Beyond “Student,” Beyond “Teacher”: Rethinking Learning Roles
One of the first pieces of advice I received during teacher training last summer seemed simple: “Treat your students as more than students, treat them as people.”
On first glance, it’s a straightforward concept. Of course, you treat students as people — that’s what they are, after all. But putting the thought into practice is a complicated process, one that can open up new, untapped dimensions of traditional academic relationships. I’ve found that by embodying this principle both as a teacher and as a learner — two categories which I’ve found aren’t as dichotomous as they appear — my teaching and learning experiences have become far deeper, intentional and productive for all involved. At the core of “treat students as people” is a premise of collaboration in the purest sense: an empathetic, intellectual symbiosis between individuals engaging in a mutual pursuit.
Legitimizing Learners in All Contexts
The summer I first heard that advice, I plunged headfirst into teaching 7th graders with a summer program, Aim High, that aims to support young people in their education before entering high school. Dan (name changed) was a student in my Issues and Choices class, a course about challenges in developing one’s identity and a sense of well-being. I co-taught the class with an older teacher in her mid-twenties, who had previously graduated from the same Aim High program; she had taught with the program since graduating, and was pursuing her PhD at the time.
She and I were in the middle of a serious lesson on racial identities when Dan began disrupting the class, interrupting his fellow students with laughs and shouting over the two of us as we tried to get through the lesson. The two-month program was in its second week, and I had already designated Dan as the troublemaker in our morning period.
As a new teacher, I was prepared to take the “ignorance is bliss” approach to Dan’s interruptions, and continue on with the lesson. My co-teacher, however, had other plans and interrupted Dan in the middle of one of his outbursts.
At first, she asked him if everything was ok, and wanted to know why he kept interrupting his classmates. When he didn’t respond, we pulled Dan aside to our desk to express our concern. I remember that Dan was quiet for a bit after we asked about how he was doing; he was looking into his hands with his head down, when he responded: “My teachers always think I’m stupid, and they don’t listen to me. So I just don’t participate in class.”
His response was heartbreaking for a number of reasons, mostly because it suggested that Dan was not seen — or heard — as a person with relevant insights by his previous teachers. He was delegitimized not just as a learner in his classroom environment, but as a learner in a general sense of the word. He had been put down at the root of all of his other roles in and out of the classroom, that sense of self from which all other learning stems.
I let my co-teacher take the lead in this unprecedented case, and her response was nearly perfect. She told Dan that she loved what he had to say, and I echoed the sentiment. We both told him that of course he was smart, that we cared about what he had to say so far in the class despite his interruptions. We made it clear that it was not the content, but the delivery of what Dan said that was problematic. We meant it, too: when Dan did participate, he was always thoughtful. I coached his after school soccer team, and had seen him emerge as a confident leader and collaborator on the field. His confidence in the classroom, though, was not as steadfast. It showed in his interruptive nature, and my co-teacher and I seemed to have found its source.
After my co-teacher’s first comment and my subsequent reassurance, we saw a huge change in Dan. His interruptions became far less frequent; he participated more; he raised his hand, and started to listen to his classmates when they took turns speaking. Dan began to see us as more than his teachers, too — we became his friends, his mentors, and co-explorers in classes on race, gender, and class. Dan and his classmates gave me the space to participate in classroom activities on equal footing, which allowed me to learn as much about my identity as I hope my 7th grade class did over the summer. I remember fondly the profound — and difficult — class periods where I examined racial prejudice alongside my 7th grade co-learners, or when we all opened up to each other about personal challenges as we sat in a circle on the classroom floor.
My experience in that class was a night-to-day transformation in learning that I sincerely believe happened because my co-teacher, my students, and I grew to understand that our learning was not limited to our roles in a traditional teaching and learning relationship. It was an experience that required both the teacher and learner to step out of the superficial and often one-dimensional hierarchy of teacher/student; it required empathy, and trust.
Learning to Act
My relationship with Dan brings me to another experience in understanding this principle, one that has been formative in my summer and my upcoming senior year. This time, I was on the other end of the teacher/student relationship as an undergraduate amongst faculty and staff.
I’m lucky to be a part of a learning community at Georgetown in which I’ve felt legitimized as a learner and thinker. However, during the school year my interactions with professors and experienced staff members is limited to only a part of my undergraduate experience. Those faculty that I do have a close relationship with appear to me as mentors and teachers, rather than a one-dimensional view of the latter, yet I would say that this is the exception, not the rule, in undergraduate experiences. Over the summer, I’ve been able to work closely with faculty and staff who, in this context, I got to know outside of the traditional dichotomy of teacher and student that emerges in most classrooms. Instead of breaking down the boundaries myself, they were broken for me by the circumstances of my work and summer.
I am the only undergraduate in a group of experienced faculty and staff that is working to develop an online mentorship application for new college students. I don’t point this out because of pride, but because it made me acutely aware of an assumed position on the development team. In the first experience of working on the app, I abided by the rules of a role I understood: “The Student.” I expected instructions from the adults, and didn’t speak up with frequency because I was hyper-aware of my status in comparison to older, more experienced staff and faculty members; this status held me back, and was an entirely self-imposed limit.
But as the development continued, I found that my colleagues — as I came to know them in this context — couldn’t answer some questions that were unique to my experiences as an undergraduate. I found that I was just as needed on the team as others, and that my status as a student actually offered a perspective that my colleagues didn’t have. As I acknowledged my strengths in-and-out of my student role, I began to step into a new niche as a collaborator.
Just as Dan’s confidence in class skyrocketed when we co-developed a space for him to be heard, so too did my confidence expand as I experienced my voice as an equal part of the discussion. The experience of working in an environment of mutual feedback, trust with delivering results, and getting to know my co-workers outside of our project roles has allowed me to feel an immense sense of agency. I am currently submitting our app development as a research proposal to the Georgetown IRB; I developed an independent study out of it; I’m forming connections and taking steps on my own volition because my collaborators have helped me recognize my strengths, and therefore my points of agency, in moving this project forward.
When we commit to a traditional relationship of teacher/student, our horizons are limited. The words come with an entire set of behaviors, expectations, and codes that can severely diminish our abilities to learn fully from one another. If we are not wholly aware of these behaviors and expectations, we see only what is prescribed by those “knowledge labels” of academic relationships. But, when we see each learning interaction as a collaborative experience, we open up spaces for each other’s expression and knowledge outside of the confines of “A Staff Member,” “A Teacher,” “An Undergraduate,” and enrich the teaching-learning process. This does not require a complete rejection of our roles as “Student” and “Teacher,” but a reexamination of the dimensions of that role outside of the classroom experience.
Ultimately, the shift in thinking provides spaces for agency. When I recognize my personal expertise—which everybody has—I can act from my strengths and develop my weaknesses. When I recognize the strengths in others by seeing them not by one-dimensional teacher or student roles in the classroom, I can open up spaces to fill with intellectual and personal contributions. That should be the ultimate goal of a successful teaching and learning relationship: to show each other unexplored learning spaces that allow us to act in the world, both in and out of the classroom.
