Recently, the propriety of my relationships with various students has been called into question. This has resulted in some mandated time away from said students, and a revision to the rules for my interactions with students. I understand that I currently operate in a system where I do not have the discretion to draw lines in relationships as I see fit, and that concessions will need to be made going forward. But, my actions have been guided by reasoned thinking, and I would like to share here my thoughts on what the proper relationship between a teacher and a student might look like, at least in my conception of a proper education system.
So, you’re not going to believe this, but I think, fundamentally, that the ideal relationship is a voluntary one. That is, as long as both parties agree that certain interactions are appropriate and desired, then the interactions should be okay. Now, there are issues of age and maturity involved when discussing relationships between older people and kids, but many of these issues may be resolved through parental oversight and consent, or through the adult’s judgment of what is best for the child. Of course, when considering a working relationship, such as the one between a teacher and a student, the objective of the relationship must be remembered. The teacher has a duty and a responsibility to the student, and the student is interacting with the teacher for a specific purpose. There are some activities and behaviors and interactions that not only don’t contribute to the purpose of the relationship, but are actually harmful to it. However, I must stress that every individual student is different, and thus the education goals of the relationship may be accomplished in different ways with each student, thus calling for different types of relationships. So, back to first principles, I think that there should be flexibility for the teacher and student to determine what kind of relationship works best for them in pursuing the objectives of their working relationship. They should draw upon the experiences and wisdom and suggestions of others, while also recognizing the desirability of adapting such feedback to their particular situation.
I also think that education is much more dependant on relationships than is generally recognized. Genuine education, which is not driven by grades or standardized curriculum or compulsory attendance laws, happens through conversation and collaboration and interaction with others. If a teacher wants to have more influence over his students, he should work on developing stronger relationships with them. To get these relationships, the teacher should recognize their voluntary nature and not push himself on any of the students; he should just be open to the possibility of more than professionalism. Also, to earn the respect and trust of students (or anyone), the teacher must give them respect and trust. That is, elevate their status in the relationship from one who is forced to participate and obey to one who can choose whether or not to interact with the other and who participates in the decision-making of the relationship. My own students do not have grades; therefore, the only leverage I have to get them to do their work is my relationship with them. They write their journals and draw out their formulas and come to round table meetings because I ask them to. There’s no penalty to not doing so, but I treat them with radical amounts of respect (such as not imposing penalties for not doing what I ask), and as a result they respect me enough to actually do what I ask.
As one half of every relationship that I have with my students, I have lines which I am uncomfortable crossing with them. But, my relationships with students are indeed much less professional than one might consider appropriate. A few aspects of these relationships have been questioned: my interactions with students outside of school, the content of the conversations I have with the students, and my availability for the students. I will explain my thinking on each of these issues to show why I’ve allowed these relationships to develop as they have.
First, any interaction or activity that would be appropriate in school, I think is appropriate outside of school. For example, a conversation is appropriate in school, as is a lecture, and other instructional interactions. Therefore, they should be allowable outside of school. Similarly, fun activities such as going for walks, playing games, watching video clips of certain things, and sharing meals would all arguably be considered appropriate between teachers and students who are in a school building. Therefore, I think that they should be considered appropriate outside of school. [Activities and interactions that are inappropriate in school, such as sexual relations, the use of illegal substances, the defacement of property, and even bullying, would a fortiori be inappropriate outside of school.] Now, normally school is the one and only setting where these interactions take place, since that is where teachers and students gather each day. So it would look unusual for these interactions to take place outside of school. However, my situation is rather unusual in that I am not in the school every day, and in that I don’t clock out at the end of the school day, as I never really clocked in. I’m low-key just always working. And, let’s be real, so are my students. They do a lot of schoolwork outside of school. Indeed, education does not just occur in school. So I never saw the sense (or feasibility) in limiting my interactions with students to just the school. Apparently, the fact that these interactions occurred outside of school itself makes the interactions different and thus inappropriate, but I would argue that a child’s education is really directed by a child’s parents; if they approve of continued instruction in interactions outside of a normal school day, and both teacher and student agree to it, then the interaction should be allowable.
Second, I am not a traditional teacher. My job is not to teach certain material in a specific subject matter; my job is to teach students how to think. As I’ve written in a previous post, the best way to learn is through conversation. This is the method that I tend to employ. And because students think and talk about all subject matters, I believed that it didn’t matter what the topic of conversation was for me to do my job and help the student question, argue, and think critically. So I wasn’t going to limit the content of our conversations to issues directly related to their research topics. Of course, there’s a difference, apparently, between discussions that have some academic value, such as Supreme Court decisions and the economics of Bitcoin, and other topics, such as certain weekend activities of certain students. While I get that society sees a difference between these things, I struggle myself to understand why it’s relevant to my goal of encouraging the development of critical faculties. Any and every situation demands thinking skills. Furthermore, because these inappropriate topics are what kids like to talk about, working with these topics allows me to influence the students in a way that they enjoy more and that might be subtly more effective in that it teaches them the ubiquity of the need for these skills. Two other points: part of my tolerance of inappropriate topics of conversation is grounded in my radical respect for the students. I want to treat them like people, with lives and personalities and agency. I don’t want to try to force them into a box where they can’t be themselves around me. If this is what they want to talk about, I’ll listen to them, not shut them up. Additionally, while the fact that I, by virtue of these inappropriate conversations, have knowledge of certain things that I agree are inappropriate for me to know, I think that it is ultimately better for students to have an adult in their lives that they trust and talk about these topics with, so that they’re not just relying on people as inexperienced as themselves, and so that the adult can watch out for any truly dangerous activities, activities which he would have never heard about if students always felt they had to shut up around him.
Finally, my availability is a matter of my respect for students. I work for them (they should be in charge of their education, not me). And, again, I’m not in the school every day, and my work day doesn’t end at dismissal time. If I’m at my desk at 9 o’clock at night doing work, and a student has a question, why shouldn’t I answer it? If I’m just spending the day reading in the library, and a student wants to meet at the coffee shop across the street, then why shouldn’t I go meet him? I live to serve, and to serve to the best of my abilities. If a student wants to learn something, I feel kind of obligated to go help him with that. Of course, if I’m busy, that’s a different issue. But if I’m available, I should be available to my students. There’s also the issue of texting, my primary method of communication with my students. Again, this is a respect thing. I refuse to try to fit my students into a box and pretend that the rest of them doesn’t exist. Kids text. That’s how they communicate. It’s convenient and casual. If that’s how they want to communicate, then I should accommodate them. It’s not a problem for me. If it helps them learn and increases my influence over their thinking processes, then I’ll take advantage of it. It would, indeed, be strange if I were waiting outside students’ houses or always had my ringer up, waiting to be needed. But to just be more available than other teachers...I see that as a good thing.
Of course, I have always stuck to the voluntaryness principle in my interactions with students. My relationship with students can be as informal and close as they wish, subject to my own lines (partially described above), which are drawn for the purpose of ensuring that the relationship fulfills its educational purpose. But only to the extent that they wish. If a student wishes to keep things professional, or even wishes to push me further away than would be normally expected, I have always been extremely tolerant of such behavior and respect the student’s wishes.
Anyway, there are clearly some incongruities between what I think is appropriate and what is considered appropriate by others. I do, in fact, understand many of the concerns expressed, but feel that theses concerns miss the unique nature of every relationship. I think that relationships are very important, critical, even, to a successful education, and I have worked hard on cultivating my relationships with my students so that I would be able to do my work as effectively as possible, and because I respect my students more than the average teacher (seeing them more as equals). The result has been deemed unprofessional. But the line between professional and unprofessional, appropriate and inappropriate, is vague and arbitrarily-drawn. The line between voluntary and involuntary is much clearer and meaningful. Seeing students as human beings, rather than as students, and treating them as such, necessarily results in a different type of relationship than the kind usually seen in school. This is a sign of the dehumanizing nature of modern public schooling, and deviations from it should be celebrated, in my opinion. There must be lines, of course, purposeful lines drawn through reasoned argument. But for genuine educational relationships, where the teacher is not just delivering facts but training minds, much stronger relationships are called for, with more respect and less formalism. One of the first steps to fixing our educational system is to reduce the lines between teachers and students. The system currently sets them up as adversaries; imagine the results we would get if they saw each other as friends.
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