Up to Speed

The Divine Miss M

In my junior year of college I took a Shakespeare course to fulfill my English major requirements.  For an entire semester I lugged a ten-pound Riverside edition of the bard’s work across campus on my back, like a pack mule in scholar’s clothing.  Willy gazed up at me from the cover with unsympathetic steadiness, as if to say, “Great literature is weighty, deal with it.” 

I plunged through play after play - As You Like It, Othello, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, King Lear, The Tempest.  My Jeopardy!expertise grew by the week!  I followed the research librarian through dark archives of the main library, sweeping dust and dead bugs from the folios.  I monopolized the microfiche for hours, dropping five dollars in nickels into the photocopier to collect sheaves of olde English. My time served, I shuffled away from Media Services with a hunched back, sallow complexion, and dark hollows circling my eyes.  The bright young coed who entered the library had been transformed into a shorter version of the Addams family butler, Lurch.   All this and more I endured for the sake of Shakespeare, and my instructor.

 

Shakespeare 101 was taught by a fashionable young actress with hair that swung behind her back like a thick brown curtain.  Miss M, as I will call her, was well-versed in theatre and literature.  She wielded her knowledge with severe linguistic precision.  Miss M liked to spin tales of the roles she’d played in her short career.  It was easy to imagine her walking the boards in Elizabethan velvet gowns, her hair woven in intricate designs atop her comely head, and large Shakespearean words slipping from her capable tongue.  One could surely picture her backstage between scenes, chatting about double-decker buses and crumpets with other anglophiles and alienating the custodial staff with her haughty demanding ways.

Although Miss M’s prim sophistication sometimes got on my flannel-clad nerves, I really, really wanted her to like me and did my best to live up to her academic standards.  In most respects I was successful.  But when I wrote my final paper for the class, Miss M was far from pleased.

My play of choice was Measure for Measure, a dark comedy about a young man condemned to die for getting his girlfriend pregnant.  I was enthralled with the play, not because I rejoiced to see careless lovers suffer, but because I loved the ethics it explored. I read the play twice over, digging furiously for quotes and evidence and pushing my understanding of the language and time period. 

A religion professor of mine once said, “In good literature the reader never quite knows where the author stands.”  I thought this quote terribly clever, so I used it as the premise of my paper, crafting a five-page examination of the sexual morality issues addressed in Measure for Measure.  I wrote that, “The freedom to examine aspects of human nature apart from the constraints of the author’s personal biases contributes to the timelessness of Shakespearean drama.”  I thought that sounded smart.  I was certain I’d earn an “A.”

Miss M passed the papers back the day of the final exam.  I stretched the writer’s cramp from my hand as I retrieved my paper, then drew in a quick breath, as if Miss M had dealt me a blow to the solar plexus instead of a grade.  The verdict was in.  A firm, hollow “C.” 

The comments were severe.  I cowered beneath what I interpreted as her harshness and intense disapproval.  The wound was worsened by Miss M’s barely legible handwriting.  If she was going to put me through the wringer, she could at least use good penmanship!

Miss M threw me one paltry morsel of praise in the beginning - “Good questions.”  After that she had nothing good to say.  “Much too simple, too broad,” she cried in her scholarly outrage, double underlining the “too” for emphasis.  Then she wrote, “As I have repeated[ly] discussed in class, it is unnecessary to involve ‘Shakespeare’ since there is no way to know his thoughts, intentions, motives, etc.  It is more useful to consider what is available - the play itself in terms of what it might explore, suggest, rehearse, etc.”

Miss M’s annoyance at my blatant disregard for her careful instruction radiated from the page.  I recalled with regret one of the first days of class, the day when Miss M had firmly told her students they were to refer to the text as an independent entity and refrain from suggesting that the author was trying to prove or do something through his plays.

I had forgotten all about it, and as a result had broken one of the key rules of success in a classroom - never engage in behavior that is a pet peeve of the instructor.  Forgetting pet peeves is the academic equivalent of kicking the ball into the wrong goal.  If you’re going to do that, why even show up for the game? 

I trudged home, failure in hand, fighting back tears and trying to sort out my emotions.  “I’m a junior in college and an ENGLISH major.  How can I not know how to write about SHAKESPEARE?  I’ve never gotten a grade this bad on a paper in college!  Have all my other professors been either too ignorant or too kind to tell me the truth about my writing?” Compounding my sense of failure was an intense disappointment that writing about something I loved, something I was passionate about, had brought me a poor mark. 

(Ironically, writing a BS paper praising something I thought absurd brought me the only A+ of my college career.  “Six Persimmons,” a masterpiece I affectionately call “Six Sloppy Circles.”) 

I rode up the elevator to the dorm room of my boyfriend Eric (now husband) and curled up in the fetal position on his bed.  I poured out my confusion and discouragement and attempted to draw a few conclusions about the situation.  The more I talked, and the more I wallowed in the pain inflicted by that scarlet letter, the more certain I was that the grade reflected my true ability. 

I decided that all my visions of myself as a competent writer had been delusional and wrong and that I needed Miss M to straighten me out.  With stubbornly pathetic resolve I vowed to Eric I was NOT going to let this “C” be a failure.  I would rewrite the paper over Christmas break and prove to Miss M I was not content to be average and obvious.  I would fight my way back to the top, like Abraham Lincoln, or Rudy!

I never found my way back to Miss M’s office for the advice that would save my academic career.  I avoided the place as if it were the dragon’s lair, afraid if I dared show up Miss M would scorch my shriveled self-esteem all over again.  I moved on to another semester and took more English classes.  I received some encouraging comments and some “A’s” and gradually felt my confidence slipping back into place.

How can you learn when your teacher hates you?

I was reminded of this Shakespeare paper experience this week when an acquaintance told me a story about her middle daughter, a junior in college.  This bubbly, vivacious daughter is a glass-half-full, life-of-the-party kind of gal.  She had the misfortune to enroll in a literature class taught by a professor with a penchant for dark depressing texts.  Dr. Gloom didn’t appreciate Miss Sunshine’s frequent baffled questions or her failure to connect with his curriculum.  He told her in no uncertain terms that she would have been better off enrolling at ____ college - a school for less serious students.  Ouch.

The mother was understandably miffed at the teacher’s criticism but, true to the optimistic genes in that family, assured me her daughter has moved on.  She has learned to ignore the naysayers and gravitate toward professors who see her value, appreciate the strengths she brings to the classroom, and make a point to tell her as much.

Why is it that teachers, who hold great emotional and educational authority over their students, find it so easy to let the axe of judgement fall when a student doesn’t live up to their standards or subscribe to their tastes?  As I made my way through grade school, a teacher education program and 4 years as a public school teacher, I found I was very sensitive to teachers’ critiques of students’ work or behavior that I felt were overly harsh or negative. 

So often the student’s only crime is to be a different kind of person from the teacher.  The artsy intellectual rolls her eyes at the athlete.  The coach chuckles in derision at the scrawny computer geek.  Or the strict disciplinarian uses harsh tactics to “shape” a student who is slow to catch on, lacking confidence, or unwilling to do what’s expected.  Instead of providing a safe place for the child to learn, the teacher offers criticism or humilitation.  We can all imagine, or perhaps know from bitter experience, what those blows must do to a young person who is only just learning to write, to play the game, to test their abilities. 

Creating The Safe Haven

Daniel Goleman, reknowned psychologist and the author of Social Intelligence, has written of the importance of teachers providing a “safe haven for learning.”  He cites Thomas Friedman (author of The World is Flat and expert on globalization) who claims, “The most important thing you can learn in this era of heightened global competition is how to learn.”  And the way to learn how to learn is to find teachers who are passionate about their subjects, who love learning themselves and can pass on this love to their students. 

Goleman says one of the most effective means of helping students to love learning is “providing what the psychoanalyst John Bowlby called a ’safe haven,’ a psychological enclave within a relationship where they can recharge and feel secure.  By providing a safe haven, we encourage one another to go out into the world in some way, to explore widely, to master something new, to achieve a major life goal.  And we complement that encouragement with patience, simply waiting with the faith that he or she has the competence to do well…we offer a secure base from which they can grow and develop themselves - or just go out for another day taking on a cold, indifferent world.”

The Curse of Knowledge

Now more than ever, we need teachers who posess not only knowledge of their subject, but also the social intelligence to effectively connect with students and teach them what they need to know to succeed in the 21st Century.  Part of the problem for many teachers in communicating their message is what Chip and Dan Heath (Made to Stick) call “the curse of knowledge.”    Teachers forget what it was like to be a novice.  They can’t shed their expert mindset and put themselves in the place of their students, remembering what it was like not to know.

This perhaps explains the roots of my trouble with Miss M.  I’m sure by the time she had me as a student she’d not only read most of Shakespeare’s plays repeatedly, but also absorbed volumes of modern criticism, poured over countless articles and books, written lots of papers, and taken lots of classes.  Miss M spent her professional life, and perhaps much of her personal life, steeped in the strong brew of the modern English graduate program.  She operated in a world that was competitive, highly intellectualized, and often intensely narrow and specific.

Writer and educator Mike Rose wrote of his own graduate school experience: “[We] learned to refocus the lens to the micro level, looking very closely at a single work…the unstated agenda was that we should come up with an original interpretation, argue that what seems fairly simple is really complex, that traditional readings miss the point, that yet another reading is possible.”  Lives on the Boundary, pp. 70-71

This “unstated agenda” reared its head frequently in my English undergraduate career.  Teachers implied, but didn’t necessarily state, that in order to write something “useful” one must write about something subversive, something that challenges traditional interpretations or values.  I’ve found you’re usually pretty safe if you go with a reading that is Freudian, homoerotic, or can be related to French feminist theory.  Deconstruction was the name of the game.  “Make it new!” they cried.  I learned the rules and learned to write papers on topics that fit this mold and were very specific, but when I got to Shakespeare I wanted to do something else.

Before I entered Miss M’s class I had read Romeo and Juliet in 9th grade, once attended a performance of Twelfth Night in a park, and watched Mel Gibson’s Hamlet on video. Obviously I was a beginner.  Almost all the texts I encountered were new to me and while not all of them were to my liking, a few plays really drew me in.  They addressed what is vital about humanity, and life.  They served as catalysts, presenting words and ideas that sent my mind racing down paths with lots of dips, twists, and turns.  I resisted the pressure to contain this vitality in narow theses and concise interpretations.  I didn’t want to crawl down an intellectual tunnel.  I wanted to dance in a field.

According to the values of the graduate school system of which Miss M was a part, my paper was flawed.  But I believe my writing had value that extended beyond the obvious.  As an inexperienced student of Shakespeare I needed to spend some time on the surface getting my bearings before I would be ready to uncover the play’s subtleties.  I needed to explore aspects of Measure for Measure that might seem overt to a more experienced reader.  I needed a chance to write about what really interested me and to think through how I felt about the experiences and opinions of the characters in the play. 

When she said my writing was not useful, Miss M disregarded the fact that what I had done was useful TO ME.  She sent me the message that producing the “right” kind of essay was more valuable than the meaning I’d constructed for myself.  What I produced would certainly never be published in a scholarly journal.  But I was not writing to be published.  I was writing to learn.

One of the most grievous aspects of this situation is that after all the hard feelings and wounded pride I did not find Miss M’s comments to be helpful to me as a writer.  A majority of her comments were TOO general, too broad to be of much use.  Rather than exerting what Thomas Newkirk calls “a gentle counterpressure” to my simplistic reasoning, Miss M basically stamped a big “NO” on my paper and handed it back to me saying, “This isn’t it.”  She was an effective critic, but not an effective teacher.  I didn’t want Miss M to lie to me about what she thought of my work or praise me for trivial things that I had done correctly.  But I DID want her to converse with me about the thinking I had done in a way that preserved my confidence as a writer and showed me how I could improve.

How then shall we teach?

So now the question is, how did this experience change how I teach?  (And by extension, how I manage people or parent my child.)  What should teachers do for students that Miss M did not do for me?  I offer three suggestions:

1.  Look for the intelligence behind mistakes.

Effective teachers put time and effort into seeking to understand what a student was thinking when he or she committed an error.  They know their authority as teachers allows them the opportunity to help fix problems, not just point out the errors. Teachers would do well to follow the example of Mike Rose who taught himself and others to, “See beyond failure, develop the perception of the counselor who must look for causes of behavior rather than simply recording the behavior itself.”

2.  Do not expect students to perform beyond their years, or beyond their experience.

Miss M’s response to my paper and her expectations of me as a student point to a desire to mold her undergrads into little graduate students.  She wanted me to produce a type and caliber of writing I was not necessarily ready for.  While it’s our job as teachers (or managers or parents) to guide our students (or employees, or children) toward enhanced performance, it is unfair and unwise to expect them to skip steps in the learning process.  We should beware of asking for mastery of advanced concepts when a student is only just beginning to try them out.  We must familiarize ourselves with the capabilities and limitations of the particular students we teach, regardless of their age or what we think they should know.

3.  Be positive.

Almost all of Miss M’s comments on my paper tended toward the negative.  She never told me if I said anything well, if I was ever on the right track, if she had considered for herself the issues I was addressing.  I had the sense that she had no desire to engage with me as a writer, a student of Shakespeare, or a human being.  I assumed that because the positive feedback was so minimal, my writing was not worthy of Miss M’s attention and my ability was questionable.

I urge teachers, managers and parents to remember how it feels when someone criticizes something you’ve done, especially when you care about it and have done your best.  Remember how easily a negative comment, unbuffered by praise or gentle language, can crush a student’s confidence and choke his desire to even try.  Make sure you encourage and build up more than you tear down, especially when his performance shows a legitimate effort and even when you aren’t thrilled with what he has produced.

Along with a teacher’s authority to assess student work comes a responsibility to respond with caution and compassion.  Teachers can have a tremendous influence on a student’s motivation and their feelings of competence.  In her book, Tools for Teaching Barbara Gross Davis writes, “Researchers have begun to identify those aspects of the teaching situation that enhance students’ self-motivation (Lowman, 1984; Lucas, 1990; Weinert and Kluwe, 1987; Bligh, 1971).

To encourage students to become self-motivated independent learners, instructors can do the following:

• Give frequent, early, positive feedback that supports students’ beliefs that they can do well.
• Ensure opportunities for students’ success by assigning tasks that are neither too easy nor too difficult.
• Help students find personal meaning and value in the material.
• Create an atmosphere that is open and positive.
• Help students feel that they are valued members of a learning community.”

A Model of Teaching for the 21st Century

I’ll close with a portrait of another teacher.  On my bookshelf sits an ancient 85 cent paperback - Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China, by Arthur Waley.  I’ve never read this book, nor do I intend to.  But I will never, ever throw it away.  For inside the front cover is a personal inscription:  “Chris!  I’m giving this book to a really good student who will shine in college and glow in life!  Good luck!  Mr. Van Iten, Summer ‘92.”

Mr. Van Iten (a PhD who insisted on being only a mister) was dean of the Philosophy department at Iowa State University.  He taught a three week class to middle school students (myself included) at an academic summer camp called CY-TAG.  Van Iten showed his love for his subject by waving his arms enthusiastically over Plato and kumquats.  He was equally passionate about his students.  He never seemed to care for a second that we were a bunch of nerdy 7th and 8th graders instead of college students, or that some (like me) had no clue what he was talking about.  He welcomed us all to his classroom, and his subject, with open arms.

He took us out to a local diner so we could eat giant fluffy pancakes and look at life through the eyes of the working class.  He invited us to his home where we toured his garden and met his lovely wife.  And at the end of the three weeks, he gave us each a book from his library with a personal message inside, punctuated with his trademark exclamation points. 

Mr. Van Iten taught me to reason more deliberately, to empathize more deeply.  I don’t remember the specifics of his lectures, but I remember the man’s passion.  He made me feel he liked me - even if I wasn’t his best student - and made me want to learn.  To this day Mr. Van Iten is still my standard for what a great teacher should be.  And if I remember correctly, my grade in that class was a “C.”

Tags: Add new tag, criticism, Daniel Goleman, Education, English Education, excellence in teaching, higher education, performance improvement, teacher education, teaching Shakespeare, teaching writing, Thomas Friedman, writing assessment

This entry was posted on Friday, December 5th, 2008 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.