Special Cases

Every so often, usually one to two times a year, a special case comes along. There will be a situation or a student with unique needs that don’t fit neatly in the lines of your carefully planned course. For whatever reason, your policies and procedures just don’t apply, and you need to adjust.

Sometimes it’s the precursor to a shift in how things will be done in the future, so everything needs to begin to adjust to accommodate a new way of doing things. Usually, it is merely the annoyance of the ubiquitous ‘exception to the rule.’

If you are like me, you are doing good to keep the normal things humming along, and you don’t relish the thought of having to figure out how to fit this road bump into your schedule. I have found a reasonably simple solution to moderate the effect of these special cases.

What Dress Rehearsal?

If “all the world’s a stage,” as Shakespeare put it, then perhaps college graduation is opening night, and therefore the college years are when we learn our lines. But is college a rehearsal?

What do we do to help our students prepare for a professional life apart from teaching them subject matter? Some fields have coops and internships, and they can be a great preparation, but what about other fields? Our philosophy students can pontificate, our history students can recite dates and tell about the gender struggles of the Maori tribes from 1830-1837, but have we helped them figure out how to market themselves in the real world to make a living, a contribution, etc, apart from telling them when the GRE is?

Part of the reason some of us are in the academy is precisely because we don’t want to deal with that stuff. But many of our students don’t really have grad school as an option or an interest. How can we mentor them as professionals and citizens, not just as initiates in our field?

SDG

The Magnitude of Our Calling

The last two posts are more than merely humorously anecdotal, they illustrate some of the challenges we face as teachers. According to psychologists (I don’t have a reference), the area of the human brain that houses critical thinking does not mature fully until around age 25. This means that we are teaching critical thinking to human beings who are still biologically developing the ability to think critically. Like every area of development, some mature earlier and some later, which is why there can seem to be such a disparity in the intellectual maturity of our students. There are so many implications to this that I cannot hope to go into, but it is humbling and awe-inspiring to think that we are playing a critical role in the biological development of our students’ brains, not just their minds, not just some subject matter.

We consider them adults, but they are not as fully grown as we (or they!) may assume. How might this change our approach to teaching/mentoring?

SDG

It's The Policy

If you teach multiple sections of a course like me, or even 1-2 large sections, your syllabus probably gets longer with the number of students with more and more legalese to cover every possible scenario, usually added just after it happens. Students today seem more able (and willing!) to find every loophole rather than just sit down and learn the material.

When they come to me with their sob story and demand time out of my busy schedule to resolve their issues, it is easy to fall back on policy and give them an answer based on the syllabus or university handbook or whatever, and wash my hands of the 'blame' for an unpopular decision.

When I do this, the Spirit convicts me, reminding me that >I< wrote the syllabus. I'm not some middle-management cog, I am the instructor of the course, and even if I were a cog in the wheel, I have been given a job to do--to resolve this person's issue. I am reminded, that in my case anyway, I am teaching because I want to help raise up the next generation of citizen-chemists. Policies don't mentor, people do.

Will I be professional enough, mature enough, to take responsibility for what happens in my course? Will I respect my students enough to listen to them, evaluate their situation, and make a fair decision, even if it is one they don't like? Am I willing to bear their displeasure or do I feel compelled to capitulate to earn their goodwill? The vernacular for this is being a 'people-pleaser,' and it is generally viewed with disdain. Jesus is not a respector of a person's self-esteem. He is a respector of truth, because He is the truth. As His people, we are called to do likewise.

Of course, just making such decisions is not mentorship. Mentorship is helping the student to understand the situation, and why the decision is a fair one. They are not always receptive, but deep down, they probably respect you more.

There is an 'old-fashioned' word for mentorship. It's discipleship.

SDG