Zeller, who is working on a book about ballet pedagogies, surveyed adults who self-identified as students of ballet at any level to learn how they would characterize the ideal student-teacher relationship. Their responses, she said, centered on a theme: mutual respect. This, she told me, suggests that “maybe they don’t feel so respected as a student.”
What the students wanted, Zeller discovered, was to feel comfortable asking a question, or revealing their ignorance, knowing they would not be embarrassed or made to feel bad for it.
Ballet instruction has a reputation as being strict, even authoritarian; it’s also a place where students may feel especially vulnerable because the work involves their own bodies. Even so, I can think of plenty of higher-education settings in which students might reasonably fear being embarrassed for not knowing.
The students shared something else: A mutual relationship might also mean the teacher asks them about their own experiences as learners.
Zeller then asked how that ideal relationship would make students feel, and their answers clustered around being empowered, motivated, and confident — “all the things we’re after,” she said.
At the same time, she noted, students were not saying they wanted their teachers to go easy on them, or act like a family member or friend. “They don’t want it to be storytime in kindergarten,” Zeller said. The students wanted to be challenged, just in a manner that respected their humanity and ability to contribute. That respect, she said, could be conveyed by something pretty small: using their name. (Zeller said she’d seen 90-minute ballet classes with 15 students in which the teacher never addressed anyone by theirs.)
The importance of acknowledging students as people applies in any classroom setting, said Zeller, who teaches both dance classes and classes about dance. Yes, using names can be harder in a large lecture format. But professors can still make eye contact, she said.
Whatever an instructor is teaching, she said, it’s good to remember that the class might not be the most important thing a student has going on. And even if it is, life can still get in the way, as everyone experienced during the pandemic. Simply acknowledging that, she said, can go a long way.
I found the survey responses interesting, but was also struck by Zeller’s questions. For all that college students are asked to give their opinions of professors in high-stakes and problematic ways in course evaluations, I am not familiar with other instances of their being asked how they would like their relationships with professors to look.
I’m curious: How do you think your students want to relate to you? Have you ever asked them? And if so, what did they say? Share your thoughts with me at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com, and I may include them in a future issue of the newsletter.
Contentious conversations
How can professors better manage class discussions on difficult topics — whether they’re the focus of the course or arise unexpectedly? Beth and I spent some time investigating those questions over the summer for a recent Chronicle report, “Fostering Students’ Free Expression,” to which we each contributed a section. Beth caught up with a handful of professors who’ve designed courses squarely on polarized topics; I wrote about handling difficult conversations in the classroom in general.
One common theme in our reporting: Many students hesitate to share their views on controversial issues in class, but professors can create classroom conditions that help them push past that reluctance.
One way to do that is to model healthy debate. In her section, Beth draws on the example of two professors, one liberal and the other conservative, who team-teach a course called “The University Blacklist.” She also quotes another professor who describes explaining to students that her marriage is “bipartisan.”
My section details students’ openness to — and even hunger for — class ground rules, and describes how professors can prepare students to talk about difficult topics by giving them practice engaging with classmates on less-controversial ones.
The report is for sale in the Chronicle Store; or ask your librarian if your college has campuswide access to it.
An engaged classroom
Students might feel disengaged from college for many reasons outside an instructor’s hands. Still, professors can take action to increase the chances that students will meaningfully engage in the work of a course — for instance, by better connecting lessons to the real world and career aspirations; being more transparent about learning outcomes; and introducing students to emerging technologies, like generative AI. On Thursday, October 19, I’ll be moderating an expert panel in a Chronicle virtual event on that topic. Register to attend here. Have questions or thoughts about the topic? Send them my way before the event: beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us, at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com or beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.
—Beckie
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