You’re right. I don’t know you.
This is a cross-post from Equality 101.
You know those days when everything just lines up perfectly and all your synapses start firing and things just connect? Yesterday was one of those days. It started with Adam’s thought-provoking post from yesterday and a conversation that keeps reoccurring with my students, continued during my grad class last night, and a conversation with Tim afterwards.
When I ask my students what they want to see from a teacher – and I do this often, whether because I sense the need that they need to talk, or because it fits in with a lesson we’re doing, or because they volunteer the information – they always start by saying that good teachers understand them.
I might be bold in including myself in the “good teacher” category, but I must ask a pressing question: Do we, as good teachers, really understand our students? I mean really understand them.
Most teachers were students that could stand – maybe even enjoyed – going to school. If we didn’t, there’s no way we would have moved on to get the college education required for a teaching certificate. We are the ones who could afford that college education in the first place, and if we couldn’t afford it, we had the means and resources to take out loans. We are the ones that want to instill our passion for learning into our students. We are the ones who had a passion for learning instilled in us in the first place.
Let’s face it: we are probably much more privileged than most of our students. I, for one, grew up in an entirely different situation than most of the students in my classes. Growing up, I experienced all sorts of privilege: white privilege, thin privilege, socioeconomic privilege… heck, I even had both parents living with me through high school. The list can go on and on, but just by growing up in a different place during a different generation in a different situation, I experienced life in an entirely different way than my students. So when they come in wanting to talk about their problems and issues and lives, the truth is that I can’t even come close to understanding.
I can sympathize, but I don’t think they want my pity. I can listen, which might be all they need, but they might need more. I can care, which I do – probably more than they know. But, honestly, I can’t understand.
I’m not saying that Adam’s student’s disposition after the incident excuses him from talking back to a teacher unnecessarily; we still need to hold our students to the highest expectations regarding academics and behavior. But I am saying that we could go a long way to acknowledge the fact that most of us truly don’t know our students, although we do our best to try to reach them, inspire them, educate them, and care about them.