Showing respect vs. being liked

The teaching world, like the rest of the world, imbues a tremendous amount of temptation.  No one enjoys being disliked, and when one stands in front of a crowd of students for a living, the temptation is to try to be liked.  However, giving into that desire entails putting one’s own interests above those of the students.  The pressures of “edutainment” make this temptation harder to ignore because in being edutaining, one tends to try to be more likeable.  If edutainment and likeability are the goals of a class, however, learning is compromised.

To address this concern, the professor must first become aware that it exists, and this is difficult because everyone loves to be liked.  A lack of awareness in this area is destructive and selfish.  Now, we all share the desire to be liked and the selfish unawareness to overlook that temptation.  As a result, there is nothing here to condemn; professors are simply human.  But think of it like this: What might be gained if each of us was a bit more aware of this temptation?   Should we gain such awareness, even a bit of it, what might that mean for education?  It would mean that we more easily and assertively put teaching and learning first, and education would trump edutainment.

How might we go about doing this?  I think it boils down to respect.  Here are some clichés that I use to remind myself of my responsibilities in the classroom.

1)    “Friendly but not your friend.”  If I am kind, respectful, and thoughtful to students it is not because I desire for them to be my friends.  It is because intimidation and anger make it tougher for them to come ask me questions.  If I am to have an open door to their world, then I must be friendly.  However, I warn them that I will disappoint them if they think of me as a friend because I will assign them the grade they earn whether or not they like it or agree with my assessment.

2)   “Grades belong to students not to me.”  Students earn their grade; I do not ‘give’ them grades.  I tell them this, and then I explain why this is the case.

3)   “My job is to teach and evaluate performance.”  It is not my job to make students comfortable.  Rather, learning can be tremendously uncomfortable if one is out of practice.  Many students are unpracticed at learning, so it can be tough.  Regardless of the condition of their study skills, abilities, and motivations, students pay for a relatively short period of time that we share.  At the end of that time, I evaluate them and assign them the grade that they earn.  This is my job because I have acquired the skills and information to teach the class and the experience to determine whether or not someone else (a student) has acquired those same skills and to what degree.

4)   “Learning is not natural.”  We (members of society: teachers, student, parents) adhere to the insane belief that learning should be easy.  Think about it.  We do most of the learning we will do during the first ten years of our lives, when it is natural to do so.  The older we get, the less able we are at learning.  Why would we expect this to be any different?  If we respect the process of education as a stiff challenge, each of us will acknowledge that acquiring study skills sets a person apart.  Dusting off the rust and becoming a better learner requires tremendous effort.  People should not expect it to be any other way.

5)   “Disappointed for you not in you.”  If a student fails to meet their own expectations, they may be disappointed in themselves.  From time to time a student will try to enlist a professor in this process by pretending that the professor is disappointed in them as well.  This is simply not true; I will acknowledge the humanity of the fact that a student feels disappointment, I will encourage her/him to keep trying, but it would be irresponsible for me to invest disappointment in them.  To do so adds an extra burden that the student should not carry and it provides a warrant for their disappointment, which enables them to stay stuck in their belief that they cannot succeed no matter what they do (“See!  The professor agrees with me,” et cetera).  Perhaps they are more capable than they recognize, and that is for them to discover during the rest of their education.

These strategies have worked for me as I navigate the courses I teach.  It requires care to think along these lines because it is easy to come off as unfriendly, distant, and demanding.  To be honest, I would rather be seen as unfriendly and demanding than put ‘being liked’ above education.  However, there is a compromising style that can be used to maintain openness and availability (I learned it from my mother, thanks Mom!)—I tell my students why I do things they way I do, and I think this shows them respect.  I know that I do not perfectly address teaching challenges.  But “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and teaching is a process that is always a "work in progress."