...Or substitute "professor" with "teacher"
Long gone are the days when professors could be moody, make scathing remarks about immature and pathetic their students are, or cast indifferent looks at the adoring (or at least cowering) masses in front of them in the lecture halls.
Now, we are for all intents and purposes, service providers, dishing up knowledge to our students ("consumers," as they are sometimes called in administrative scenarios). We are supposed to be cheerful, altruistic, and ever-understanding of their physical, mental, and emotional needs. Some students have cultivated serious habits of blaming all the problems in their academic lives on inadequate professors.
What they forget is that we're just as human as they are.
And it's hard being a role model (or a saint) every single day of one's life.
I've had students ask me if I ever leave the office (I want to answer, "No dear, I sleep in a coffin next to my desk"), why I don't answer emails at 3am (I may just be asleep -- at home, in a bed), why I expect them to be in class (why not?), and so on.
As much as I would like to be accessible to my students and to exercise compassion during the most challenging moments in their lives, I wish that some of them would remember that we have hearts and minds too. Until someone invents the Perfect Professor (a robot), teaching and learning are two sides of the same coin, and can only be productive with compromise and empathy.
Long gone are the days when professors could be moody, make scathing remarks about immature and pathetic their students are, or cast indifferent looks at the adoring (or at least cowering) masses in front of them in the lecture halls.
Now, we are for all intents and purposes, service providers, dishing up knowledge to our students ("consumers," as they are sometimes called in administrative scenarios). We are supposed to be cheerful, altruistic, and ever-understanding of their physical, mental, and emotional needs. Some students have cultivated serious habits of blaming all the problems in their academic lives on inadequate professors.
What they forget is that we're just as human as they are.
And it's hard being a role model (or a saint) every single day of one's life.
I've had students ask me if I ever leave the office (I want to answer, "No dear, I sleep in a coffin next to my desk"), why I don't answer emails at 3am (I may just be asleep -- at home, in a bed), why I expect them to be in class (why not?), and so on.
As much as I would like to be accessible to my students and to exercise compassion during the most challenging moments in their lives, I wish that some of them would remember that we have hearts and minds too. Until someone invents the Perfect Professor (a robot), teaching and learning are two sides of the same coin, and can only be productive with compromise and empathy.
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