Equality 101

"How you doin?"

Confession:  I’m 26 years old (but I’m often told I look younger), and I started teaching at the community college level fresh out of grad school.  I was 23.

In other words, since I teach at a community college, I look a lot like my students (the average age of students at my community college is 25).   This isn’t usually a problem though.  I tend to dress differently than students (business/professional clothes) to distinguish myself and seem more of an “authority” (not that being an “authority” always works—see my post on losing my voice). And sometimes looking young helps a lot as students are more comfortable, speak up more, and laugh more at my dumb and nerdy jokes.

However, sometimes being a young teacher is a problem—especially when students perceive you as too much of an equal.

This blog is about equality in the classroom, in its many forms, but it’s also about equity in the classroom as Lacey pointed out in her post (check it out!).   As Lacey suggested, the difference between the two is subtle yet important, and this rings true even when it comes to dealing with boundaries.

How involved should I get in my students’ lives? And how does this affect my own classroom policies, which are supposed to be policies for every student?  For example, if I have a pregnant woman in my class, how do I treat her equally?  How do I treat her with equity?  Do I ignore my own policy on attendance for her because I know that she needs to go to doctor’s appointments? Because she’ll probably have morning sickness?  Am I being more sensitive to her situation because I am woman too, and although I have no children, I am more knowledgeable and forgiving about her needs?   Is it fair to the rest of the class if I make exceptions for her?

What if I have a student who’s in AA and needs to miss a week and half of class to do 10 days of jail time for a DUI he got before he got clean?   Do I ignore my attendance policy for him? How far do I go to give him materials to work on before he does time or to help him catch up when he gets back?

Both of these examples actually happened to me in the same semester, and I’ll get around to reflecting on how I dealt with them in later posts (I hope).  But these are just two examples of how boundaries, equality, and equity become difficult to define in the practice of teaching.

I’m not saying that teachers at other levels (K-12) or in other kinds of institutions (4 year universities, both public and private) have an easier time defining boundaries when it comes to getting involved in students’ lives, but there is definitely a different atmosphere at a community college and many of our students are more likely to have LIFE conflict with their goals as students.

One other way in which a community college offers different boundary problems, and the situation for which the title of this post was created, is as follows:  the 40-something-year-old non-traditional student asks the young teacher out on a date.

And yes, this was an actual interaction with a student, which also happened in the same semester as the previous examples (that was a rough semester for me!).

Having non-traditional students who are obviously older than the teacher is always a sticky situation—they’re not sure if they can trust the experience of the teacher (“She’s so young; is she qualified to teach this?”) or there may be issues with lack of respect for the teacher, whether the student is aware of it or not.

In this situation, the teacher (me) was seen as too much of an equal: equal enough to ask out on a date, to tell her that she’s cute in a homework journal entry, and to eventually badger in the classroom— by telling lewd jokes and getting the class discussion way off target—and in individual conferences—by telling the teacher that if she doesn’t get the anagram that is the title of his poem than she should take it home and work on it.

How does one deal with this situation with equity?  And how does one retain an objective, equal, and equitable state of mind as she grades the rest of this student’s work for the semester?

It was tough.  Because of the badgering and harassment, I felt threatened and wished for the upper hand again, even if it came at the cost of seeing this student do poorly in the class.  I wanted to see this student do poorly, but time and time again, I took a step back when an assignment was turned in late or a class was missed and asked myself what I would do if it were any other student.  And then, I acted accordingly.

In the end, I got the upper hand again by telling the student exactly how and why his actions were inappropriate and letting him know that I would take the matter to my supervisor if those actions continued.  I continued to breathe and find ways to bring the focus of the class discussion back to the topic at hand and away from him.  And in the end, he passed the course because I continually reminded myself to treat him equitably, even though I didn’t really want to.

The moral?  Being a teacher is hard.  Practicing equality and equity is hard, especially when you feel threatened.  But in the end, I walked away from the situation feeling good about the way I handled it because I believed I was fair.  And sometimes, that’s all this teacher really wants.