by Barry George
[W]ith people: first let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good; that is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them.–Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
One warm spring night not long ago, I stood waiting on the El platform near the branch campus where I often teach. I had just finished marking the last set of essays from my English 089/097 class. Pleased with the overall progress the papers showed, I was thinking especially of one particular student's work—Rakeeshah, I will call her. With a strong final exam, I thought to myself, Rakeeshah will pass. Then, somewhere between looking up again for the train and staring back down at my shoes, I had a revelation.
Rakeeshah is Donna, came the thought.
Almost immediately, I understood the broader implication. Whereas Donna, a student from last semester's class had not passed the course, Rakeeshah probably would. And the difference was a shift I had made.
Donna and Rakeeshah are indeed two different personalities. But their strengths and weaknesses as developmental English students were similar: two alive and inquisitive minds when discussing a short story or even a point of grammar, they nonetheless persisted in making basic writing mistakes. Moreover, both were loud and rather—defiant—individuals. Both had, as far as I was concerned, an "attitude."
Rakeeshah and I had skirmished, for example, over her (slight but frequent) lateness, incessant chatter, and use of profanity in classroom conversations—this last being a practice she felt was her "right" as an adult. Although we had concluded early on a no war-no peace accommodation, this made an uneasy basis for teaching and learning.
My experience with Donna the semester before had been similar, and I still regretted that neither her writing skills nor class conduct had improved in the term's closing weeks. I recalled her leaving my office after receiving the news of her "Making Progress" (as opposed to "Passing") grade. Although she hadn't cursed me aloud, she had come as close as pride and propriety would let her.
This semester was ending differently for Rakeeshah, however. Not only were we getting along better in the closing weeks of the semester, her writing had improved markedly at the same time. I couldn't help seeing a connection.
Let me hasten at this point to disavow primary responsibility for the success or failure of any of my students, including Rakeeshah and Donna. Students come to class, learn from instructor and peers, receive assignments, and hand in work regardless of who teaches them, or how well. Their intelligence, experience, maturity, motivation, and receptivity are all factors over which we teachers have little or no control.
But I have come to believe, especially with developmental English, that we nonetheless play a considerable role in student success, and that our intellectual effectiveness is only one of the influences we bring to bear. An equally important factor is our capacity to connect with individual students: to find the person in each student and the student in each person, and to include him or her in the productive life of the class. This is a factor substantially within our control, a key to becoming a better teacher.
How did I connect with Rakeeshah when I had failed with Donna? I don't know exactly, except that at some point I resolved to be positive in all my interactions with her. (Perhaps I had an "attitude" where she was concerned.) I also began asking her about her approach to her studies, rather than silently assuming the worst. How did she feel about her work? What did she think she could do to improve it? What was she doing already? Was she spending enough time on assignments, getting individual tutoring? To my surprise, she sincerely believed she was working as hard as she could.
Those conversations helped shift the ground. From then on, I think Rakeeshah felt supported and credited in improving her work, rather than blamed for falling short. I saw her work in a different light, too. I formed—and shared with her—a suspicion that her persistence in making grammatical errors had something to do with stubbornness (a more constructive diagnosis than my previous belief that she wasn't trying). This theory seemed to make sense to her, and she became more willing to change her writing.
As for my own stubbornness, I also resolved, against my "controlling" impulses, to overlook her (frequent but slight) lateness. Her behavior changed only in this respect: now she would bring her books to class a few minutes early, go out briefly, and arrive a few minutes late. This I chose not to question.
In short, I learned from Rakeeshah herself how to teach her. I stopped trying to make her take the course my way, and helped her take it her way instead. In embracing more warmly the mischievous spirit I had enjoyed in her all along, I found the "cosmic giggle" in our teacher-student relationship. I would say I learned to appreciate her. She would probably say I began to respect her.
A few days after my El revelation, I was walking down the hallway of our main campus when Rakeeshah hailed me from behind. She wanted me to look at the thesis statement in her revision of the aforementioned last paper of the semester. After chatting amiably about the change she had made, we revised the sentence even further. (I pretty much told her what to write—another area of my teaching I need to improve). Then, as I headed off, she warned me, in the noncommital style I had come to appreciate if not fully understand, to be on time for class.
"Don't be late," she repeated when I looked back at her quizzically. "We need to start on time."
Was she referring to the lateness "issue" that had been a sticking point between us earlier, or simply expressing anxiety about the final the class would be taking later that afternoon? Perhaps both; I didn't know what to think. But I felt the same pride and satisfaction then as I did an hour or so later, when I looked out and watched her working intently with pen, paper, blue book, and dictionary along with the rest of the class.
As it turned out, Rakeeshah wrote an excellent final and passed the course. But as I look back, that seems but a happy footnote to the semester's two more important accomplishments. Rakeeshah gained a purpose and sense of herself that made her, in the finest sense of the word, a student. And I learned how to teach her.