You’re reading the latest issue of Teaching, a weekly newsletter from a team of Chronicle journalists. Sign up here to get it in your inbox on Thursdays.
This week:
- I describe how one professor moved from projecting authority to her students to letting them know about the time she considered dropping out of grad school.
- I pass along some new research on the benefits of giving students an authentic research experience.
- I point you toward a few thoughtful takes on how to make sense of research on teaching.
Rigorous — but Human
To learn a bit about her students, Catherine Savini used to ask them to complete a survey about themselves on the first day of class. But over time, Savini, an associate professor of English at Westfield State University, in Massachusetts, came to see this expectation as “asymmetrical”: She shared very little of her own experience with them.
Savini had her reasons for that. “When I first started teaching,” she said, “I felt like I needed to project an air of authority. Probably because I didn’t have any.”
When she was in college, Savini said, she carefully avoided giving any kind of public presentation. The very first time she taught, as a graduate student at New York University, a student approached her afterward and said something like, “First time teaching, eh?”
Most new instructors want to be taken seriously. But the challenge of pulling this off, Savini said, is “amplified” for women. Her approach? “I set up really rigid boundaries.”
Slowly, Savini came to see the limitations of this strategy. She read books like The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life, which helped her to see students at her institution — many of whom are first-generation-college and struggling to succeed — with new eyes. When students seem checked out, she learned, the cause might not be laziness. Another possibility is fear of failure — a feeling she can identify with.
“The students would do well,” Savini thought, “to learn about the ways I faltered on my way into this position.”
So a couple of years ago, Savini started something new. Before the semester begins, she now sends students an introductory email sharing a bit about herself. She describes feeling out of place in graduate school, where she was surrounded by graduates of Ivy League colleges. Once, she tells them, a professor walked out in the middle of a presentation she was giving.
“I felt completely demoralized,” she continues, “and I considered dropping out, but I am glad I persevered or I wouldn’t be able to have the job I have now. I want to make sure that students at WSU don’t feel inadequate the way I sometimes did in graduate school.”
Then Savini makes a request: “Please let me know if there are ways I can better support your learning.”
The email also includes a set of questions, similar to the survey that she used to give out. Students’ responses have helped Savini get to know them — and at times, even changed the way she teaches. This semester, one student described having serious social anxiety. That led Savini to change her plan for the first day of class, when she had planned to use an improv activity. Savini will look for ways for this student to participate, she said, but that seemed like too much for the first day.
Savini is selective in what she tells students about herself, she said. This isn’t about being “their buddy,” she said — whatever she shares has to serve a purpose. That curation lets her model for students the kinds of things she’d like to know about them. And it lets them know that she’ll be able to connect with their stories.
Savini considers herself to be a “rigorous” professor, she said, and that has not changed. “You can be rigorous,” she said, “but also be human.”
I’ve heard a number of stories like Savini’s — in which professors come to see their students as fuller people and share more of themselves as their careers progress. It makes me wonder: How do you decide which personal information to share with students? Have you ever regretted sharing too little, or too much? Have you received any good advice on striking the right balance? Tell me about it at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com, and your example may appear in a future newsletter.