Learning From Our Students:
The Aha! Moment

by Joanna Howard of Montgomery College

Over the years, I’ve gained a great deal from the Basic Writing discussion group—from texts worth teaching to ideas about assessment and placement to—well, the list goes on and on with each month’s offering. Probably the greatest gift I’ve gained from participating on this list is to be reminded of the variety of programs, institutions and instructors who work with, as the late John Lovas would say, “developing writers.”

Class blogs, sheaves of assignments, my files-- both paper and electronic--and ideas that never made it to the classroom but which hang from the computer on faded stickies speak to the influence of the list on my work. While I’d like to return the favor, by this time of the academic year, my brain has turned to pudding, with only a few active neurons (two, maybe three) left to make it through the coming months.

So, instead of presenting you with a thorough, academically researched essay, I, along with my two neurons, would like to invite you to try something different as we move through April towards the winding-down month of May: let’s talk about what the year has been like in our classrooms. Let’s share stories of hard-won success and “aha!” moments--the insights that we glean from our students, who are the reason we do what we do in the first place, and with whom we’ve tried the many ideas that come from our peers on this list.

I’ll begin.

“You’re a good teacher, but it wouldn’t hurt to smile sometimes,” wrote one of my students on my December teaching evaluation. Although this was the first and only time anyone had ever commented on my countenance, the suggestion has precipitated a chain of aha’s as I’ve mulled it over. I’ve come to realize that in the past two years, dealing with some overwhelming personal events, I’d become more serious in all areas of my life, including the classroom. Nothing wrong with that, except that when seriousness overtook all of my other moods, it made me seem unapproachable and, possibly boring, to my students, or at least one of them.

It’s true that when I’m deeply into a topic, I don’t smile. I may be enthusiastic, I may be passionate, and I may even gesticulate, but smiling? No. The problem is, in a course designed to welcome basic writers to college and writing, having an unsmiling instructor sends a confusing message—like replacing Mickey Mouse and friends with hair-shirted mendicants as greeters at Disneyworld. Not the best way to invite students to explore the joys of writing.

Yeah, but . . . as a female college professor, am I feeling pressured to smile, to make learning palatable and yummy and to behave like a doormat? Is this the reason why so many feminists ahead of me suffered—so that I could smile at my students? Do male professors smile and when they do, is it perceived as a gesture of power? Am I making too much of this by turning it into a feminist issue?

No, however. . . .

Well, I’m not for becoming a retro-accommodating woman, but I’m not certain that gender is completely the issue. From where does my solemnity spring—this quality of quiet, intensity, of being so caught up in one’s thoughts that one can forget to breath, much less smile, frown, or wrinkle one’s brow? Given that I’m my father’s daughter, I can’t really blame this one on cultural conditioning or gender, but on inheritance: along with his nose and fair, freckled skin, my father gave me gravitas.

That’s all well and good, but what about my students? Why wouldn’t a somber demeanor work? As mentioned above, it can seem cold and uninviting. Here at Montgomery College, many of my students are first- generation college students. Some are the bilingual children of immigrants; others come from families that have lived in the U.S. for centuries. Nearly all of my students are enrolled in Basic Writing because they were not strong students in the past. Generally, the rules and norms of college life overwhelm them, and some react by skipping class, behaving like seventh graders, or becoming very, very quiet.

While it’s true that they need someone who is serious about school and serious about them, they also need someone who can laugh with them and who can apologize for making a mistake, while at the same time hold them to a high standard. Ultimately, what they need is authenticity in the form of a teacher who isn’t wearing a mask. From authenticity grows trust and from trust grows learning, regardless of how leaning is officially measured. In the end, I want to be a teacher who is completely present in class, blending the serious with the silly.

So this semester, I’ve begun to catch myself when I hear myself becoming too serious, either in the fire and brimstone, textbook thumping vein: “If you don’t turn this in on time, there will be . . . consequences,” or in the brain-in-need -of –a-personality vein: “Verbals LOOK like verbs because they are CONSTRUCTED from VERB FORMS; howEVER, determining their FUNCTION demonstrates their classification.”

The minute I hear myself taking that tone is the minute I ask my students for a hand count: “How many of you think I’m getting a little bit carried away?” Or “Raise you hand if you feel that I just took the most complicated route to an explanation.” Generally, this technique, and the laughter that follows it, has the effect of bringing us back together so that learning and teaching can resume. More importantly, it brings me back to the heart of my course, where I am remembering to smile.

Can’t hurt.

How about you? What “aha!” moments have your students precipitated in you this year? Consider any of the following:

What brought about the moment? An evaluation, an offhand comment, a conversation?

1. How has this awareness affected your teaching?
2. Did you change anything about your teaching after having the realization?
3. My “aha!” had to do with the way that I was coming across to my students—your “aha” might be related to an assignment, a concept, even a word.

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