Taking Students Seriously

One of the things I've been really grappling with is how to take students seriously. Part of this is the fact that I'm teaching an online course right now for future middle school teachers. It focuses on how to teach young adolescents, with all of their wonderfully weird developmental changes. These changes impact the way we approach teaching young adolescents, obviously. And one of the things I've been trying to convey to these future teachers is that we need to take our students' needs seriously. Want to be an effective middle school teacher? You should know some things about how middle schoolers are developing--physically, cognitively, socially, emotionally, spiritually...all of it! And taking their needs seriously means giving them what they need to flourish in your class. Yes, they need academic input--that's what school is for! But if it's only academic, without accounting for their physical, social, emotional, and spiritual needs...well, good luck to you in actually reaching and actually teaching those students!

And where my thinking is currently pointing? This approach of taking students seriously is probably true of every group of students! 

I'm mostly teaching undergraduates right now. They definitely have their own peculiar needs! And the graduate students I'm teaching have a different set of needs, because of their station in life and where thy are in their professional career.

Certainly this is not just true in a distance teaching situation, which is where I've been focusing my blogging this month. Obviously it matters in a face-to-face classroom as well! But I am thinking right now specifically about how to take students seriously when you aren't meeting up with them face-to-face. Here are a few ideas I've been trying in my own online teaching practice this semester:

• When I have synchronous meetings with students, I am trying to make sure to have an opening circle where we can just check in and see how everyone is doing. I don't compel students to share--this is at their level of comfort--but by making space where sharing about life beyond class is normalized, I think I'm taking students' needs seriously.
• I am using case studies and small group discussion extensively in one course. This allows for students to get to know a smaller group of their colleagues better (working in a small group) which will, I hope, build greater trust among them. The cases we are considering are "controversial" in the sense that they are designed to have multiple "right" answers, and I have some structures in place for the way I'm setting up the discussions to help students engage with each other around ideas. This means that even if they disagree with each other, they are disagreeing about content and not character. All of this to say, I think I'm taking students' social and emotional needs into account in the way I'm arranging for this learning experience to unfold.
• I am being even more flexible than normal with due dates. Let's be honest: most due dates are completely arbitrary and are about the instructor's convenience, rather than being driven by students' needs. I'm at a point in my teaching career that if a student reaches out and says, "I could use a little more time on this," I'm willing to extend the deadline with no questions asked. I know how much extra grace benefits me personally. I'm willing and ready to extend that extra grace to students as well.
• In my communication with students, I am checking my language to ensure I'm conveying confidence in their ability to learn, a sense of high expectations for the quality of work we will do together, and a clear message of support and encouragement from me--that I am for them and not against them. 
• I am intentionally looking for their input on how things are going in the courses they are taking with me. Soliciting feedback from students might not be a norm for you right now, but if you are open to hearing from students--and taking their comments about their experience in your class seriously!--you can learn a lot.

I hope that these suggestions give you some encouragement. What else are you doing to demonstrate that you are taking students seriously?

Image by Tim Gouw via Unsplash.

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)