Resources

If you teach long enough, you will teach a course that feels flat, has low morale, or even fails.  While a totally ruined course is rare, there are moments when the sinking, the malaise—yours and that of the students, happens.  We all know this experience.If you have never taught a course that has tanked, then you have likely been a student in a course that has. No real need to recount or describe all the ways a course can fail—the ways a course can “go south” are legion. The more important emphasis is to know that when a course is collapsing it can be rescued. When you feel the course sinking …...do not blame yourself.do not blame the students.do not blame the administration.do not blame your family.do not blame your pets.do not blame the moon phase.do not blame the state of the nation.do not blame the national economy.do not blame climate change.Blaming is ineffective. Finding fault, placing fault, shaming, guilting or scapegoating rarely corrects the problem. Sinking courses are not saved through blame.Do not ignore the situation or pretend that, without adjustment, it will mend. If you sense that there is trouble with the course, the students know there is trouble with the course. When you find yourself watching the clock during your own class session – this is a clue that something needs to be adjusted, altered, changed.Resist the impulse to knuckle down, grin and bear it.Resist the impulse to stay-the-course, stick to your guns!Resist the impulse to “right-fight” and believe whatever you planned, how you planned, is best and “be damned!” anyone who will not comply with your plans.Consider that rescuing a course might take a multi-pronged approach. The recovery of the course might need support from others. Don’t be a hero - please ask for help. If you feel as if the course is weak, ask for help. If you feel lost or disoriented, ask for help. If you do not know how you feel or what to do, ask for help.What help?Get a new perspective, fresh eyes, a more seasoned approach, an empathetic listener. Talk to colleagues. Talk with a trusted colleague at your school, or a trusted colleague beyond your school. You might talk just once, or you might talk several times. Describe the incident or incidents and ask them to listen to what might be changed to strengthen the course.Consider asking a trusted colleague to observe your teaching and then assist you with reflection. These talks are not for confessing to being an imposter. Resist reducing these conversations to disclosing your deep-seated anxieties about public performance (save that for your therapist). Use these conversations to troubleshoot, problem solve and strategize for better teaching and strengthening of your course design.Consider, at the beginning of the semester, creating a small reflection group of colleagues (3 or 4 people) for a semester long conversation so when the course feels like it is not going well you have established conversation partners. The group might be organized around studying teaching resources, together.Talk with a trusted student to get feedback. Talk with a small group of students and ask their opinion. Perhaps, take class time to ask the entire class for feedback and suggestions.Talk to human resource personnel, consult the faculty handbook, know your Title IX procedures. Sometimes bullying behaviors are the culprit in troubled classroom environments.What might be needed?Consider that you might need to recast elements of the syllabus. Consider creating different assignments, adjusting timelines, subtracting some readings or adding new kinds of readings. Add a field trip. Invite a guest speaker.Ask yourself about yourself. Are you too tired to teach well? Are you bored in your own course? Are you anxious? Are you distracted? Are you disappointed, grieving or just sad? Do you have an experience of belonging in your institution and in your own classroom? Your vibe radiates to the students and permeates all aspects of the course.Are the materials in the course too advanced for the students or too inconsequential? Are the materials culturally aligned and relevant to the students’ experiences and expectations? What story are you inviting the students into—is it a story of their imaginations and aspirations?What are the larger happenings of the school, community, region and country that are affecting your classroom? What would it mean to weave these happenings into the conversation?Perhaps it is the students - by which I mean – perhaps you do not know the students and their lives well enough. In what ways can you get better acquainted with your students. Do your students come to class tired after a long day of work? Are your morning students tired after having worked all night? Are they taking too many courses? If they are rested, are they hungry while in your class? Awareness of the conditions of your students might help with addressing some of the malaise.Do not be surprised when a course tanks. It happens to the best of teachers. When a course is “not going well,” do not abandon it or your students. Learn, by experience, how to adjust and adapt to create a meaningful experience for your learners and for yourself.

“I see you!” is a trending colloquialism. It is prevalent on social media and tv commercials. Think Google Pixel commercials featuring Druski, Jason Tatum, Giannis, and other NBA and WNBA stars. “ I see you” says you are doing the do, handling your business. “I see you” is different from pejorative side-eyeing, nosy eyeballing, or shade. “I see you” is an optical-verbal pat on the back. I see your skills, your talent, and your moves. I see your humanity. I wonder, however, how do we see ourselves? Do we look in the mirror and offer the same affirmation? Or is our own internal self-talk lacking what we give to others? We will give a compliment while refusing to receive one. For some of us, there will always be something about ourselves we believe we can’t applaud. We have achieved, arrived, and accomplished, yet we are constantly looking over our shoulders waiting for “them” to “find us out.” Without question we have the title, desk, company computer, and business expense account. However, not a day goes by when you or I don’t hold our breath waiting for the ball to drop or the stuff to hit the fan. I see you. The ultimate question is how do we in the academy see ourselves?   Coined by Drs. Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in the 1970s, imposter syndrome is described as an “internal experience of intellectual phoniness in people who believe that they are not intelligent, capable, or creative despite high achievement.” It is the constant scrutiny, self-critique, position of doubt, posture of “I don’t belong,” and rewinding of being unsure and uncertain. Imposter syndrome evinces wherever a person feels they are not qualified notwithstanding credentials that testify otherwise. Yes, there was a lack of cultural competency and attention to race, class, and gender in the initial studies. However, since then many psychologists and researchers of African American, Asian, Latinx, and LGBTQ life and background have noted that imposterism can be found across existential realities. There are many series of external and systemic factors that contribute to the sense of fraud and “fake person” experience: work drama, email mayhem, blind copy bullying, a low grade in college when you were valedictorian in high school, coercion to turn on the Zoom camera, or a slight off-color comment. These are some of microaggressions that lead to macro-agitation, and maybe to macro-medication. Imposter syndrome is especially evident when discussing first-generation college students, women of color, people who are the first or only in a position, transgender siblings, and anyone who must thrive in contexts that are predominately white, cisgender, and male. A part of our duty as professors is to attend guild meetings. Such convening can be quite daunting for students who travel to present a paper for the first time or meet a “scholarly superstar” in person. Yet, I wonder how do we, as faculty, teach and sojourn with each other despite our own experiences of imposter syndrome? Our courses ought to help students see that their feelings of not being “good enough” do not rest solely on their shoulders. Classroom work should promote a pedagogy of decolonization which shuns imposter posturing and calls oppressive systems out for what they are. The greatest harm of imposter syndrome is how it causes professors and students to suffer, and this leads society to suffer as well. Our giftedness does not illuminate a dark, dank world when we doubt ourselves and dare not show up fully. “I see you,” says I see you—all of you.

My first year at Fuller Theological Seminary, teaching Introduction to Black Theology, I failed myself and my students. I opened the class with a twenty-one minute clip of the most brutal scene  from the television mini-series Roots, which aired in January of 1977. The clip showed Kunta Kinte, brutally beaten with a whip, being hung from a post while other Africans were made to watch. He was beaten near to death and made to renounce his African name and refer to himself as Toby. With every lash of the whip the students squirmed in their seats. The lights were out in the room, I knew something was happening but I couldn’t see, literally and figuratively.  When I cut the lights on after the clip had played, the students were crying. One student got up and ran out of the room, wailing. The clip had traumatized my students. The students were not prepared for the clip. I had not expected this response. I had not prepared them. They were a mess. The classroom was in disarray and I was paralyzed. I was not prepared to handle this level of emotion. I stood in front of the class stunned, and feeling like an incompetent professor. How did I allow this to happen? Why didn’t I know better and do better? What now? What do I do? I don’t know. I stood helpless, in silence as the students wept, wiped their eyes, sniffled and sat. Sat, still yet squirming, and I couldn’t move. I looked at them, with no direction or leadership to offer. No words of comfort. No instruction. We sat together. As we set listening to the sounds of our emotions, there was an eerie feeling that came over the room. A feeling I couldn’t name. It was in the silence that we found our way. We wept together in this moment. This moment, pregnant with failure, birthed a new beginning. Not the beginning for the class I had anticipated, but something else. We sat in that moment, talked about our feelings. We felt in that moment and it opened a door. A door I didn’t see and could not predict.  The door was a new opening to what teaching could be. Teaching could be emotional. The door of the classroom as a space of embodied experiences. Students and professors gather in the sacred space of the classroom not to be taught, but to experience the presence of the Spirit. The classroom is not just a place we experience in our minds. It is a space to be embodied, to be felt in our hearts, our emotions, our cries, our tears our love. Our love for those whose stories we revisit that shape our own. This is my story; a story I pray I never forget. What is your story of failure? A failure that led to a breakthrough. 

A few weeks ago, my eight-year-old daughter decided to grade the weekend we spent together. I don’t know where she got this idea. I didn’t love it. Our weekend scored a 70/100. Readers, over the course of this weekend, we ate pizza, hot dogs, and fried chicken. We went to the pool, twice, where she played with two different sets of friends. We got her favorite ice cream flavor at our favorite ice cream place. We watched an animated film of her choosing. We went rollerblading at a nearby playground. We went to a park where she participated in a kid’s mud race. We attended a local Bach concert. We walked down to eat breakfast one morning at a beloved brunch place, which had just recently reopened after having been closed during the pandemic. There were some challenges. I made her rollerblade. Even though they were rollerblades she herself requested from her grandparents for Christmas,  rollerblading is still hard for her, and she doesn’t like doing it, and she grumbled throughout the entire experience, and I got annoyed, and we butted heads. But we cuddled, chatted, and laughed a lot too. And this was a C-?!? I felt disappointed, hurt, even, by the low score. I wanted to protest about how hard I had tried to create a good weekend for her. I wanted to detail all the effort I had put into our plans. I wanted to point out all the good things about my weekend “performance.”I wanted a different score. And I definitely wanted to put way less effort into future weekends, if my best efforts were, at most, going to earn me a 70%. And then I realized precisely what—or rather who—I felt like. I felt like one of my students who had tried really hard, on a paper or a test, and who still didn’t get the grade they wanted, that they thought they deserved. The same students who send seemingly entitled emails late at night or come by my office hours to do the dreaded “grade grubbing.” The same students about whom I sometimes privately think: Tough noogies. Effort isn’t everything. You can work hard and things still won’t necessarily go your way. This is life. Oof. Researchers are coming to better appreciate the role of emotions in learning (see here and here, for instance). Grading, in particular, is an “emotional practice,” for students and instructors alike. Getting this score from my daughter was a good reminder for me—and for all of us—of just how difficult the learning process can be for students. Failure (or even a C-level grade, which certainly isn’t failure), on top of everything else going on in their lives (e.g., living away from home for the first time, working part-time jobs, health problems, relationship issues, etc.), can hurt. It can feel frustrating, demoralizing, unfair—even if it is also “a necessary component of learning and growth.” When we get a low score, or other negative feedback, it can affect our motivation, our self-efficacy, our self-worth, our willingness to take risks, as well as our desire to continue. I think it’s important to put ourselves in the shoes of students once in a while, to remember what these feelings—and their potency—are like. As we get older, there’s less of a demand on us to get out of our comfort zones. Kids are learning constantly: how to hold their own heads up, how to use forks, how to not run directly into oncoming traffic. As adults, we can usually opt out of uncomfortable learning experiences. When was the last time you tried to learn something? When was the last time you really struggled with a new skill or knowledge? When was the last time you failed—and it was public and someone else gave you a grade for it? One of the skills that’s important to me to teach in my religion courses is empathy, which I hope students will apply to the people and traditions we study. But this skill is applicable to us too. Experiencing our own failures can be a good reminder that students are people too and that they bring a mix of emotions into our classrooms, all of which affect their learning. This reminder may help us consider how we might, perhaps more delicately or kindly, facilitate those situations in which failure is possible or even inevitable.