I’ve been trying for a few days to put together my thoughts on the extremely complicated issue of classroom authority; in the end, I’m breaking it into a couple of parts, to make it more manageable. Part One is a story, because telling stories is one of my favorite ways to make sense
At the beginning of my second year of graduate school, in the fall of 2001, I started teaching for the first time. I was a teaching assistant for one of the history of science survey courses, which meant that I was responsible for two discussion sections. A couple of weeks before classes started, I sat down with two of the older grad students in my program, people who’d taught before, and asked them for advice. What I was most worried about was controlling the classroom. I wasn’t worried about the course material–I was confident in my understanding of that–but I was worried about establishing myself as an authority. I wasn’t that much older than my students, and I don’t have a particularly imposing personality. I was worried, I guess, that they wouldn’t respect me.
When I explained these concerns to the two older students, one of them, S, nodded along and said that she knew exactly what I was talking about. “They’re going to sass you,” she said. “Most of them will be fine, but you’ll probably have at least one kid who has to get in your face about something. It happens to me every semester, there’s always at least one kid–and it’s always a guy–who tries to act like you don’t know what you’re talking about. What you have to do is just shut him down, don’t let him keep talking, don’t engage with him.”
While she was talking, the other grad student, K, was just staring at her in open astonishment. “I’ve -never- had a student challenge me in the classroom. That’s actually happened to you?”
“Every single semester. Every time.”
“Huh.” K seemed genuinely dumbfounded by this. “Why would it happen to you so often and not to me at all?”
She just stared at him. Stared up at him, actually, since he was close to a foot taller than her. K was a former Navy fighter pilot and looked the part, a six-foot-something white guy with broad shoulders and visible biceps. S, on the other hand, was a slim Asian woman with big eyes and hair practically down to her waist. It surprised me to hear that students challenged S in the classroom, because I knew her as a fierce no-nonsense woman who wouldn’t hesitate to tell you if she thought you were acting stupid. It didn’t surprise me at all, though, that no one every gave K any trouble
I think about that conversation pretty often–it was such a clear, emblematic example of something that I think a lot of us are used to dealing with. I thought of it again recently because of that Rebecca Solnit piece about men not listening to women or respecting what they have to say. It’s a pretty common phenomenon, and often very obvious to people who teach. Race and gender factors aren’t the only things that come into play–the way you conduct yourself matters too, and in the long run I think it matters more. But you shouldn’t discount the first-impressions effect, and the fact that so many students will more easily accept the authority of men than that of women, and more easily accept the authority of white teachers than of people of color.
(I want to make it clear, by the way, that K was a good guy. He wasn’t a bumbling oaf or anything, not even close. He was a good, smart, generally aware, entirely well-meaning person, who included gender analysis in his academic research. It just seemed to never have occurred to him that his physical presence made a difference in how students reacted to him.
Of course, any advantage (or disadvantage) that you carry into the classroom on the first day is just one piece of the story. I think it’s one of the first pieces, but it’s just one piece. Discussion of other pieces to follow in other posts, including the process by which I learned that “control of the classroom” wasn’t really the right goal.
Posted Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 4:34 pm. Filed under: academic.
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Here you go - it’s by Rebecca Solnit, and the piece is “Men Explain Things to Me: Facts Didn’t Get in Their Way”.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041408I.shtml
I first read it linked from Theriomorph, who is awesome:
http://theriomorph.blogspot.com/2008/04/qualitative-ramble-through-forest-of.html
This is the article you’re talking about.
I don’t get a lot of sass–probably the age thing–but I do have students trying to take advantage of me. I think I need to work on projecting a sterner persona, but that doesn’t come very naturally to me.
I look forward to reading your thoughts on this.
Oh, god, thank you both for the article link. I’ve updated the post.
I remember years ago you said something–maybe someone else had said it to you?–about how your role in a seminar was to turn the gain on your students up and down as appropriate. That was one of the best single sentences on teaching! It really helped me.
Delurking here, since we do the same job.
I’m not your Navy Fighter Pilot, but I am not without physical presence. Word has gotten back to me over my first year of teaching that some students are actually afraid of me (which actually bothers me as I’m not trying to terrify them).
Having said that, my physical size, gender, my tendency to smack my fist against the white board for emphasis (not often, usually when someone is sleeping) hasn’t stopped the ever so often smart ass of a student who decides they are going to be a pain.
That said, the student usually has a reason for doing so. If they are poor test takers (I’m old school, use tests and some of them absolutely hate it) they’ll try to drive the instructor off on a tangent during lecture with a question which really doesn’t serve any purpose. The strategy behind it is to decrease the testable material (doesn’t work, I put it on the test anyway even if I don’t cover it).
Some students like to show off. I’ll humor them as it can break up the monotony that comes along with the class from time to time. Some of the students are special needs and I’ve found in their cases, it is better to bend with the wind than try to clamp down even tighter on them. FERPA prevents me from giving specific examples.
But most classroom disciplinary problems are self eliminating. Poor performance eventually weeds them out. Granted, you’ll have a couple that will hold on with a deathgrip (got one right now, this semester and not one trick in my bag works on that student).
Worst comes to worse, I’ll pull out the heavy ordnance. Some students like to ask “Stump the Teacher” questions. Since I’m a Europeanist teaching American History, it is easy enough to catch me. If it gets to be too much, I’ll fire back a “Stump the Student” question. My favorites include, “Tell me who the first female admiral of the US Navy was? (Grace Hopper)” or “Explain the nature of the Petrine Theory of Papal Supremacy.”
If those fail and the class simply won’t get with the program at all, I’ll drop a pop quiz designed in an essay format intended to take the entire class period. It usually runs as follows.
“Tell me why I should pass you and what have you learned this semester?”
For the most part, though, out of 320 students for my first year, my problems have been nil. That doesn’t mean I get a free pass based upon my gender and no one who wanted to give me crap ever let my physical size stop them from doing so.
My two cents.