Do most professors wish they could teach their students how to be students before the first class, or is it just the inner control freak in me?
Last fall, in an effort to help my students avoid doing things that frustrate their teachers, including me, I posted an article on my course website under the header “10 Things Every College Professor Hates,” written by a sociology professor at Occidental College. I thought it was a lighthearted (and yes, indirect, since I hadn’t written the piece) way for me to make my life easier by changing their behavior. Even more important, I wanted to prevent students from having a negative relationship with me and other faculty members.
I don’t know how many of them actually read it, but the ones who did may well have been more offended than enlightened. So last spring, when the new semester got underway, I decided to give them much the same message, but in my own words and with an affectionate and respectful tone.
After posting it, I immediately got emails from my students praising my list of “10 Things This Instructor Loves.” I offer it here, as we all prepare for the new fall semester, in hopes that other faculty members may be able to adopt it and get the same positive reaction from their students.
So what was on my list? I told my students that I love …
1. Students. I love you! OK, not “you” in any sort of personal way (though I’m sure you’re very lovable), but I love college students. I love talking with you, mentoring you, teaching you, learning from you, and watching you interact and learn from one another. College is an amazing time in anyone’s life. You’re a grown adult, but still young, often idealistic, and not yet set in your ways. I love that about you. I love the enthusiasm and energy you bring to my life. You remind me of my 20-year-old self — when I was figuring out my place in the world and how much I had to learn, but also all the ways I could contribute, all the things in front of me. College is exciting (but also scary). I love to be able to guide you through this time.
2. Students who come to class with an open mind. I love the first day of class, and it’s made even better by students who arrive ready to make the course their own, and not what they heard it would be like. I love when we all come in with a clean slate. We’re not yet bogged down by grading or studying. We haven’t yet realized just how much work the semester is going to be, but are instead focused on how much we will learn, how much we will grow, how much fun we’ll have.
3. Students who come to my class to fulfill a requirement but decide to make the most of the experience. I had an economics major once in my “Oceanography” course who confessed he was dreading taking the class and didn’t see how it related to anything he was interested in. Nonetheless, he tried to approach the course as an opportunity to learn things that he wouldn’t have time to study later in life. Along the way, he later told me, he discovered all sorts of things that turned out to be relevant to his life — learning the nature of the tides in his home town, and understanding the connections between oceans and things he read about in the newspaper like ocean acidification, global climate change, and renewable energy.
4. Students who give eye contact during a lecture. There is nothing worse than standing in front of students, whether it’s only 10 or 300, and feeling alone. It is a lot of work to teach, but seeing just one set of eyes engaging with me rather than with a screen makes it so much easier. Thank you to those who listen and engage with your professors.
5. Students who come to me when they need help. To help someone learn a difficult concept is incredibly rewarding. It is a relief when students recognize that they need help and come to me early enough to get it.
6. Students who aren’t afraid to ask questions. If one student doesn’t understand something, it is very likely others don’t either. Stopping the professor to clarify a point gives us the opportunity to really teach and stay in touch with our students. I am always grateful to students who risk looking “dumb” to ask a question.
7. Students who tell me not just that they enjoyed my course, but why. I have had students give me poems they wrote about rocks, tell me stories of discussing our case study on the Salton Sea in a job interview, and send me vacation pictures with vignettes of how they taught their family all about the volcanoes they visited in Hawaii. I’ve had graduates, on campus for a visit, drop by my office just to tell me they put their knowledge gained from one of my courses into practice in graduate school. Whether I receive those poems, letters, and visits weeks, months, or years after the course ends, they never get old. They re-energize me and remind me of how lucky I am to have the opportunity to affect people’s lives.
8. Students who have their own ideas. Few things are more fun in teaching than seeing students so engaged in the course material that they begin to have new ideas, rather than just regurgitating what I say. I know how I would describe the ocean gyres or why Earth has seasons, but often students find new and better ways to describe those things. I love that. Some show me articles they’ve found on something we’ve discussed in class, or help a struggling fellow student do a problem that I hadn’t clarified in the best way. It makes me smile when students challenge the conventional way of understanding. Keep it up.
9. Students who give me unique and powerful things to say in a letter of recommendation. Writing a letter for an excellent student is so satisfying. When I applied to graduate school, my strongest letter came from a professor who gave me one of my worst grades in college. Despite the message that grade conveyed to some, I knew I had worked incredibly hard in his course, and went on to do research with him. I never found out exactly what he said in my recommendation, but I do know I got into every graduate school I applied to. I have had the privilege of writing similar letters, both for A students and for C-plus students who worked so hard and showed such curiosity and creativity that it was a pleasure to write them a glowing recommendation. There are other students who may have earned an A from me, but that is about all I could say of them in a letter. It’s better when students give me something to say about them.
10. Students who are fully engaged in the learning process. My heart skips a little when I see students bent over their desks, arms moving rapidly, trying to get everything down on paper for an exam, or when I see their hands in the air figuring out which way the ocean currents are deflected in the Southern Hemisphere. The energy of new knowledge put in motion is a beautiful thing.
When I posted this list on my course website, I told my students that I could easily make this a list of 100 things. But these 10 encapsulate much of why I do what I do. I love working with students, and I told them that I hoped that they would enjoy working with me, even if it wasn’t always fun. I told them, upfront, that I want them to get the most out of their college years, and my hope is that I can be one small part of helping them do so. That is the message I really wanted them to hear — a message of affection and respect.
Guess what I got in return? Much more affection and respect, and a lot less of all that stuff we “hate.”
