"Teacher plays favorites."
Some students throw the accusation around rather lightly, but it is a serious charge because it goes to the heart of the teacher's job, which is to evaluate work based on previously established criteria and to do so equally with each student. We are more than mere purveyors of content, we help our students along the path of understanding that content, encouraging them along the way. But, we are also the judges of who has demonstrated knowledge of that content. Peter Elbow famously considers the conflicts for each teacher between these two roles we must play, calling them "coach" and "gatekeeper" (1). According to Elbow, "Our loyalty to students," when we are acting as coaches, "asks us to be their allies and hosts as we instruct and share." Yet "our commitment to knowledge and society asks us to be guardians or bouncers: we must discriminate, evaluate, test, grade, certify" (2). Teachers struggle to shift from one to the other and back.
As students, we prefer the coach, and fear the gatekeeper. And if we don't like it when the coach seems to prefer one player over another, how much more infuriating must it be when the gatekeeper seems to let a few people through, based on criteria that have nothing to do with what we were told would matter? It's unfair. And, yes, Life is Unfair, as we are told by many sources including The Princess Bride (3). But teachers are held to a higher standard, and so we must work extra hours to put in place measures that will prevent our own flawed human natures from grading the thousands of students we teach in our lifetimes any differently from each other. The same things we do to keep ourselves from grading one paper more harshly than others simply because we're tired that day, or because we're sick of the assignment or content, are the things that keep us from going easy or hard on a student's work because of our feelings towards the student. Because no matter what we might say for the cameras, do not doubt it that some of our students are an absolute delight to teach, and others cause us to hold our breaths and count to ten before walking into a classroom we know they'll be in. Sorry. That's just reality.
We are not robots. We are humans, and that is a good thing. There's a reason classrooms are places where people teach, and aren't just places for students to pick up books and then drop them off after reading. Not only has human knowledge been passed from human to human since, well, ever, but a human can discern that a student is struggling and adjust to help that student catch back up. A human can discern talent for a subject beyond just turning in an excellent assignment (or a far-from-excellent one that nevertheless shows promise). A human can discern meaning. Not just meaning of words, like in terms of definitions. I mean "meaning" like "truth." A robot can only problem-solve as well as the human who programmed it. Who wants to be taught by that?
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| This is a robot teacher. A real one. In Tokyo. Touted as a major achievement, the teacher, named Saya, is credited with the following worthy skills: "she can speak different languages, carry out roll calls, set tasks and make facial expressions." Wow. Just what we all want in a teacher. Read the story here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/4942136/Robot-teacher-that-can-take-the-register-and-get-angry.html |
But that does mean there is room for human error, and I totally concede that. We teachers are very, very aware of our own potential for human error, and we work hard to safeguard against it.
I have seen the accusation again recently, leveled at teachers in general, saying that teachers who play favorites should be fired. It was said in great anger, but with a scornful wave of the hand. This "off with their heads" statement left me wondering, of course, what that particular former student had experienced to cause such a righteous and such a generalized dismissal. Particularly since that student had been a student that I liked tremendously and looked forward to having in class - I suppose a favorite, although I graded that person's work according to the same rubric I did everyone else's and so there was no actual privilege.
As I considered this person's anger, I remembered what it was like to be a student, to feel helpless sometimes about how to do well. I remembered how it felt to try my hardest to succeed in a class and to feel great resentment towards those who later bragged about their great grades, or feel a flash of anger against students who name-dropped professors subtly and cleverly to indicate that they had the inside track, who seemed to be those professors' favorites, who seemed to be able to get grades unrelated to the quality of their work. It didn't happen often, in fact it was extremely rare, but it leaves a permanent mark. Or rather, some of those cases leave a permanent mark.
Others dissipated once I became a teacher and I came to understand things that students can struggle to grasp. Sometimes (every once in a while, but extremely seldom) a teacher will fail to put in place measures that keep grading consistent, things like grading rubrics that recalibrate the grader with each essay and prevent the teacher's feelings towards a student or just the exhaustion of grading from affecting the grade. With nothing to prevent it will be easier on some students and tougher on others. But most of the time, the problem isn't an unfair teacher, it is that the students don't actually know everything that's going on with all the other students.
I know. So simple as to sound snarky, like the problem is the students themselves and they should just stop being so freaking self-centered. I do not mean it that way. But they're young, and some think they know everything that happens in a class because a lot of the other students talk about their own experiences and share their grades, and so students assume they have the whole picture. They don't have anything close to the whole picture, and they have no idea how much the other students aren't telling them or, in some cases, even distorting the truth. Students can, after all, see clearly only their own relationships in class. Teachers, I remind you, are legally prohibited from revealing anything about a student's progress to anyone but other educators who are specifically invested in that student's progress. In other words, I can discuss Jane's classwork or behavior with her advisor, even with another of her professors who may also be able to shed some light on her difficulties or with whom I could troubleshoot how to help Jane, but I cannot even discuss her grades or attendance or behavior with her own parents who are paying her tuition. You think I'm going to give away her grades to a fellow student? Even if she is openly defiant in class and everyone knows she isn't doing the work, but she's telling people that she's making good grades for me? I can't. Even if I want to, I am forbidden from doing so.
So to all of us, past students and present students, who fear that teachers are treating students differently based on like and dislike, I give you this perspective from the front of the room.
1. Don't assume that the student that everyone knows isn't doing the work is making good grades, even if s/he tells you that s/he is. We hear students lie about their grades all the time. You should not be talking with other students about your grades at all. It's no one's business. But you often do. And students who aren't making good grades, when you ask them outright "Hey, I got an A-, what did you get?" will often lie because: a) his/her grade is none of your business and you had no right to ask but s/he doesn't want to start something by saying "It's none of your business," b) s/he would be glad to share his/her grade if it were a good one but is ashamed of it and so has to make something up, or c) s/he habitually lies about his/her grades because s/he isn't doing well in school at all and isn't even ready to deal with that fact or do something constructive about it and so is just skating along hoping it all works out later.
2. Don't assume that you understood the assignment better than someone else did. If they got an A on it and you got a B, perhaps instead of favoritism on my part it is a misunderstanding of the assignment on yours. If they've taken my classes before and make better grades than you, don't assume it's because I like them better, assume it's because they've grown accustomed to my assignments and are less likely to miss some required detail. Rather than calling it "playing favorites" and resenting it, ask them what they did to make a better grade and see if they'll help you on the next one. With all due respect, you may not be as great a writer as you think you are, and that is one of many good reasons why students do not determine their own grades.
3. You have no idea what personal and private circumstances a student may be experiencing that are legitimate cause for an extension or an Incomplete. I once had a student who had been punched by her boyfriend at a party. She missed a couple days of class, including the day on which the paper was due, and then came to my office to ask me what to do, and when I saw the bruise I begged her to talk to her advisor and the Dean of Students so she could handle the safety and legal angles, and then I gave her a two-day extension on her paper because she was too distraught at that moment to concentrate on finishing the paper she had started the week before. The other students in the class, who may or may not have heard what happened at the party, merely saw that a girl was absent on the day the paper was due in class and then saw me hand back her graded paper along with the others. What conclusions did they draw? I don't know. But I do know that the girl told me later a boy in the class had asked her how to get me to cut some slack on due dates.
4. Other people's disabilities are not your business, so if you ask why another student gets extra time on tests and papers I am legally barred from answering. You don't know which students have learning disabilities that they don't want to discuss with you, so you don't know why someone might be absent during a test but still get to take the test (because it's being proctored by the office that handles cases for students with disabilities). You don't know what private medical information I may have that led me to grant an extension or Incomplete when I denied one to others, perhaps even to you. You just have to trust that I know something you don't and that even though a student may be your friend, he or she may not wish to disclose to you that he or she has a disability, even if you've proven yourself to be a non-judgmental person or even if you've disclosed to your friends a disability of your own.
5. If students show up early and stay late, come by our offices and discuss their work, demonstrate themselves to be so hardworking and trustworthy that we hire them as babysitters or housesitters, shine so brightly in group work or class discussion that we offer to write recommendations for internships or graduate school, we are not "playing favorites." They are practicing the behaviors that lead to success. We are doing what teachers do when students prove themselves to be exceptional. They are leaders. They are working their butts off. They are probably making very good grades for us, but that doesn't mean they can't make mistakes and get penalized for doing so. I have put dreadful grades on the work of ordinarily successful students because they made mistakes in the assignment. It broke my heart to do it, but I took a deep breath and consulted the grading criteria next to me and graded the work according to what was there, rather than what I wished was there. In several of those cases, the students' other work was so exceptional that the one bad grade didn't hurt them much in the end.
6. I give bonus opportunities to students who are giving it everything they have and coming up short, not to students who screw around until the last second and then realize they need a few extra points to keep the grades required for whatever. Some of the students in the latter group will, astonishingly, even say that's what they're doing (actual quote from a student years ago: "I didn't really put much into your class because I figured I already knew what I needed of English and writing and stuff, but now I'm failing and I'm in trouble with my grades and I could lose my scholarship. Can I do a bonus to bring my grade up to a B? I have to have at least a B"). Compare with the student who came to me with every essay to go over it, who went to the Writing Center at every stage of writing, who was just shy of the B she wanted to get into the honor society she aspired to, who offered to go see a local play and write an extra paper on it to bring her grade up the point and a half to where it needed to be. I said yes to that student, yes I will grade some extra work for you because you're offering to do a lot for a little, after doing a lot all semester. Did that make her a favorite? Because, I have to tell you honestly, she was one of my all time favorite students, in that I respected her and how hard she worked and if I walked into my classroom again and saw her sitting there I'd be thrilled.
And on that subject, I will elaborate: Oh yes, we have favorites. We don't have to "play favorites" to have favorites. Playing favorites is giving better grades to the students you like than to the students you don't like, regardless of the work they do. I honestly don't know anyone who does that. But every teacher I know has favorite students. Don't assume, however, that those students are doing well for us or that the students we aren't looking forward to teaching again have anything to fear when the grades come in. I've had repeat students who made Cs and Ds in my classes, but whom I'd describe as favorite students because they were smart and interesting, and I just wished they'd put more effort into their work because putting the grades they were actually earning on their work was depressing for me.
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| Mr. Keating lent this book to Neil. Playing favorites, or recognizing a student with potential? I'd add that Todd and Knox and others were also seeming favorites of Mr. Keating, despite the factthat Todd was almost certainly not the star of the class (coming in all defiant without hispoetry assignment done). I pose this to you, if you had to choose for your teacher eitherMr. Keating or Saya the robot, which would you choose? photo from http://bookriot.com/2013/06/12/17-movies-starring-books/ |
Because 6. Don't assume if you made good grades in my class that I liked you. Don't assume if you made poor grades that I didn't like you. Maybe I found you terribly annoying, and disrespectful, and swaggering, but you wrote some great papers that were cleverly thought-out and well-developed, and so even though I was glad to see the back of you at the end of the semester you earned a good grade through your own merit. Maybe you were a jokester who made us all laugh and who had great intellect and charm but didn't get your work in on time or blew it on the Works Cited page and so I couldn't give you the grade I knew you were capable of earning because you hadn't actually earned it. I can't count the students whom I've liked personally who made abysmal grades in my classes, or the students who did extremely well on their assignments but whom I was not thrilled to see sign up for a second course.
So back to the former student whose anger prompted my musings. I hope this person never felt disfavor in my class, never felt that others were preferred or given privileges. I think not, largely because the person speaking had been one of my favorite students. But it's possible this student was someone I was delighted to teach and looked forward to having in class, but who never realized it. Because the favorites thing is totally about perception, and a students' perception of class is necessarily limited to what he or she experiences and what he or she hears from others. If you think we should experience every student identically I ask you if you could do that with thousands of students over your lifetime. Pleasant people are more pleasant to be around than unpleasant people, and that is just life and we're human and the only way to render pleasant and unpleasant people the same in our experience is to stop being ourselves.
Of course I do my best to avoid treating any students unfairly. Of course I do. Of course I do. I love when my students pleasantly surprise me, as they so often do. And what greater reward is there for teachers than for students who haven't been getting it to suddenly start getting it??? That simply cannot happen if we favor some students over others. What is more awesome for us than for students who have been immature and difficult to start acting maturely and pleasantly? That won't happen if we are unfair to those students. To former students, if we're still in touch, bets are you were one of my favorites. I'm glad to keep up with you and what you're achieving in your life. For current students: work hard, have a sense of humor, be nice to your fellow students and to me, assume that you have room for improvement, and share your ideas during class - and there is a distinct possibility that when you come back to visit years after graduation, you'll be introduced as one of my favorite students.
(1) Peter Elbow, "Embracing Contraries in the Teaching Process," College English 45.4 (April 1983), 327-339.
(2) Elbow 328.
(3) Readers familiar with only the film will remember Wesley's line to Buttercup "Life is pain, highness; anyone who tells you differently is selling something." But we might ascribe his bitterness to the moment's conflict of his finding Buttercup engaged to another man. In the novel, however, the "Life in Unfair" mantra is repeated at several levels of both frame narrative and fairy tale, including with the fairy tale ending as Prince Humperdink's men are closing in on the escaping Wesley and Buttercup. Why? The narrator tells us it's because life is unfair. The film is great, of course, and I love it. But in this case as in so many, the book is a hundred thousand times even better.
