Directional Discomfort
Important contextual note: This is a slightly edited copy of a speech given to students on January 5, 2016. It was originally archived as part of an instructional post here. I’m reposting it to embed it in a separate essay, not least of all to remind me not to be so angry.
So this isn’t directed at current students. Some of the ideas apply, yes, but not all of them. And I’ve long since stopped invoking Jonathan Edwards when I address students. All that fire and brimstone causes agita.
1. The Closed Fist
To talk about what your job actually is, we need to talk about how complacent and comfortable you’ve grown. I am forced to remind you of what you seem to have forgotten: I run an interstitial classroom. Failing to invest fully in that interstitial classroom is tantamount to falling asleep during the period. And you are falling asleep.
I know this, because you are constantly tested. The most obvious tests are the major assignments — the essay deadline, the post-writing requirement, the metacognitive response.
No less obvious is what I do every day. I ask you questions, watch for you to take the initiative, wait for you to react to something I’ve taught you through this interstitial classroom. When I observe how you spend your class period, it is a test. Every time I load the comment section of post, it is a test.
Many of you are failing. After all, this is the profile for a GAP 4:
These students do not meet the basic requirements of the course. They are almost always missing significant work. They usually have not demonstrated growth, and their output reflects inadequate skills and limited knowledge. They tend to be demonstrably unmotivated, incurious, and resistant to learning. There may be an explicit inability or unwillingness to invest in the learning process and classroom environment.
Emphasis mine. If you won’t or can’t do your job after days and weeks and months of instruction, then you certainly haven’t grown. It’s also hard to see anything but an unwillingness to invest.
2. The Open Hand
But that’s all very much the fire-and-brimstone, sinners-in-the-hands-of-an-angry-God approach. There’s another side to this, and it’s simple enough:
- If you read everything available interstitially from me; and
- if you talk to me one-on-one and face-to-face; then
- you will be just fine.
What does “just fine” mean? Well, I can’t promise that you’ll love the class. Almost every student who reads the interstitial stuff and advocates in person does love it, but it’s still a bit of an acquired taste.
What I can promise you is that you’ll understand the class. I can promise you that you’ll do well in it. I have never had a student who engages with me fully feel discouraged and frustrated. In fact, I know with 100% certainty that, after years of refining this course, it’s only a lack of communication and/or a lack of reading that leads to a negative experience.
If you are honest with yourself, then you know if you are investing in that interstitial instruction. You know if you’re reading. You know if you’ve worked to understand that kind of teaching or if you’ve merely glanced at it. And it’s obvious whether we’ve been talking in person or not.
You must learn to do both. It isn’t always easy to speak to me, I know; it is easy to read, however, at least comparatively. I have given you everything you need, and I will be here to work with you individually and in small groups when you’re ready.
3. Feng Shui
First, though: You really have grown too comfortable and complacent. You are too accustomed to arriving to class, retreating to your established space, and then doing what you’ve always done. For those of you who work hard and work with me, that’s been enough; for the other 80% of you, things must change. We need to shake up the physical space in this classroom.
From now on, group work must be group work, not individual work that happens to take place around other people. We’ll begin with the makerspace tables in our classroom, which should be reserved for actual collaboration. They will be monitored much more closely; if I can’t step in at any moment and see that you are collectively working on a shared goal, it isn’t collaboration.
4. Radial and Ramiform Work
We also need to reinvest in what it means to learn through radial and proxy feedback. If you want me to sit with your group and give you that sort of feedback, then you need to invite me into your space. Take the initiative and ask me to conference with you. I will still circulate, as always, to ask you what you need, but you are no longer allowed to say that you don’t have any questions and don’t need any feedback.
I really can’t stress that enough, so let me repeat it: This course is designed so that you always have questions and always need feedback. Otherwise, you aren’t doing the work. If I’m busy, you might need to rely on a peer to get proxy feedback, but that is also how the course is designed; you will never, however, be able to say “No, I don’t need any help right now.”
And if you doubt that, I will redirect you to the website and all the interstitial instruction and tell you, as the person who built the course from the ground up, that you are wrong. If necessary, I will help you see what’s possible, but it will take an open mind from you.
What you want is a situation where your only frustration is that I don’t have time to meet with you as often as you’d prefer. That would be a good problem to have. A bad problem to have would be reacting to this speech/post by thinking, “I don’t need help, and I am doing really well.”
I’d say that fewer than 20% of you are doing that well. The rest of you can do well, but it will take a lot of reading and a lot of conversation to get there.
