sticking to my own job

I used to want to be a family and marriage counselor early in my undergrad. I liked listening to people’s problems and acting as a resource for them. Now the tricky thing was that I learned I have a permeable personality. This means I tend to carry absorb quite a bit of other people’s problems or worries. Since finishing school I’ve gotten a lot better about not taking on people’s problems, but teaching has brought different kinds of challenges in this area.  

Last week was hard keeping up with my students. I know it’s the end of the semester, which means students slowly start trickling off. Lately, I’ve been very distracted by one particular student due to his extended absence from the class. He hasn’t been to class in four weeks, hasn’t completed any of the online work from the past month, hasn’t answered any of my emails, and didn’t participate in the donation drive.

BIG YIKES.

My students in his advocacy in action group kept asking me “where is he? Have you heard from him? Is he okay?” And all I could answer them is “no, I haven’t heard from him so we’re going to move forward.” If I’m being honest, there’s a part of me that’s worried about him. I’ve emailed him multiple times, but no response. This is where my permeable personality kicks in and I begin questioning what went wrong. So here I am thinking “did he drop out of school? Is there something going on at home? was it something I did?” which I know the likely answer to the last question is no, but this student is MIA. Over the course of the semester, I’ve come to care about my students as people. They’re not just faces I see twice a week for an hour; they have lives outside the classroom and other factors affecting them. Knowing this particular student could be dealing with something big, or simply forgot to drop the class, I really just want to confirm if he’s okay because I care about him as a person.

Send help.

Now, although Fish wasn’t my favorite author, I am tempted to say I agree with him... WHAT? I know. Hear me out. Going through this situation has made me open my eyes a little more and find his philosophy to be convincing. When he notes, “I can’t speak for every academic, but I am not trained to do these things, although I am aware of people who are: preachers, therapists, social workers, political activists, professional gurus, inspirational speakers. Teachers, as I have said repeatedly, teach materials and confer skills, and therefore don’t or shouldn’t do a lot of other things - like produce active citizens, inculcate the virtue of tolerance, redress injustices, and bring about political change” (pg. 66). As teachers we are not trained to deal with specific situations outside the classroom, there is only so much we can do. In this case with my MIA student, there’s only so much I can do as his teacher. I’m not equipped to help him with problems affecting him in other parts of his life. I have been trained and equipped to teach course objectives and various class content, but I’m nowhere ready to assist with struggles outside of that.

It would be exhausting if I tried to fill more roles outside of being a teacher. I’m already a graduate student and debate assistant on top of it. If I were to try and take on my students’ problems, then I would be spread almost too thin to function. It wouldn’t be fair to myself or my students if I didn’t give them my best foot in the classroom. As Fish says, they deserve to be “[equipped] with the analytical skills that will enable them to move confidently within traditions and to engage in independent research should they choose to do so” (pg. 18). This is my job; to educate students to the best of my ability and equip them with skills they can transfer to other areas of their academic career. I need to refrain from doing the job of another because, frankly, I’m not trained to do so. There are resources on campus that I can point my students to that will serve them better in that capacity than I could.

I’m a first-semester teacher and, hey, I’m learning. I’m figuring out how to best serve my students and what my role in the classroom looks like. I’m figuring out the ways I can act as a resource to them and pointing them to other resources that can provide for their needs outside of an academic context. I think Fish got this part right when he says teachers should stick to their jobs and not do the job of another.

#andthatstheT