“Can I ask you a question?” students new
to me ask. I’m fond of answering (1) “You
just did!” (pa dum da); and, (2) “Of course not! I’m your teacher.” Blinks and winks. No one has ever questioned
this question before.
It
troubles me, not only because we have become so unaware of our language (a
topic addressed in other posts), but because it gives me, as the teacher, an additional
layer of power and implicit dominance, that is untoward: A student has not only
a right but a responsibility to himself, his teacher, and his classmates to ask
questions. I would place “Can I ask you
a question?” on the left side of the power continuum, what I’ll call the “left-behind”
side, where the student has the least amount of power (right above cowering
silence). For this post, we will focus
on the student’s point of view. Here’s
the continuum:
Student Power
Silence Can I ask? Discovery You Can’t Teach Me Silence
On
the other end of this continuum—what I’ll call the “I’m right” extreme is
hostile silence, falling asleep, and any of the rude behaviors with which I regale
you in The Rude Student. Right next to that is You-Can’t-Teach behavior
that attempts to wrest power from the teacher: statements and questions that
are meant to establish the teacher’s limitations and to assume dominance over her.
The student in this mode displays showing off behavior: bringing in topics and
angles on the discussion in order to distract attention from the general proceedings in the class and onto herself. We might
call this being “The Devil’s Advocate,” which might, without the will-to-power,
invoke the fulcrum Discovery mode. But too often, The Devil’s Advocate is
challenging the teacher, not ideas. This
bravado is meant to hide a deep-seated feeling of inadequacy, a translation of
the fear of the new, resistance to what might feel like a submission to
learning something that she didn’t know before. Another manifestation of this is the student who dismisses new ideas with such declarations as "I don't get it!"--meaning "it's not worth getting. You're wasting my time." Whereas on the left side of the continuum the student is mired in
inadequacy, on the other end the student is fighting to deny it. On the left-behind side we have untoward
submission, on the right, untoward dominance.
In
the beginning of my teaching career, when I was the director of a developmental
writing program—creating and coordinating courses in which students initially felt
stigmatized as unbelonging dummies—I committed myself to notice and to diffuse
power struggles in the classroom—to be awake to these dynamics and to replace
them with, what all the Because I Can Teach posts assume, learning environments
that are respectful, energizing, and geared toward mutual creation and discovery
of new ideas and skills.
So,
the fulcrum, the middle of our continuum, is what I call the “Discovery” mode—not
even the “Balance,” as that assumes a see-saw between “Left-Behind” and “I’m-Right.” In this mode, students relax their fearful
defensiveness to become active creators of knowledge in the classroom. Questions and ideas flow freely. Since there is no sense of “I’m better than
you” in either direction, we appreciate each other’s contributions and revel in
how we, in each meeting, become renewed.
To facilitate this, I model new ways of seeing and doing, and then
release students to working with each other.
Ideally, they will hardly notice me floating between groups, so
engrossed they are in their deliberations.
I
often say, “If I haven’t learned something new in a class meeting, then it wasn’t
a good class.” It means I repressed my
students in some way, asserted dominance in a way I abhor—squelching their
development. On the other hand, it is
also my devotion to notice when a student attempts to assume that position of
dominance, which is so corrosive to group dynamics. To help this student, who, in many ways, is
less well off than the Left-Behind, find a way to new learning and legitimate
power. Hence this blog post.
And,
yes, there are classes where the teacher is faltering—more interested in
asserting dominance, hiding his own sense of inadequacy. How can we, as students in such an environment,
look for a way to turn it around for ourselves?
How can we make our time in such a situation an opportunity instead of a
grind? (For one, we can watch how the
dynamics play out, as I am doing here.)
How
are you in the classroom? Where do you
place on the continuum of power? How can you get off the see-saw to renew
yourself? What happens when you ask yourself, “What new,
beneficial thing can I learn here, regardless?”
Works Cited:
Because I Can Teach Link:
