Second Chances

This whole term, I have been gripped with the same angst as the person in here suffers.

There was a time, long long ago when I considered being a teacher. I loved the notion of being able to impart some form of “knowledge”, and of presenting myself as an empathetic counselor, who would rise above and beyond repeating words from a textbook and be a “reformer”, a “mentor” of some kind. The whole concept of understanding the psychology of students and guiding them before they take a wrong turn seemed to appeal to me. I always start with lofty ideas and idealistic dreams.

I reformed this ambition over the years - scratching off ideas, introducing revisions, reinventing career paths, putting down “inter-disciplines”, diverging into roads-less-traveled, and well, continuing to pave the roads that somehow lead me to the vicinity of what I initially planned on accomplishing. While I try to frustratedly explain this to confused people, who ask me, “So, what exactly are you doing? And what does it mean”, I have to admit, there are days when I do feel grateful that my destiny swung off course and saved me from becoming a teacher.

In all these years of graduate student life, I’ve had the “privilege” of being a Teaching Assistant and Full Time Instructor, for about 6 courses. Barring a couple of instances when I actually felt a surge of satisfaction at the end of the semester and swelled with the feeling that I really did make a ripple of a difference in somebody’s life, I’ve been left utterly exasperated and disappointed. I try to make light of it by reminding myself of the gang of buffoons and baboons that I was part of in my undergraduate days. But in a way, those callous and unprofessional professors seemed to deserve the hooligans. All those bright minds that never even tried to glance at assignments and projects and blatantly copied from the nerdy first-benchers, are now in respectable positions, doing great for themselves. And I don’t suspect that they have dilapidated moral foundations either. They seemed to know when and where to draw the line.

But somebody has to come along and push me to the edge. As a graduate student, I don’t demand “respect” in the classes I help teach. My enthusiasm corroded after a few courses. Now I do my duty and leave the rest to the students, without fretting or trying too hard to inspire. I have other pressing things to focus on than go out of my way and try to inspire kids who would just sneer at my earnest attempts, or so I tell myself. I choose to ignore people who yawn, sleep, update their Facebook profile, track football scores, give wise-ass retorts, or just stare at the wall disinterestedly. It’s their prerogative. In labs, I spell out the formula and will even help them plug it all into Excel, if they choose to ask me. I hover around computers, relentlessly spilling out “hints”. I mark in big bold red markers the concept that they have to apply for the assignment staring right in front of them. And yet, it appalls me, that some would still hand in a shoddy report. Fine. So, I grade by searching for a few words that convey the concept, give partial credits for even “thinking partially”, organize extra study sessions, and what do some people still resort to? Copying, cheating and proxy signing. And to put the bitter cherry on the icing, it happens to be an Indian who hopes to get away with all of the above.

I hate stereotyping, but this is quite typical of an Indian teenager who finishes his high-school in India and walks into a class here, thinking, “Chalta hai, like this girl is even going to notice all this.” He has better things to do, like skip lab, have someone proxy sign for him, skip classes, giggle at facebook profiles, complain about how “difficult” and “irrelevant” this course is, demand more points for an utterly wrong answer, quiz about class averages, and suggest that we curve the grades. He has the nerve to turn in one of the most easiest, middle-school-level assignments, by copy-pasting his friend’s graph that quite clearly doesn’t correspond to his results. Is a TA that dumb to not notice that the numbers don’t correspond on a bar graph? Sure enough, I dig out a suspected accomplice’s paper,  another Indian, and lo! there’s his graph.  Academic dishonesty in the US is taken very very seriously - the punishments are so severe and will cast a black-mark on the transcript and is sure to haunt for the rest of one’s life.

But I hate to be the person to bring him down. As my rage boiled over, I couldn’t ignore the thought of dozens of guys I know who engaged in such acts in their under-grad days. And I still hold them in good regards. This little graph seemed harmless in a bigger perspective, especially given the fact that he had completed the other parts, and just decided to be lazy to merely plug his results into Excel. He couldn’t spare those 5 minutes and lifted his friend’s graph. However, he had met the Lab’s objectives; the graph itself was just a superfluous extension. Proxy-signing, I brushed off and marked him absent. In the grand scheme of his grades, these two things would count less than 2% of his grade. And he carelessly, idiotically decided to take the risk when the benefits were so insignificant.

I rationalized and rationalized, and eventually decided to take off points that he did not deserve and confronted him with these issues over an email. I decided not to take this up with my professor, but warned him, and “berated” him for assuming that such things go unnoticed.

At home, I relate this to the husband and he fumes at my “innocence” and “benevolence”. No one cares that you give them a second-chance, he rails. People like him don’t learn through forgiveness, he says. He then issues this warning - the more you give in, the more you forgive, the more you will be taken for a ride and treated as a doormat by such people. In effect, he lectures that I’m not being a smart, intelligent woman in a cut-throat world.

We both come from our own episodes of hurt. He tries to shake me out of the compulsion to endlessly give people multiple chances, rationalizing their flaws and forgiving their mistakes with the hope that they will one day change. I know his rant towards me goes deeper than just this episode. But I struggle to change. 

This morning, the student apologizes and asks if he can still get partial credit if he redid the work. Before I was swayed to say yes, I typed out no. No matter how long a rope you give such people, they always push the envelope and ask for more. I would love to listen to what his moral conscience, if any, is saying. However, I try to remember this book, and tell myself what a small issue this is, and how much more effectively I could have handled it to help change his ways. I guess it's indeed better that I am not a teacher.

Reflections: My Posse Don't Do Homework

LouAnne Johnson is a former Marine Corps Officer and a journalist in the US Navy who restarted her career as an English teacher, aspiring to teach at a University. In the course of her certifications, she took up a part-time job teaching high school students English in a California public school. She is assigned to a class that held the terrifying reputation of having harassed and driven away multiple teachers in the past, the most recent of whom had burst into tears and fled out of class. With trepidations on one hand, and enthusiasm in the other she walked into a class full of stubborn, closed, boisterous, obnoxious, and defiant teens who try as they might couldn't dampen her spirits. Instead, they inspired in her the unwavering grit to make them learn and reform them for the better. In this book, Miss. Johnson recounts her real-life encounters with "problem" teens, sharing her strategies, challenges, frustrations and extremely inspiring and moving experiences.

In the Hindu tradition, a teacher (Guru), is highly revered and is regarded to be a life-altering influence in the pupil's life. Respect for the teacher was implicit, and their command and authority were unquestioned. With such cooperation, discipline and obedience in place, the Guru could concentrate on imparting lessons and molding the pupils. But in recent times, respect is no longer implicit for anybody. Without the stringent enforcement of law, even basic respect for fellow human beings cannot be assured. Knowledge is no longer as isolated and concentrated in the heads of a specialized few. Besides, education is now a service. One pays, the other delivers. With little respect and discipline, unfortunately, a teacher's foremost task is to establish trust and respect, before delving into any serious teaching. With unruly kids who don't hesitate to insult and harass, and who don't seem to care about their grades or future, the task gets exponentially harder. We have all witnessed many such scenes with fellow classmates. We have seen such students being verbally abused, "punished", failed, and tormented, all in a vain attempt to discipline and reform. Yet, every year the same events unfold until everyone reaches a dead end, gets tired of flogging and being flogged at and there is unanimous resignation. Indifference sets in. The teacher no longer cares if anyone learns, and the belligerent ones no longer have to try to care.

In all these years of countless classes and numerous teachers, I can remember only a few... the rest no longer have a face, or a name, until memory is sufficiently squeezed. These few stand apart from the faceless crowd, not necessarily due to their exceptional teaching abilities, but because they truly cared, supported and helped. Miss. Johnson is one such a teacher. Rather than blame, criticize and get disheartened, she always took the initiative to first understand the student, their personality, and the life they led. As in most public schools, the "less-ambitious" students were cooped into a different set of classes. Most of these students hailed from the low-income minority communities. When forced to voice out their lives, we see how riddled their lives are with emotional abuse and poverty. If an adolescent grows up in an atmosphere that demeans their self-respect and motivation, corrodes their perception of the world, and demoralizes their spirit, why would they care about a homework in class? The bigger problem is getting one meal a day and escaping a beating from their step parent. These students put up vile defenses to guard off their inner insecurities and vulnerabilities. Their defenses cannot be broken down through meaningless punishments. Teachers like Miss. Johnson turn their world over by first offering them emotional support. It's miraculous how people turn over a new leaf, if given the right encouragement, acceptance and trust.

The stories are full of hopeful, sagacious and inspirational techniques. The most crucial trait that sets teachers like Miss. Johnson apart, are their abilities to adapt and innovate. If one technique of reinforcement doesn't work, they try another, and another, until they get through to the students. They never give up, nor do they keep butting against a dead end. They have the right knowledge of psychology to apply them at the right instances. In the journey, they erase the line between them and the students, get accepted as one among them, while still commanding respect and admiration. They realize that forging such a bond of trust and acceptance is a culmination of plenty of tiny steps, and they patiently work on their steps like dribbles of water trying to erode a stone. Tagore says, "Not hammer-strokes, but dance of the water, sings the pebbles into perfection."

But not every story is a success. She relates her experiences of students with whom she could never reach through. The bitter truth dawns - we can't help somebody who does not want to be helped. No matter how far we reach out into the waters, we can't pull someone out unless they try to hold onto our hand. Parents and guardians also play a significant role. Without any cooperation from them, some students continue to deteriorate. Despite such emotionally draining experiences, Miss. Johnson has still not given up. She continues to help hundreds of kids make a decent life. I truly envy such a satisfying profession, wherein one can retire to bed with the contentment of having touched someone in a significantly meaningful way.
In Miss. Johnson's words, "For every student who slips through the cracks, a dozen or two dozen step over the cracks and walk out of high school with a diploma in one hand and a dream in the other. It's these kids - the ones you don't read about in the newspapers because good news doesn't sell - who keep me coming back every year to my lopsided wooden desk, my crumbling bulletin boards, my outdated textbooks, and my own handful of dreams."
My lofty (and often scoffed at) ambition is to be able to do something as constructive with my life and career. Stories such as these galvanize and encourage it further.

Through the book, she also highlights the discrimination, unnecessary politics, power play and stagnant policies present in schools. Constrained by rules, policies and skeptic higher authorities, she has to fight many battles for her students. Each battle reiterates her commitment towards her students. As a former journalist and an English teacher, Miss. Johnson's writing is impeccable. Her words are touched with humor and insight. Her frustrations are palpable. Her genuine care and persistent dedication to help students advance in their courses, and in their lives, make us reminisce on our favorite teachers who made a difference to our lives.