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Perhaps, selfishly, my journey away from authoritarian teaching came from confronting bad teaching evaluations in my first two years of teaching. While my early education was decidedly not authoritarian – I was homeschooled by a mother inspired by unschooling, Waldorf, and Montessori – I often fell into the trap of confusing being rigorous with being an authoritarian. My first few years of teaching, I threw my hands up in frustration, wondering why my students didn’t take pleasure in learning. My thinking remained unproductive until I began to reflect on a difficult question: what energy was I bringing to the classroom? The conclusions weren’t pleasant: I thought that to earn respect, I had to be tough. Being tough meant being inflexible with deadlines (what am I, a pushover?), having an intense, aloof demeanor in the classroom (how else would they take things seriously?), and having rigorous, high standards for grading that were given in an unfeeling manner (no A for effort, kids). As a young woman, I felt like I had a lot to prove and it showed. My teaching evaluations were abysmal. And while yes, there is a lot to be said for gender (and, though it does not negatively impact my evaluations personally, racial) biases in evaluations, I do think that students were picking up on my general insecurity and responding to their own feelings of powerlessness. Put more simply, it is hard to be invested in a class in which you feel you have no control over, and it is easy to assume that everything you don’t like is the fault of your professor. At first, my move into more student involvement was rooted almost solely in improving my evaluations. But after major shifts in teaching practice, I’ve noticed that the more I’ve levelled my authority and engaged in more collaborative teaching with my students, not only do my students enjoy my classes more, but they also learn a lot more too. They also seem to feel much more invested in the material and take ownership of their work and role in shaping the classroom environment. As a professor in a required first-year seminar program, I teach St. Augustine’s Confessionsoften. I am always struck by Augustine’s reflections on the distinct experiences of learning from authoritarian teachers at school. Discussing learning Greek, he writes that “the threat of savage, terrifying punishments was used to make me learn.” He contrasts this to the ease with which he learned Latin, under the gentle tutelage of his childhood caretakers, “without any fear or pain at all.” Augustine concludes that “It is evident that the free play of curiosity is a more powerful spur to learning these things than is fear-ridden coercion.”[i] Inspired by Augustine (along with feminist thinkers such as bell hooks and anti-carceral pedagogy inspired by Mariame Kaba and others), I have sought to create an environment of genuine freedom and joy to explore ideas and improve my students’ critical abilities.In the next entries in this blog series, I will share some of the specific practices I use to create a more collaborative learning environment (such as students creating discussion expectations, collaborating on course policies, changes in how I offer grading feedback, and more). I will also discuss how I maintain rigor in such a classroom. For now, I invite readers to consider a series of questions: am I unwilling to be more collaborative out of fear that I won’t be taken seriously? How can my vulnerability inspire the same in students? How can this shared learning space enrich all who enter it? Notes & Bibliography[i] Augustine, Confessions, translated by Maria Boulding (New York: Vintage Spiritual Classics, 1997), I.14,23.

What they don’t tell you about learned, trauma-induced suspicion is that it is a force. It acts all-powerful, is dynamic. It cannot be shut off. It has no valve. It feels quite eternal, quite useful, deeply harmful, and is the most intriguing companion you will ever have. It helps; it harms. It is a tool of wisdom and an ingredient of destruction.And it lives with you—or dare I say, comes from you. It is not sibling or lover; it is child—part of you yet distinct from you, something for which you are responsible to show love, to teach care, to help guide it into its maturity. But you cannot control it or rid yourself of it; it is always a part of you.So, you learn it.And have patience. And decide that since you both are connected on levels and planes you may not see, you have to build relationship with it—create sites of health and progress and adaptation. This is not resignation or lack of strength; this is clarity and vision—and perhaps a glimpse into genealogical secrets.You are likely not the first of your people to wrestle with suspicion’s place (I, at least, don’t think of them as tricksters in any way).But you can be the first to craft a new relation, an honest partnership.What can suspicion teach you—what has it been trying to instill in your heart? How has it sharpened your spirit? Have you even realized it has granted you more eyes?The impulse is to call suspicion an enemy. It is age-old to lean into fear. But suspicion absorbs what you place on it. Fear is not helpful here. Attention is.What is it showing you about yourself? And are you ready to understand?You are a galaxy of unknowns—are you ready to know something buried in your atoms, to become a scientist of yourself?