A jet- and poodle-lagged pedagogy post

In Heidelberg with husband and poodle. So I have not kept up with the thread following this post, and I'm way behind on Sunday Styles and the like. I have, however, seen the cargo areas of the Frankfurt airport - evidently two weeks before our arrival, they'd changed how one goes about picking up a pet, but hadn't told us, so that was a completely unnecessary - if not entirely uninteresting - trip to the parallel universe known as Cargo City Süd. (Even small dogs can't always come in-cabin. Inconsequential dog-welfare-wise, assuming the right breed and other factors, but unanticipated-cost-wise, bureaucratic-hassle-wise, something to consider.)

I have, however, read Flavia's latest post, about socioeconomic differences in students' classroom behavior. As usual, lots to think about. To highlight just one angle: student self-advocacy: "Most of us have probably noticed that while some students have no hesitation asking for extensions or extra help or other special treatment (sometimes justified, sometimes not) others are diffident and won't advocate for themselves even when they have a compelling reason." Indeed, although at this stage - having taught for three years and been in school for 300 - I've seen it more as a student than as an instructor.


But yes. There are certain students who come to a teacher to explain that they're really stressed and thus need an extension, and other who won't tell the teacher that, say, a parent just died, and will come in as if nothing happened. I have found it frustrating, as a teacher, that you can only give extensions/exceptions for students who've come to you with their problems, when for all you know the kid who always gets Cs - but who doesn't seem depressed or troubled in such a way as to allow you to ask how he is - might well be going through a worse crisis that he just hasn't told you about. Or - perhaps more poignantly, the kid who gets A-/B+ grades, and would be a star but for some crisis... that you don't know about, or have any way of finding out about. 


I've also, however, found it frustrating as a student when someone comes to a teacher with an utterly B.S. excuse (in one memorable case from pre-grad-school, a student who felt entitled to an A in a language class on account of having lived for a time where the language was spoken, a fact that somehow hadn't led to As on the assignments) and actually gets somewhere with it (as that student did, who went and got that A). As someone who was not raised to expect teachers to care about my feelings, who was never encouraged to take "mental health days" (or physical health days) or to expect to be able to forget my homework at home without consequences, that one could make a fuss about nonsense and get results has always struck me as unfair. To me, but also to students who had super-legitimate reasons to hand work in late, but still managed to get it in on time. 


On the other hand, it can seem self-defeating when a student with legitimate what-have-you fails to mention it, out of pride or cultural background or who knows. 


There's certainly a class distinction when it comes to self-advocacy, but in my experience, it's only a small number of the wealthy students thinking the teacher cares about their problems. I'd almost go as far as to say that there will be that kid in the class who expects sympathy for her hangover/his upcoming family vacation to Tuscany/her chemistry exam later in the week that will determine if she gets to med school so is it OK if she skips her Creative Writing assignments just these few times with no consequences thanks in advance? 


What leads to this attitude? Much of it could be innocuous, like when a student accustomed to life at a tiny private school (or homeschooling) switches to a large college. Just as it's not the instructor's job to know what other responsibilities/leisure activities each student in a 40-person class has that week, it's not the student's to understand that the instructor has 240 other students that semester. Sometimes it really will come as news to a student that a class of 40 will fall apart if each student has his or her own syllabus. But there are no doubt some upper-middle-class parents teaching their kids that the teacher is always wrong, and that the way to an A is complaining, not working hard. Other times still, kids pick up that message without having been taught it, simply by observing what gets results. As in, sometimes that which looks and quacks like "entitled" has no more profound explanation.

So. Self-advocacy can get grades changed, even without the proverbial threat-of-lawsuit-from-parents. But it's almost never something the top students engage in. The top students may also come from wealthier/better-educated family backgrounds, but they'll have been raised in in the Amy Chua "tiger mom" manner, which is to say, as if they were struggling immigrants, whether or not this bore any resemblance to their actual socioeconomic situation. Or they didn't grow up in the States, and so are unfamiliar with the nurturing, "American" classroom environment. Lots of people who make it to grad school were, not surprisingly, raised to get As without insisting upon them, and so are mystified, if not necessarily annoyed, by this kind of behavior.

Is the answer simply to be less indulgent across the board (with whichever exceptions for extreme circumstances), or to encourage all students to come by if they have a problem, as in, to actively reach out any time a student gets grade below an A, just to be sure that nothing external and unfair has stopped them from reaching their full potential? I suppose I lean closer to the former. I'm not confident that I'm in a position to rank my students' obstacles, let alone when I know I'll never have the full story. Many really tough life situations aren't ones a student - rich or poor - will want to tell a teacher. While I do hope students are getting whatever help they need outside the classroom, I think it's reasonable that they won't want to share everything in exchange for the possibility of an extension on some assignment, and thus am totally fine with students sharing, or not, according to what they're comfortable with.

Also, class background isn't always so transparent in a classroom setting, especially in this age of scrappiness one-upmanship. You can guess quite a bit by the type of school it is, but at schools with a great deal of socioeconomic diversity, it may well be your students/classmates with the least financial concerns whose financial concerns you'll hear the most about.

And finally, in terms of teaching not just the subject, but Life Lessons, a (good) boss will be understanding if there's a real problem, but will think less of you, perhaps stop paying you, if a non-problem prevented you from doing your work. But you also don't want to be too harsh, just to make a point. Flavia's approach - a strict policy on the syllabus, paired with an insistence that students in genuine crisis feel free to come to you to work something out - does seem the best way.