Lynn the school ma'am

One thing I was really appreciating about my new teaching self was the fact that I've been so relaxed. Especially about the expectations I had about my students. In my previous teaching life, before the PhD, I was such a reactive teacher. Very demanded, critical and hard. Setting the bar very high and expecting my students to rise to the challenge. I often got 'upset' at them because they seemingly refused to do the right thing in class or take their learning seriously. At the time I had very clear motivations for this aspect of my teaching behaviour; motivations I thought (and in certain respects still do feel) were honourable and came from the right place. While today I still believe in the those underpinning values that drove certain aspects of my practice, I don't feel compelled to exert too much pressure on my students, or demand that they conform to strict rules of appropriate learning behaviour that I strictly enforce. It's their learning experience and they should be given the opportunity to exert as much control over what and how they learn (within the structures that the university has created).

On Thursday I felt all these new grand ideals slip from my grasp as I morphed into Lynn the school ma'am. As it happened I could hear the voice in my head say...'No! don't go there' and as with so many other moments like this in my personal life, I told the voice firmly to shut up and I went 'there' anyway.

It had been a frustrating lecture from the moment I stepped into the class. The students just seemed distracted and as the hour passed it felt like I had to stop every 10 - 15 minutes to get them to calm down, get them to concentrate on the discussion at hand, encourage them to participate in the discussion or respond to a question I had posed, or ask one or other group to stop talking. Then as I tried to talk through the last slide which outlined the small homework task, there was a rush of students to the front of the class, smartphones in hand taking photos of the slide. I make all my slides available on Blackboard either before or within an hour of the lecture. This sent me over the edge. I couldn't help but wonder if students at other, more prestigious, universities would react and behave like this in their lectures. And then I started my rant. Almost embarrassingly I turned into the delittling parent  - using their power to scold the child but at the same time seek retribution by transferring the blame back onto the child. Afterall it was the child's poor behaviour that had forced the parent to respond in ways that was clearly demeaning for the parent. Welcome back the old Lynn. I'd like to suggest that the frustrations of the multiple challenges I had to deal with during that hour were to blame for my outburst - but I think it's an easy response and one that all too quickly vindicates and absolves me from all wrong doing. But it is challenging teaching where I teach. It's even more challenging trying to maintain my learning and teaching philosophies that value and reinforce active and critical learning while also placing a humanist ideal at the centre of all I do in the classroom. So I didn't do too well on Thursday but I hope I can keep Lynn the school ma'am at bay...for now anyway.