After a particularly interesting Career Day, I looked at my father when I was perhaps eight years old and told him I wanted to be an English teacher. In a stroke of pure genius (according to him), he said I absolutely could – if I could spend an entire 48 hours not fighting with my little brother. Teachers needed infinite patience, after all! A mere six hours later, if that, I decided I’d be an astrophysicist instead. About the time NASA shifted toward privatization in 2008, I finally remembered having this talk with him, and immediately changed my major to English.
In a perfect world, our students would also be perfect: interested, focused, and prompt, to say the least! Instead, we teach real human beings. No matter their age, disposition, ability, or foundation, it’s our responsibility to guide these people toward the overall objectives of a given course, and, if we’re very lucky, hand them coping skills for life in the process. Acknowledging that my students are people, and treating them as such, makes up the heart and soul of my teaching philosophy.
While I’ve been a “relationships-first” teacher for many years now, I’ve since learned that there’s a proper name for this sort of approach: “the pedagogy of connection.” DJ Carter Andrews, et al, write that a focus on “cultural responsiveness and critical caring” remains an integral part of “elevating the human [sic] aspects of teaching that are essential for developing and sustaining” connections between teacher and student (268). In other words, if we as teachers keep the focus on the fact that our students are human first and learners second, we’re much more likely to engage them for the long haul. In my classroom, utilizing the pedagogy of connection in every meeting, I see this happen in real time.
I value student perspectives, and my classes learn this rather quickly. I employ the Socratic method whenever possible, breaking up moments of lecture to check understanding and regain focus if necessary. We regularly explore philosophical reasoning and real-world connections, as well as literary concepts. We take the time to bring current events into the discussion, and I encourage them to draw connections between their experiences, the world at large, and their readings. They’ll need the skill of making such connections in the “outside world,” and I give them every opportunity to stretch that skill to its limits.
Humans are storytellers, no matter their level of skill or breadth of creativity, and I shape my courses with this maxim at the fore. I tell them very plainly that I don’t teach skills they already know – I help them grow the skills they already have. I center their humanity, the fact that because they are people, they can tell a story, even if it’s “bad,” and curate the learning around the goal of improving their storytelling before ever touching on argumentation and research. After all, as Douglas Hesse acknowledges, storytelling has its place in the composition classroom as a way “to share, to learn, to feel valued” (47). When I encourage students to hone their skills in creative writing, I give them that space and thus connect their humanity to learning itself.
In treating my students like people, it’s inevitable that my own interests come up in discussions, if for no other reason than just as examples. I mix in my medieval studies focus, linguistic leanings, extensive literary [non/]canonical knowledge, and varied knowledge of culturally-relevant media, often in the same meetings. In experiencing such a wide variety of topics – and in no small way relating their own – my students invariably enter and leave with open minds, expecting and receiving only a few minutes of lecture before we begin class discussions, TEDx Talks (and similar) on argumentative structure, and writing practice, all of which lead to even more fruitful discussions about how writing and critical thinking skills can and do affect their daily lives, both in and out of school. Each meeting, my students leave the room knowing they are seen and heard, and that their opinions made an impact on someone else that day.
Students are people, plain and simple. In this world of standards and metrics and oversight and and and, we can get overwhelmed and just plain forget that. I make it my goal to remind myself every day that I’m working with humans, not talking at them, and it usually turns out all right.
WORKS CITED
Carter Andrews, D. J., Richmond, G., & Marciano, J. E. “The Teacher Support Imperative: Teacher Education and the Pedagogy of Connection.” Journal of Teacher Education, vol. 72, no. 3, 2021, pp. 267-270. https://doi.org/10.1177/00224871211005950 .Hesse,
Douglas. “The Place of Creative Writing in Composition Studies.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 62, no. 1, 2010, pp. 31–52. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27917883
The Crafty Medievalist 