Students who want you to care about them

[Wahoo Redux]

This whole notion of "caring" for students strikes me suddenly as rather strange.  Why is it even a topic?

Of course students want us to care about them.  College is very stressful. They want to know that we have empathy.  They don't want us intruding into their private lives or taking on some sort of parental role, at least most students who are psychologically sound don't, but students do want to know we are basically interested in them as people----we spend a fair amount of time interacting.  Why would that be irksome or unsettling?

I don't see why basic civility and concern is bullshitting.  I barely know some of my neighbors, but I do wish them well.  Why not my students?

[mahagonny]

This whole notion of "caring" for students strikes me suddenly as rather strange.  Why is it even a topic?

The student evaluations fo course and faculty include such things as 'agree or disagree: the professor cares about my progress.  The professor is enthusiastic.'

[marshwiggle]

I don't see why basic civility and concern is bullshitting.  I barely know some of my neighbors, but I do wish them well.  Why not my students?

I think the issue is more that the range of what students expect is getting wider.

In particular:

When higher education was education for the few, it was easier for faculty to have a personal relationship with students.

As we moved to large classes, and now move towards online education and even computer-guided teaching, the personal element is reduced. And we are also moving to having a large proportion of the population in higher ed, often without much enthusiasm about being there.

Seems like there's a growing gap between what students feel they need and what faculty can provide.

We're in a culture that increasingly evaluates people, not on what they provide, but on how the people they do things with/for perceive what they received. The idea (as in the legal system) of "what a reasonable person would expect" has been replaced by the idea that "reasonable" is a completely personal and subjective standard.

[adel9216]

Even if I don't know all of my students' name by heart because of how much of a large group they are in my classroom, I truly care about them and they feel it (they tell me so). I feel like it increases their comfort level to ask questions about class content to feel that they are an environment where they feel safe to make mistakes and learn.

I still feel like I am able to be impartial and have "authority" and boundaries as an instructor. I truly enjoy teaching and it just shows.

[adel9216]

This whole notion of "caring" for students strikes me suddenly as rather strange.  Why is it even a topic?

Of course students want us to care about them.  College is very stressful. They want to know that we have empathy.  They don't want us intruding into their private lives or taking on some sort of parental role, at least most students who are psychologically sound don't, but students do want to know we are basically interested in them as people----we spend a fair amount of time interacting.  Why would that be irksome or unsettling?

I don't see why basic civility and concern is bullshitting.  I barely know some of my neighbors, but I do wish them well.  Why not my students?

This.

[Caracal]

I don't see why basic civility and concern is bullshitting.  I barely know some of my neighbors, but I do wish them well.  Why not my students?

Exactly. And its important to have that sort of basic level of friendliness with your neighbors, even if its just a nod and an occasional exchange of pleasantries. There are times when you really need your neighbors help for emergencies, both large and small, and they might need yours.

Same thing basically applies to students. They may need your help, but you might also need theirs, or more often their forbearance. Students are going to be a lot more tolerant of my minor screw ups with canvas or being late on grading if they think of me as a pleasant, nice human.

[downer]

My sense is that some recent comments miss the point. Of course I act in a basically civil way to my students, sympthathizing with their plights, wishing them well, making a few jokes, and so on. I give them a few fairly neutral facts about me, including some "fun" facts.

None of my neighbors want me to really care about them though. I am happy to offer help to neighbors who need it, especially old or vulnerable ones. We get on OK. We are civil to each other. That's enough.

As a student, it didn't occur to me to want my teachers to care about me. That wasn't an expectation.

But more frequently I see comments from students about professors who "really care about the students."

So I've been wondering if that is something I want to live up to. Part of me wants to tell them: you are confused, I am not your parent, and this is not elementary school. Some posters here have given recommendations about how to make students feel cared for. Maybe that's a good ploy, but still if I engaged in that, it would feel a bit like bullshitting.

I have known professors who genuinely do really care about all their students. They gush about them and show pictures of them and their achievements. There's something nice about that. But still, I'm not sure about it being an exectation of teaching in higher ed.

[mahagonny]

There are also issues of impartiality. I prefer to see my role as relatively impersonal.

This is how I felt when was younger. In those days I was more aware of the need to have some amount of authority figure status. Now that there's a big difference between my age and the students I don't feel that pressure. They call me professor automatically instead of by first name. I don't worry about seeming to be their friend. Not their buddy, but their friend. Maybe I should. I'm friendlier and it works out OK.
Tenured faculty can fault you for being too nice to the students, or not nice enough. These criticisms can be valid or they can betray jealousy. A lot of times they'll leave you alone.
I'll admit I am surprised if you can fail half your class without repercussions from the department. The chair ignoring the strain on the department of so many fails is one thing. Ignoring student complaints would be harder. And I'm not saying I think there are complaints. But no matter how much support you may think you're getting, in the back of the chair's mind would be the fact that replacing you without having to name a reason (even one not subject to challenge) is always an option. Of course if you have a union it might be a little different than that. But you haven't mentioned union as I recall.
You're not worried about being popular, but you're worried about the fact that you don't worry about it. You are one among legions of adjunct faculty who feel their way through the situation in the prison of no documented, consequence related feedback for the department, no path to promotion, no path to even a full year's commitment. It is a longstanding structural defect that most of higher education has basically accepted as neglectable. I think I would be worried about that many F's, but you know your school and I don't. Your sense of personal integrity shows in your posts, but good qualities are not alway noticed or rewarded.

[downer]

It's true I'm not worried about being popular. I do regularly get emails at the end of the semester from students thanking me for the course, which is nice (though it is before final grades are submitted, so who knows!). I figure that you can't please everyone, so I don't try to. I like to have a reputation for making students work hard, and I encourage students to look over the course requirements before the class begins, so they can drop it if it does not suit their current capacity to do the work.

[RatGuy]

If you just mean the language of the student evaluations, a quick review of some of the old eval threads will see this issue crop up. Students notoriously expect their female instructors to be nurturing and sympathetic, and their male instructors to be demanding and rigid. It's part of that bias baked right into that evaluation process. So what seems like "really caring" for a male professor and baseline "she's ok I guess" for a female professor is the same "human decency" mentioned above. And the flip side is true too: a man who has a stringent late policy is less likely to be called out as "uncaring" on evaluations as a woman.

That said, it's also partly a function of their limited capacity to evaluate instructors -- this too has been commented on in other threads. And if other eval questions refer to "caring instructors" you can see how students would repeat that language. But they've got little vocabulary or valid criteria for evaluating what happens in the classroom, so they rely on language of emotional reactions. Even in that limited space, "caring" is one of the few terms they do know.

I believe that "students expect me to care" varies between campus cultures , but its also nothing new. As an undergrad one of my cohort's favorite complaint was "they act like we don't have any other classes! They don't care if we pass or not!" Same today.

[mamselle]

They also have little experience with evaluating anyone, and their parents (from whom they might have learned some of these biases) may not, either.

If our country were better at realizing how to tell when someone is capable, has reasonable leadership abilities, and can teach, or manage the books, or hire competent people, or whatever, we wouldn't end up with some of the presidents we've had, either.

Instead it's gotten into such dimensions as "likeability," or "personality" or such-like, which have little to do with leadership capacity, or teaching ability, or anything.

Be glad they don't want you to "Make <your school> Great Again" or something.

M.

[mahagonny]

Be glad they don't want you to "Make <your school> Great Again" or something.

M.

It's much worse than that presently. They want to make our school 'antiracist.'

[mahagonny]

If you just mean the language of the student evaluations, a quick review of some of the old eval threads will see this issue crop up. Students notoriously expect their female instructors to be nurturing and sympathetic, and their male instructors to be demanding and rigid. It's part of that bias baked right into that evaluation process. So what seems like "really caring" for a male professor and baseline "she's ok I guess" for a female professor is the same "human decency" mentioned above. And the flip side is true too: a man who has a stringent late policy is less likely to be called out as "uncaring" on evaluations as a woman.

Simpler explanation: since most adjunct professors are women and most tenured professors are men, adjunct professors have (and also feel)  zero job security and tenured profs have (and also feel)  absolute job security, higher education institutions are training students to think they can push women around more.

[Caracal]

It's true I'm not worried about being popular. I do regularly get emails at the end of the semester from students thanking me for the course, which is nice (though it is before final grades are submitted, so who knows!). I figure that you can't please everyone, so I don't try to. I like to have a reputation for making students work hard, and I encourage students to look over the course requirements before the class begins, so they can drop it if it does not suit their current capacity to do the work.

It sounds like you have found a teaching persona that works for you and you don't need to worry about it. Not everybody needs to be warm and fuzzy. The important thing is that you treat students with courtesy and respect and it sounds like that comes across to the students.

A lot of the advice here applies when people are coming across to students in ways they don't intend. When I first started teaching, I got comments that I was dismissive of student concerns or seemed unapproachable. It was really just that I was nervous, but I had to find ways to make sure students didn't get the wrong impression of me.

[mamselle]

Be glad they don't want you to "Make <your school> Great Again" or something.

M.

It's much worse than that presently. They want to make our school 'antiracist.'

That should go without saying. If you don't, it will be, or remain, or become racist.

And I doubt you actually want that.

M.