A few weeks ago, an education major asked me how I balance being friends my students and being a teacher to my students. The question came about sort of naturally during a “podcast assignment” where the questions and my answers were being recorded. My response was clumsy, in part, because it’s not something I think about consciously very often and , in part, because I knew my answer could easily become an essay. Looks like we might be here today for the essay answer.
First of all, let’s address the semantics. Am I “friends” with my students? When I learned how to be an educator for K-12 certification 30 years ago, the idea of being friends with your students was pretty far-fetched. That’s typically not a concern for K-12 teachers anyway, and with the much weirder headlines in the last 30 years, I’d say it’s not a good idea. During college I had experiences with my professors in line with that way of thinking.
In the 1990s, we treated our professors like lower deities. We addressed them by their titles, we always felt like we were intruding on their time if we went to their office/studio and we hung on every word they spoke. We treated them with respect. These were experts who had very important things they could be doing. Students understood that they were blessed to be in the presence of such wisdom, experience and greatness.
The current academic environment is a consumer driven environment and one that is very different from my experience 30 years ago. Schools now are providing a product, students are customers and professors are basically waitstaff. Respect for professors is pretty much non-existent and all of this is further exacerbated by how this generation of students has been made to believe that anything worth learning should be entertaining and should be presented in segments no longer than 3 minutes at a time. I’ve seriously had a student tell me he could learn sculpture from YouTube as he dismissed me completely.
The old idea of standing in front of a room of students and “professing” knowledge is outdated and ineffective. Students expect a stunning presentation and teachers who fail to connect with them will most definitely lose them, or at least lose their attention.
Over my years of teaching, I have learned the importance of personal connection as an educational tool. I spend time asking questions and carefully observing my students so that I can figure out how to connect with them. If I know what makes them feel challenged, what their interests are and where their point of frustration exists, I can put myself in a better position to help them grasp the course information. This is a part of effective teaching most people outside of education do not understand and one that takes a great deal of extra effort. If you look at the basic structure of that strategy; getting to know someone, learning about their interests, showing interest in them, working to help them…that basic structure also looks a lot like friendship.
Friendship comes with care. It feels a little lame to hedge on the use of the more accurate word here. Let’s be bold and honest. Friendship comes with LOVE. Do I love my students? Most definitely I do. I don’t think about my salary very often, but I recently saw my annual salary on a tax return and I promise you that I would not be doing this job if I didn’t love my students very much. So yeah, I love my students and I’m friends with them.
I’m friends with most of them, at least. I’ve had to learn to accept the fact that I’m not for everyone and I’m still trying to be ok with that. Some students will not like my personality, teaching style or the fact that I’m a middle aged white guy and those students will gravitate towards a different personality on our teaching staff. Does this hurt me deep down? Heck yes. Can I do anything about it? Nope. But the ones who do respond well, I do my best to be a friend to them. And I do my best to love the ones who don’t, just the same.
Sometimes that means my students give me music and movie suggestions in the studio. Sometimes that means we will have a conversation about current events or ask thought provoking questions to one another. Sometimes it means we’ll have coffee together outside of class. Sometimes it means we’ll gather in a group and get food after a gallery reception. Sometimes it means they’ll come in my office and sit silently on their phone or computer for an hour. Sometimes it just means we high five and speak when we see each other on campus. Whatever the specifics may be from person to person, it’s still people who are choosing to spend their time together and to actively seek connection. You know, friendship.
It takes time and energy to love. All of the duties listed and evaluated on my annual faculty review have to do with teaching, research and service. I’m never asked about love or friendship and the amount of time and energy I put into that, even if it does factor into my teaching. I never tell my Dean that I stayed three hours after class to go to a field hockey game because one of my sculptors is on the team. I suppose that’s difficult to quantify and in the world of consumer academics, it may not be valued. In my studio, however, it is essential. (I also understand that it’s simply a part of how I teach effectively and it doesn’t really matter to me if it’s quantifiable to administrators.)
Now that we’ve established that I do have academic friendships and that I see those friendships as key factors in the success of my teaching, let’s get to the question I was asked. How do I balance those with teaching?
Ugh. The most accurate answer is “carefully”. The “ugh” is necessary because friendship isn’t easy. The answer is “carefully” because every single student is different and that means every single situation must be handled differently. Some students are what I call volcanoes. They are pleasant and wonderful right up until the eruption. No warning, no change in facial expression or attitude, just total destruction in every direction. Some students are like summer in the South. You know exactly what to expect every day with almost no variation. Some are a little more like a Southern Spring. Ice cold at 8:00 am, thunderstorm at noon, 80 degrees and sunny at 3:00 pm. The conditions change a lot, but it's all pretty manageable and predictable. Some students rarely speak a word in the studio, some won’t shut up. Some students work nonstop, some almost need to be physically forced to work at all. Every personality type, every attitude, every demeanor is what I have to be prepared to engage with in the studio.
Showing love to one student may involve a tactic that would be offensive to another student. I can walk in and shout “Get to work slacker!” to one student and they’ll jump to action. Saying that to another student would send them to the bathroom in tears. I can joke and kid with one and I can absolutely never joke around with another one. Some students need a challenge to become motivated. Some students frustrate easily and a challenge will kill their motivation. Some respond well to my high energy antics and some will cower in a corner until I calm down. Teaching the way I do is not the path of least resistance. It is probably the most difficult way to go about it.
In a practical sense, “carefully” means that I have to continually be switched on as a teacher. My antenna always needs to be up and receiving cues related to facial expression, body language, energy shifts and verbal stimuli. Some students come preloaded with family and friend histories that profoundly impact how they will interact with me. Some are happy to be friends and they possess a maturity that will allow them to engage in a healthy way. Others are skeptical and may only open up after you establish trust.
I can hear you wondering how grades impact these friendships. Here’s the thing that might be most surprising about it: I would say not at all. My job is to professionally assess the work my students do. This assessment is not personal at all. There are established criteria for each project and I have always found the process of grading to be void of emotion. It either is or it isn’t. It either does or it doesn’t. I am not grading the human, nor am I grading the friendship. I’m grading a project. I explain this process on syllabus day and I rarely need to revisit it. I have students who will come to my office after seeing their C or D in Blackboard and they’ll say, “Yeah, I stunk that one up. I promise I’m going to do better next time.” Sometimes they do better and sometimes they do not. I still give them a high five when I see them and I welcome them to sit and chat. I’ve had students I’m academic friends with fail my class. It happens. I check in, see what I can do to help them, listen to their problems and then I’ll see them again the following semester in the same class.
Many of my students over the years have learned that being my pal doesn’t mean they get any grace or good grades. Many of those students, though, have allowed that academic friendship to propel them forward in their work. My very high expectations and words of scolding may be taken more seriously because we’ve established that I actually care about the student. I’m not just a teacher telling them I expect more, I’m a trusted friend telling them I expect more. More often than not, students rise to my expectations and I have no doubt that my level of care and love for them is a factor.
The thing that makes balance interesting is when it doesn’t work. Right? I mean, we watch a balancing act because there’s a chance we’ll see someone fall. Sometimes students get mad at me. Sometimes I get mad at students. Sometimes we have to have a sit down conversation to get past it. In a small department like ours, it’s not uncommon for me to hear that someone was talking crap about me to other students. In those moments, I try to remember that I chose this strategy. I remind myself that we all make mistakes and I try not to take it personally. Besides, the other option is to protect my feelings and be a less effective teacher. I'm not willing to do that.
Sometimes it does work and it works beautifully. There are former students who keep in touch many years after graduation and those academic friendships have transitioned into just plain friendships. I’ve gone to dinner parties, helped deliver artwork, helped move furniture, given career advice, approved significant others for dating and officiated a wedding for various students in the past. Sometimes they’ll get nostalgic and remind me of something they learned in my class. That’s when I remember how important it is to do the difficult thing. There are easier ways to teach, but I guess I don’t always do the easy thing.
