In my office this week I have met with students sincerely attempting to improve their writing and others desperate to offer excuses about why their writing stinks, when sometimes it really doesn't. I have felt the need to inform students that due dates matter, that they are still responsible for the material even if they neglected to complete the reading assignments, and that "that" is not a verb--and I've had the pleasure of telling a very nervous student that he's a good writer regardless of what anyone may have told him in high school.
This week I have laid hands on students more than usual: a heartfelt hug to a student who is withdrawing for medical reasons, and a tug on a set of headphones that were preventing a student from being fully present in class. That incident could have gone very badly in a variety of ways, but in the moment I couldn't think of another way to get the student to take the quiz I was trying to hand him.
With one student I've expressed sympathy for a death in the family, and then with the next I've had to put on my Mean English Professor gaze and deliver a stern sermon on the importance of taking responsibility for one's actions. It's hard to shift from one persona to another in a short span of time--maybe I need a set of masks to make the switch more seamless. The problem is that I don't always know which Me the students need when they come into my office, and switching masks in the middle of a session might be awkward.
The hardest part of my week was meeting with a student facing a really serious and life-changing problem just a few minutes before class, an encounter that left me feeling bereft, but then I had to go and face a whole room full of students who needed a whole different Me of the non-bereft variety. Where can I find a Competent Teacher mask?
But now office hours are over. Time to take off the mask, put my feet on the desk, and turn my attention to the next urgent task. (Close the door on the way out, would you?)
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