I'm baffled at my colleagues who play the parental roles to their students.I'm across the hall from one right now, a super nice 50ish woman who calls her students "Sweetie Baby" and "Honey." It's not just a special few, either; nearly everyone gets that.
Here's an actual sentence I heard a minute ago.
"Oh, Sweetie Baby, I know how a cold can be. You really can't be too careful. You just put the assignment aside until you can get a good sleep and a cup of soup. I really wish I had some of my soup left over. It was yummy."
And you can't believe how good her student evals are!
I have students tell me they "love" Professor Honey Baby. Why? Am I doing it wrong? Am I supposed to be seeking love from them?
Fucking Sweetie Babies and Honey Babies.
How about we just teach some college courses around here?
Which of the Carolinas do you teach in?
ReplyDeleteNah, I live in Ohio, and teach just across the border where Dr. Crazy / Katie teaches. Trivia.
ReplyDeleteI've heard people talk this way, but I never met anyone who does so whose male ancestors saw their shadows at Shiloh.
ReplyDeleteThe key question here, Hiram, is not whether or not you are supposed to be seeking love from them, but why anyone would want that kind of "love" from students to begin with.
ReplyDeleteInsecure narcissists, most likely. What a teacher needs to instill is respect. My guess is the students "love" Dr. Honey Baby but they don't respect her, because no one respects someone that they can so easily fool.
Cold comfort, probably, if you wish to be well-loved. I've moved beyond caring whether or not any of them like me. It's simply not relevant to me anymore. They work, or they fail. Love has nothing to do with it.
And in the end many of them that respect me end up liking me as well. Which is the only kind of affection that means anything anyway.
Hiram, this is apropos of nothing in your post, but every time I see your name I think of my alma mater, and it gives me a warm tingly feeling.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever been kissed in Bonney Castle?
ReplyDeleteI used to work at a college-prep school that was very academically rigorous, but had a wide-ish range of student abilities. This place had a tradition wherein each year the senior class would dedicate the yearbook to a faculty of its choice, decided by popular vote. In my time there, the yearbook was always dedicated not to the "sweetie baby" easy teachers who wanted desperately to be liked, but to the handful of truly rigorous, challenging, and talented teachers. I always liked that about the kids; they'd play along with the superficial narcissists, but they knew who their great teachers were, and they never failed to honor and respect them.
ReplyDeleteI went to a progressive-hippie school, and as early as 6th grade wanted nothing to do with the teachers who wanted to seem cool or maternal. It creeped me out.
ReplyDeleteEesh. Nothing creepier than a grown woman (it usually is a woman) using the word "yummy."
ReplyDelete"Am I doing it wrong? ... How about we just teach some college courses around here?"
ReplyDeleteI think you identified the problem right there.
Hiram, are you sure you're in southern OH, because I could swear you and I overheard the *same* conversation today (and, I should add, had the same reaction to it). Guess there's one in every department.
ReplyDeleteI taught at a tech school for several years and the concept of a professional arm's-length relationship with my students got me into a lot of trouble. Apparently addressing my students as "Mr.", "Ms.", "Sir", or "Madame", whichever was applicable, and expecting to be addressed as "Mr." or "Sir" and, later, "Dr." was seen as--ahem--"intimidating". Supposedly, it scared the students off so that they wouldn't ask me questions and, thereby, wouldn't learn. (These, by the way, were often students who knew what they needed to be taught and how it should be taught and figured they could to a better job of it than I did. But I digress....)
ReplyDeleteBy comparison, one of my colleagues was every student's pal, called them by their first names and allowed them to do the same. However, he didn't push them very hard and gave out high grades like candy. His student evaluations were overwhelmingly favourable while they regarded me as the meanest critter in the universe.
Since when did being professional when dealing with one's students become a liability?
I think there is a need in some students -- too many students -- to be cared for the way they were during their very busy high school days. You know, early skating lessons, then school with all its activities, then theatre practice, soccer practice, violin lessons, dinner, tutoringin Mandarin, homework, bed...
ReplyDeleteThis prof is giving a warm, comforting flashback. While enabling terrible terrible snowflakery, of course.
Any instructor who does this should see a psychiatrist. This is aberrant behavior, possibly related to what motivates the crazy cat lady, or the childless couple who get a monkey and dress it up like a child. Didn't we give Katie lots of aggravation for this? Frankly, I think it was well deserved.
ReplyDelete@i_escaped_from_academe:
Since when did being professional when dealing with one's students become a liability? Right around the time Ron Reagan made being a dumbass fashionable.
@Monkey:
ReplyDeleteOne of my former colleagues treated his students like his own kids and was, as a result, quite warm and fuzzy with them. He was one who took particular umbrage at my attempts at being professional with my students.
Maybe he suffered from something like empty nest syndrome.
Hiram, I don't kiss and tell. Though I can tell you that I showed up mildly ripped to class during a seminar spring quarter my senior year (I had a blues radio show prior to the 4 hour night class my ex was also in).
ReplyDeleteDo we know each other? Hmmm...
Ugh--to quote Dorothy Parker, "weader fwowed up."
ReplyDeleteOh, this makes me want to puke! It's tough enough being a woman who teaches writing, a discipline where students are encouraged to share personal narratives and therefore think that I'm their somehow part of their personal support system. Idiots like your colleague, Hiram, should be held accountable for furthering the ridiculous notion that women professors should somehow be maternal figures.
ReplyDeleteI'm not their tea partying mother. I'm their mother tea partying professor.
@Great Lakes Greta: I just loooove your use of "tea party". Love it.
ReplyDeleteI had forgotten about "tea party". I tea partying approve of your use of tea party.
ReplyDeleteThe woman clearly has a lost career as a den mother for the Cub Scouts.
ReplyDeleteStella & Greta nailed it! Women like this tea party it up for the rest of us!
ReplyDeleteUnder no circumstances would I use a term of endearment on a student akin to what I would direct toward my own child or any other younger relative. Not appropriate for the circumstances. Not ever.
ReplyDeleteEven the students who I quite like as young scholars, and we get into a good professor-student groove--professional distance is maintained. And a good student knows better than to push the boundary too.
Your colleague is being foolish, and you nailed it when you said, "How about we just teach some college courses around here?"
Amen, especially to Stella and Greta. As a round, gray-haired, middle-aged woman, I'm sure my appearance sets up cookies-and-sympathy expectations in students that my temperament simply isn't equal to providing to 90 people at once (bottom line, I'm much more energized by interacting the ideas associated with the students' projects than the student themselves, though I have no objection to the latter). I'd blame it on being raised primarily by the emotional equivalent of wolves (a somewhat distracted widowed father), but from what I can remember of my late mother (a bit) and grandmothers (quite a bit more, since they played an active role in my upbringing), they were pretty no-nonsense too. Like them, I try to be reasonable, and kind, and fair, and have even been known to dispense advice (mostly of the setting-realistic-goals-and-priorities and remembering to eat, sleep, and exercise variety), but I can't imagine "sweetie-baby" or "yummy" passing my lips in conversation with anyone, let alone a student.
ReplyDelete