Commencement means a beginning rather than how it is commonly thought of as an "ending" of jumping through a lot of hoops to get a piece of paper. Tomorrow evening at 7:30 I will get to read the names of about 200 graduates and hope that I will not butcher them. So I practice. This is our second year as an independent school at the institution where I work. We have the responsibility of educating about 800 students in communication arts and technologies. It is our "second" independent commencement, so the initial "honeymoon" year is nine months beyond us.
It was a difficult semester because I literally "limped" through it, setting aside household management and other things to continue along the trail of quitting smoking and healing a bad knee. Today I spoke with an unhappy father whose student had not told him the whole truth about why he is not graduating. It happens much more frequently than one might think. Last year, a whole family came from Ghana to see their loved one cross the stage, ignorant of the six credit hours she has to complete in order to receive her diploma.
I answered e-mails from three of my students who were unhappy with the grades they received, spelling out the things they earned credit for and areas where assignments were not completed or were done inadequately. I really like these students, and it is not a happy occasion for me to deliver unfortunate news, but I am not doing them any favors if I am not honest about their performance according to the criteria that were laid out for them in the beginning. I understand they get distracted, do things hastily, have other commitments (some of them work as many as 30 other hours a week), and have assignments for other classes.
But it would be a form of patronization and ethical betrayal to not let them know where they stand. This is the hard part of teaching. I have another situation where I am pretty sure the student bought or "lifted" a paper from some online site. The jury is still out on that, and I do not enjoy playing detective. But if I close my eyes, again I am not being fair to other students in the class who turned in work they had actually done themselves. Another situation that came my way in the last week was a student who turned in the same paper for credit for two different classes. This is not okay. So I am responsible for confronting the situation on behalf of the dean's office and doing so in a firm, but supportive way. I always ask two other people to read what I have written or discuss the thing I think is appropriate to do to make the situation go away fast (rather than to blow it up into a big storm).
I have learned a lot by being the "point person" to handle these things and frankly, enjoy the challenge. While I don't like to be the bearer of bad news, I think I am better at delivering it than others might be. Sometimes I have to clean up a grade mess that would not have become one if the instructor had just been responsive to the student. Students usually get the maddest if they are ignored or harshly criticized in an undiplomatic manner. In those cases, it's never really about the grade.
Teachers have to develop a tough skin because whether students like you or not, they will tell you what they think about you, your class and what they learned (or did not) at the end of every 14 week semester. I have developed a ritual for reading those evaluations. I look at them once, see if there are any common negative responses and make a note of it for "next time". If they write comments as if I am the Messiah, I take those with a grain of salt too. I am most interested in thoughtful feedback about the course materials, organization and structure. As well, I am concerned about whether or not students thought they were treated fairly and respectfully.
What's so strange is that this is where parenting comes in. I want to treat my students in a manner that I would want any other teacher to treat my daughters. I don't want them "judged", given "hopeless" messages or singled out because of a personality conflict. Teachers work hard and students can be brats sometimes, but teachers also do stupid things (that also find their way to my office--e.g. swearing at a student unless it's some kind of demonstration of a concept, not starting or ending class on time, changing the goal post after having given students one set of criteria, droning on to a point where the students have no possible chance of learning anything because they will all be asleep, or giving a whole class with a power point presentation entirely in the dark for nearly two hours, rushing through a lecture to "get through all the material" instead of genuinely answering student questions, or treating questions like a bother).
I have spent much of my time this year putting out these kinds of little fires, hoping that they don't become forest-sized. I get the teacher's point of view and generally know who our best teachers are. There are also teachers whose work would be enhanced by making a few minor tactical changes. I get the students' right to have clear answers to questions, adequate time to complete assignments, realistic expectations, given the information and direction they've been given in class, and basic human respect whether they're the brightest bulb in the group or someone who really needs a little extra help. And frankly, I try to forget about a student's performance on one thing before they turn in the next. These days that is pretty easy because I can only hold so many things in one brain. Yet in the end, I do hope that something I've said or taught sticks with even one young person because over the course of 23 years of teaching, it might make a difference to the world when that "one" begins to become a more conscious citizen, more informed opinion maker, or just a better person. I never expect the "matter" of my class to be memorized, but the ability to write, read and speak to be enhanced in a way that is more thoughtful than when they walked in. In return, my students give me the feeling that I have something to say, experience to share, and knowledge that may be of importance someday.
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Ventures into virtual land
I admit I am a techno dinosaur. My laptop is slow and low on memory space. Maybe these first two lines parallel mid-life. Both of my daughters have recently married in the last two years. I am at odds with myself and contented at the same time. Is that possible? I began this blog in a technology boot camp that was our faculty retreat just days before the halls of our new building were filled with cute boots that college girls wear and the sounds of cellular equipment dinging, vibrating and rapping. Within the span of two years, I turned fifty, traveled to Africa, accepted a position as Associate Dean of a brand new School of Communication that had long roots in a small department I have been part of for eighteen years at an institution I love. I became a grandmother of a little girl, deployed thirty five students to mentor young girls, women and migrants from faraway places out of one of my classes, and traveled to two different states to stand in my role as proud mother of the bride. Alone. Their weddings were as perfect as my daughters are different. I cried unbridled tears at the ceremony where I felt like I was revisiting my former life with their father's family and loving them all, healing from an ancient divorce and regretting the unfinished business I have with the bride. The second ceremony signaled a "coming out" of shyness I had never seen in my younger daughter. I have not been successful in love, though I have loved and been loved; yet both of these beautiful young women, my daughters appear to have found their life's mates. I wish I could take credit for that, but I have no idea if any is mine and am grateful for their good judgement. My insides moved at the second wedding from fatigue, joy, a sense of completion, and overwhelming sentimentality at the simultaneous sight of watching my eldest nurse her baby, worry about a baby girl's fusses while cutting new teeth, and my youngest's embracing of her big, beautiful day that she had worked months to deploy with a budget spreadsheet, delegation of roles to aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents and her truest friends. I spent that day in two places very far away from each other--ecstasy and longing. I celebrated a beautiful couple's joy, likeness, practicality and sense of humor, watched my parents who are in their seventies dance for perhaps the first time in fifteen years. They came alive as if they had not suffered the loss of many dear friends over the past few years; they looked young and as I remember them loving each other in sweet and funny ways throughout my growing years.I felt the loss of my importance in each daughter's life as I watched my eldest fulfill her role as wife and mother, nursing her baby girl, feeling those early pangs of watching your daughter suffer, even if only from cutting new teeth. I felt like a woman cutting new teeth in suffrage and liberation at once. I was far away from my home in Chicago and close to the home of all that I knew as a child and young mother stranded between the whole of what I thought I might do with my life's future over five decades. I have failed miserably in some things and reached heights I never knew I was capable of. I finished a book manuscript over the summer that took me eleven years to write through the trials of tenure, raising teenage daughters and managing parts of my life that always seemed like bikes and ropes and water and steam that I tried to hold onto, but could never fully grasp.
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