day of a 10^th grade history class at Bellflower High School.  The teacher took the roll and then said this (not an exact quote but an adequate paraphrase): 

“I am Mr. ……  I am the teacher, you are the students.  My job is to teach and your job is to learn.  I am not here to be your friend, just your teacher.”  This was not good for me.  I was 15, had acne, very little self confidence, and was just trying to fit in. I was not cool - that social level was always just out of my grasp.  But teachers had helped cover up my social deficiencies by being my friends.  From kindergarten through the ninth grade I had many really good teachers and never had I been told, right up front, that I should not expect some level of friendship.  I quietly revolted by deciding not to be his friend, and not to do much of anything in his class.

Is it necessary to like students?  I say yes and I would further add that it is critical to love them, to care about them, and to be concerned about them as people not just numbers (that is, if you want them to learn anything).  Someone told me once that a good working definition of ‘charity’ (real, pure love) is to love the unlovable.  I like that.  It is easy to love the lovable – the students who come in with work done and with eagerness to do more, the pretty ones, the handsome ones, the smiling ones, the confident ones.  It is much harder to love the unlovable.  Those are the surly ones, the bored, the disengaged, the lost, those that drag in late and stare at you and dare you to teach them.  The easy thing is to emotionally dismiss them and just work around them.  The hard thing, and the right thing, is to find a way.  Work your way into their life.

I've heard a teacher or two say something like this: “They don’t show any concern for me and I really have all I can do to work with the ones that seem interested.”  If you are going to wait for students to show interest in you first you are going to wait a long time.  That is not the natural order of things.  In the New Testament, I John 4:19 we learn the proper order and it is this:  We love the Savior because He first loved us.  The person with the most power in the relationship has to begin the process.  Sometimes the process is quick and often it drags out but I can hardly recall a student (teen-ager, young adult, or adult) that I could not be friends with, and then learn to love, after I made the first move and stayed with it in a variety of ways until we were friends.