Yesterday, I taught Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in my British lit survey and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in my Shakespeare survey. I worked out a two-sided page outline for each class that included performances, class discussions, writing exercises, and engagement with secondary sources. This was not even close to the most important work I did yesterday.
Before class even started, I was having a back-and-forth with a student about a quiz grade. The student had joined the class a week late and was still missing her books in Week 2 when she had taken the quiz I had just handed back to her. She didn’t think the quiz should count because she hadn’t really been able to complete the assignment.
I tried to listen. I changed my posture. Instead of hovering over the student, I got down in the position of baseball catcher. I kept my voice low. We didn’t resolve anything, however. I wanted her to see that I was encouraging her to ask questions if she needed help, and that the low quiz grade was a reminder of that, but that it ultimately wasn’t that big a part of her grade, as though in scoring low on one quiz she was irreparably handicapping her grade. She didn’t understand. When I finally looked up at the clock, I realized the class should have started a couple of minutes ago, and we weren’t through. I ended our conversation by asking the student to come back to talk with me after class. I didn’t know if she would or not. When I got up to resume passing out quizzes and starting the class, she left for a few minutes. All of the students could see what had happened. We were sitting in a circle. It gave the class an unfortunate edge.
Yesterday was a recitation day. Eleven students memorized poems and, after offering an introductory interpretation, they each recited them. The performances were both good and fast, and class was over in 35 minutes. It was tough for me to concentrate on the recitations. I kept working over my exchange with the student from the beginning of class and wondering what I could have done differently or would need to do differently to reach the student. It seemed clear to me.
As students got up to go, I asked the quiz-contesting student to stay and talk. As we walked back to my office, I asked what had caused the registration problems early in the semester. The student’s answer hinted at deeper problems: she mentioned in passing the recent deaths of two friends.
Once we got to my office, I asked for more details. She was balancing seventeen credit hours, a weekend job, the difficulty of being separated from her family, and the emotional weight of her friends’ passing.
We talked about next week’s assignments and which books she did and didn’t have.
We talked about how she was feeling about her friends’ passing. Was she a person of faith, I asked? Did she think she would get the opportunity to see her friends again?
She articulated her sadness and the way she had been using school and work and constant activity to stay busy and not feel her grief.
I prayed with her. I gave her a print out of an assignment that was in a book she hadn’t been able to purchase yet. I checked her grades and sent a follow-up email.
This was the most important work I did yesterday.
I thought about the many times I haven’t leaned in and continued to engage with the questioning student, the times I had simply dismissed them as misguided in their priorities or assuming that they had had a bad morning. Moments like this will give me the confidence to lean in to these superficial moments of confrontation in order to find a deeper connection with students and a potential moment for God to move in their lives.
God, help me to listen and to have the wisdom to know that sometimes a student’s question isn’t the real question and how I can show them Your love and grace.