Education

Dear Auntie Siobhan: How Do I Balance the Passion in my Classroom?

by Siobhan Curious

category: Student Rights And Welfare

Published July 25, 2009 @ 07:27AM PT

Dear Auntie Siobhan,

I’m writing about classroom dynamics. Specifically I’m trying to determine how best to deal with some dynamics that keep recurring in my classes.

First a bit of context: I’m an out queer woman and I teach in a small town college at the undergraduate level. My classes often deal with sexuality issues, gender politics, and social justice, and my classes often draw queer students as well as students from other minority locations, as well as more seemingly normative students.

There are a number of interconnected and dynamic problems which sometimes arise however: there is often tension, and sometimes verbal aggression, between my queer and more politicized students and those students who are seemingly “more normative”; sometimes this takes the form of conscious or unconscious forms of homophobic or racist commentary from students who are unaccustomed to classrooms in which their privilege is not naturalized and taken for granted, sometimes this comes out in a presumption of homophobia or other forms of oppressive behavior on the part of apparently privileged students, sometimes it seems queer and of colour students get defensive and uncomfortable whenever the topics of racism and homophobia come up, not wanting to become personally implicated in those conversations. Conversely, I sometimes find students who regularly occupy more marginal positions feel the need to take up more space in my classroom, which makes sense, and yet…

Do you have tips, suggestions, ideas about how to pedagogically engage the real differences that shape students experience of, and behavior in, the classroom, without shutting down students that are in the process of figuring out how those differences work, in their lives and in the world?

Thanks,
Yrsin S. Truggles

Dear Yrsin:

What a fascinating and tricky problem.

Clearly you are teaching course content that your students connect with passionately.  Every teacher wants this, and so in that sense, you are to be envied.  However, in order for passion to be productive and minimally damaging, there need to be boundaries.

Here's how I see it: a classroom is a community.  The teacher is, among other things, the sheriff.  If problems arise, if student learning is being adversely affected by student behavior, then it is the teacher's responsibility to address that student behavior.

The question is, how do we know where to draw the line?  We don't know, but we have to make educated guesses based on our own level of comfort, and our observations of the other students in the room.

When I was a graduate student, I attended a seminar that was dominated by a few supremely confident, loud people (all of them men, as it happens).  I eventually, through sheer doggedness, managed to force myself into the discussion, but most of the other people in the class sat silent most of the time.  It wasn't because the others had nothing to say, and some of the loud men's contributions were more bravado than substance.  What troubled me was that the professor never made any attempt to intervene or guide the discussion in order to allow everyone in the class - even those who lacked confidence - to have a voice.

In the "Classroom Conduct" section of my course outline, one rule is, "Discussion, including disagreement, must be conducted with civility and mutual respect."  No student has ever asked what this means, but it would be a good question.  What constitutes civility?

In my classroom, I call these things as I see them, and much of it depends on my comfort level, but it is ultimately about how I perceive the comfort level of the students in the room. Often, these two comfort levels coincide.

If two students are discussing a subject that they disagree on, and one is shouting, the tension in the room is usually palpable.  I would probably call a halt and ask them to express their views in another way: write them down, for example.  Maybe I would ask the whole class to write down their views on the subject.  Maybe then I'd ask them to read them aloud, in order to continue the discussion but curtail the aggressive momentum.

I'd also feel the need to intervene on a more personal level.  I might ask the students who were arguing to speak to me after the class, or I might email them.  I'd ask if they felt they'd been able to express what they wanted to in the exchange.  I might ask if there were any other points or concerns that they wanted to raise (or wanted me to raise) for further discussion next time. I would certainly emphasize that they should come and see me if they felt that they'd been silenced in any way, so that we could discuss it.

But I would also emphasize the need to express themselves in ways that open people up rather than shutting them down. And I think that's the key - to offer students ways to communicate that will actually help them communicate, instead of just venting to the detriment of others.  If a student were open to it, I might even suggest changes in phrasing.  "What if you said, 'In my experience, that's not true,' instead of yelling, 'I can't fucking believe you'd say that!'?  What if, instead of attacking the person, you asked him which of his experiences led him to that conclusion?  What if you spent an entire class just listening and trying to understand others' points of view, and then at the end of the class I gave you a chunk of time to express your views on a the subjects that caught your interest?"

So I think my approach to your difficult situation would be threefold: 1. curtail behaviors that negatively affect others; 2. speak to students who engage in those behaviors, and those who are negatively affected by those behaviors, to find out what they need; and 3. offer more productive alternatives to the ways they're going about fulfilling their needs.

And modelling comes into it as well, of course.  Our own engagement with the ideas in the classroom sets the tone for the general exchange.  And are there situations where we need to call someone out because they say something blatantly offensive?  Of course.  But simply shutting the student down will not bring about real change in attitudes, I don't think.  It can be difficult to engage with students whose world views we think are flat-out wrong, but as teachers, I think it is our responsibility to try.

Classes and students are different, and like most aspects of classroom management, this problem will require experimentation and, inevitably, some failure - as you point out, student behavior is rooted in all sorts of things we have no control over.  But I think the key is to make each student feel that he or she is a valued member of the community.  Members who feel valued are more likely to fulfill their responsibilities to that community, and to take pleasure in doing so.

*

Siobhan Curious teaches English language and literature at a CEGEP (college of general and professional education) in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.  Her blog, Classroom as Microcosm, explores her personal experiences as they unfold in the classroom.

Image by Kamil Kantarcioglu