The First Day of Class: How Much Do We Reveal about Ourselves?

[Greetings!  The next few posts focus on recent experiences I had facilitating our International Teaching Assistant Orientation (http://tap.msu.edu/pdf/2010_ITA_Overview.pdf ) and MSU TA Seminar (http://tap.msu.edu/pdf/2010_TA_Overview.pdf) .]

In one of those classic teaching moments, when a profoundly powerful question arises with little time to adequately engage it, I have to admit that I recently fumbled a chance to respond meaningfully to a new TA's questions concerning how transparent an instructor should be with their students the first day of class.   Given the timbre of our general workshop discussion, little time remaining, and my concerns over attempting to answer a question that begged so many fundamental issues, I had trouble sorting on the fly.  Imagine fish flopping around in the bottom of a skiff and me trying to catch them bare handed, and you'll get some feeling about how my brain was firing.

Hope I can begin to make up for that now.

We do a lot with new instructors and first-day issues (visit http://tap.msu.edu/orientations/tappt.aspx , scroll down to "Creating Learning Environments that Last."). The first day provides powerful chances to set the semester's tone, lay the groundwork for communicating openly, and of course, covering administrative and policy fundamentals.  First and foremast, I recommend we don't just explain the syllabus and let them leave.  To use my (JMU) friend Chris Womack's phrasing, "Hit the ground running..." with your new students, and make sure they know how to find ways to keep up (Also, be willing to slow down when you need to.).

Recognizing that classrooms are social spaces, and that part of building classroom community means engaging your charges in multiple ways beyond content, inevitably teachers must come to grips with how to much to give away of themselves.  Fact is, all kinds of great teachers give up widely variant amounts of who they are to their students.  One need not be a friend to our charges, but it helps to at least display a modicum of friendliness.  When asked what they'd reveal to their students, a recent group of faculty I worked with were all over the place concerning whether to reveal political views, socioeconomic status, religious inclinations, home phone numbers, opinions about texts, and sexual preferences.  Many, concerned that in a position of power that their opinions would inappropriately shape their students' views, decline to share much of themselves at all.  Others, believing that transparency justifies kind of social (and pedagogical) legitimacy, were more apt to share background information about themselves.

What details do you share?  Why?

And it's the Why's of my new TA's views that had me in a bit of a rhetorical twist earlier this week. With a fervent nod to Patricia Cranton's powerful little book, Becoming an Authentic Teacher... (and its impact on my thinking about reflective practice), in my First Day sessions I broach the notion of considering one's "authentic" teaching self...at least in terms of one's developing self as they decide how to interact with their students.   In that context, and with ten minutes to go in the program, a workshop participant asked, "Should you come out to your students on the first day?" 

Those are the kind of questions that have me nodding...reaching for my water bottle...and duck-feet-beneath-the-water scrambling for an answer that validates, informs, and encourages but also one that communicates a bit of a warning, particularly for conservative middle-class students like those at my state institution.  For the record, I'm not sure sexual preference is one of those things I'd want to communicate. But then, apparently I'm not primarily a social justice kind of instructor (See and take Collins and Pratt's Teaching Perspectives Inventory http://www.edst.educ.ubc.ca/faculty/pratt/DPtpi.html - It's not that I don't advocate for social justice, it's that my sensitivity to diversity issues apparently has me damn careful about advocating for certain types of change.  Oh, I'm a Developmentalist.) .  Anyway, after a few slugs of H2O, I responded with a watered down, "I think you need to consider how coming out "...helps, and not hinders..." your communication with your students." [Okay, I stole some of that that phrasing from Linda Johnsrud.].

I've seen hundreds of reactions to what I've had to say about things, many of them encouraging, but this one reminded me of all the times I've encountered eyes glazing, smiles dropping, heads nodding, and in some cases, sneers emerging on the faces of those who weren't hearing anything helpful from me.  Upshot?  He left, the workshop ended, and I immediately began engaging friends and colleagues about how to better meet those kinds of queries.

I'll continue this story once I've made some sense of what my mates tell me.  In the meantime, your comments, suggestions are welcome.  I've been a strong diversity advocate and spokesperson for STEM education, and would like to think my ears and head are open to talking about (and supporting) what it means to be oneself as a teacher.  In short, anything that opens communication and prompts reflection is fine by me.  But of course, you can't always control what others think.  If we're not sure we can motivate, how do we absolutely avoid de-motivating?

All the best,
KMJ

[Note:  Profound thanks to A. T. Miller, Director, Global Intercultural Experience for Undergraduates, U of Michigan, for his input and support.  His worksheet, "Teaching Diversity:  Inclusion in the Classroom for the Educational Benefit of All," remains a fundamental part of my presentations on higher education diversity issues.]