At the risk of belaboring the point, beating a dead horse, and continuing ad nauseam, I have to say again that my students are a pretty decent bunch. As I said in an earlier post, they were almost as excited and relieved as I was to hear that I had received tenure. In the months we all waited to get the news, the students decided that they would storm the Bastille, or, in this case, the admin building, if I did not get tenure, so they were happy that such extreme action was not called for.
On Monday night, I posted my tenure news on Facebook, and students started commenting right away. One student immediately decided that the American lit class needed to take me out to dinner in celebration, so I agreed to give up Thursday’s class time so they could do that. The sacrifices I make… After some discussion, the class agreed that a pizza place in Bridgeport would work well, so we carpooled down when we were supposed to be discussing mid-20th-century American lit.
We had a good time. Perhaps it should be a little strange and awkward to to out with a group of friends and one professor, especially when I learned to my chagrin that I am the same age as some of their parents (!!), but it was very fun and relaxed. The students seemed to be perfectly at ease with me, and I never felt like some old geezer hanging out with the youngsters.
There seems to be some sort of message in this about the teaching relationship, but I’m not sure yet what it is. Perhaps we have as a culture become so afraid of the mere hint of impropriety that we move too far in the opposite direction and forget that our students are also our fellow humans. Teaching has always seemed to me to be a very strangely intimate business: students bare their minds and their souls in a class, and I must do the same in order to bring them into the conversation. I believe that we may not allow ourselves to become intellectually intimate because we fail to recognize the nuances of intimacy.
I’m sure there is an article or something hidden here somewhere, but I’m not quite sure how to find it.
It is weird how it’s changed. My father and his colleagues and their students all hung out together (vivid memories of my childhood involve parties at our house with students and professors alike). I think the baby was thrown out with the bathwater, as is so often the case in this country, when sexual harassment became such an issue right around the time I was in college. It’s a shame. Why can’t we distinguish between obvious inappropriate behavior (e.g. “kiss me or you’ll flunk my class”) and valid interaction/relationships that are healthy and good for all involved? Instead, we seem to resort to what basically becomes restricting most interaction in order to control fears of what might happen if we don’t, merely because a few jerks insist on engaging in inappropriate behavior. The result to me seems to be more and more division along generational lines or roles (i.e. “student”/”teacher”, “boss”/”subordinate”) in our society instead of mingling across generations/roles and learning from each other, which one would hope would have been the result of a lot of the freedom people were fighting for in the 1960s. (The exception, as I always seem to observe, is the blogosphere, where people of all ages/roles seem to mingle).
(Sorry. Rather than clogging up your comments, I probably should write a whole blog post about this myself.)
Congratulations on having your tenure wend its way through all of the administrative hoops!
I know I’m behind in reading blogs, but CONGRATS on tenure – that is such great, great news! And how very sweet of your students to take you out to celebrate – I think your relationship to your students sounds a lot like the kind my husband had with his professors at Wabash College in IN – they would move mountains for one another if they could.
Until the admin replaces you all with robots, I think that some of the best lessons/conversations/learning experiences are always going to happen when teachers and students can be real and honest in their treatment of each other, as fellow human beings and not as “superior/subordinate” as Emily points out.
If I had been brave enough to watch Dead Poets Society, I might compare that to this, but I’m afraid if I watch it, it will affect me too deeply for weeks.
Congrats again on the tenure! My best professors have been the ones that were able to relate to me as people and then switch back into professional mode as appropriate. Our course coordinator was such a mother-figure to us (we were a small class of 10) and it really worked. Not too close as in holding our hands and being our friend but close as in inviting us all to dinner at her house and having coffee with us to celebrate the end of term. But I guess it becomes tricky if you’re friendly with only some members of the class. That could lead to suspected favouritism (and rumoured impropriety).