How An Educator Views Their Students

The role of an educator may not necessarily be the most cushy out there.

There are that many different types of students and personalities. Some are great, some are the type that you'd want to get out of your classroom as quickly as possible because they just get on your nerves. Some are good at communicating but just can't seem to grasp the course material no matter how hard you try to deconstruct concepts for them.

However, dealing with students now, I believe, is vastly different from how my educators would have dealt with me as a student while I was growing up.

Back then, social media wasn't as big as it is today. The role of the educator was to deliver the lesson, do the administrative work, and then knock off for the day. While social media does promote a higher level of connectedness in the virtual sphere, it does also open the door to an unwanted level of stalking from curious students. I remember being in awe of my lecturers' list of publications and their university degree credentials, because that was all that I could find online about them. One of my university advisors, whom I had a closer relationship with, actually told me stories about how his entire doctoral thesis was handwritten. It did blow my mind for a bit, but I eventually did go on to complete my own doctoral thesis too.

Generally though, I'm not the kind of person who airs my dirty laundry in public. My private life is well shielded from the public persona that I do put up on social media. After all, if social media is meant to enhance the so-called "glam factor" of one's life by promoting a vicarious consumption of such media, then I might as well indulge in having that kind of persona too.

Having a shell of a public persona is much better than putting up one's real self on social media - if the shell gets attacked/trolled, it can be disposed of without much offense being taken. However, if the real you gets attacked/trolled online - it's harder to disassociate yourself from your social media profile. And that's how cyberbullying can become such a big thing today. When people are unable to distinguish between what is private and should not at all appear on social media versus what can be put up online for vicarious consumption. Even social media influencers these days play around with public personas that are meant for that specific account, and do not post anything sensitive up there.

But I digress.

Students these days still do possess some characteristics that I used to possess as a student. For example, I used to play computer games on a desktop computer. They play their games on laptops or on their phones these days. I have no idea what they're playing, but I try to take an interest in what they're playing and why they're playing. They end up using wildly new terminologies and vocabularies that are slang words from modern Youtube or television series, some of which I can understand and some of which I can't. Again, I do have to end up asking what on earth something means, and why they used it in that context. For example, the word "sike". That was commonly used in my classes, and it was strange to hear it for the first time.

But at the end of the day, I view students who come into my classes as people who are learning something. Even if it is something fundamental that I've done to death while preparing my doctoral thesis; even if it is something that goes way above my heads. The challenge for me is to first build up a working, functional relationship with them. Communication is key here.

That's when the more inquisitive ones will start to whip out their Telegram and Instagram apps to do their independent research about me, even though I am teaching them about grams and kilograms. It becomes more like a game of marketing - they want to see who I am outside the classroom, and not just as someone who is presenting lecture slides or writing down equations on the whiteboard. Some of them do end up saying "Whoa you have Instagram too! So cool!" I never did think of my social media platform as a status symbol, and I do have way less followers than some of them, but... whatever rocks their boat, I guess?

Students are human beings, after all. They all have their own basic human needs for physical food, mental food and relationships. It's interesting seeing them outside class and spending a few minutes to indulge them in small talk - all in the aim of being more human and relatable! Sometimes, that does make a big difference over how much attention they actually do pay when they're in my class. I tend not to take note of how academically inclined or disinclined a class is when I meet them for the first time - but a few weeks of interactions are enough to tell me who is hardworking and who isn't. Who is working smart and who is merely pretending.

It's not a given, though. I can be on friendly terms with some students but they somehow (for the life of me) cannot understand the concepts that I am trying to explain to them in class. Ideally, I'd wish that they all were able to score A grades in whatever I was teaching them. Realistically though, there's always the bell curve for grading and performance related matters.

Unfortunately, though, my time with them won't be forever. They'll graduate, and they'll go out to work. I only hope that they'll be productive to society wherever they are at in life, and not falling into the wrong company of people.

And life goes on. I still have subsequent batches of students to take.

At least, I still have Telegram and Instagram to keep in touch with some of them.

EVEN IF THEY GET ON MY NERVES ALL THE TIME.

So even as they graduate, sans their graduation ceremony this year (curse you, COVID-19!), I can only wish them well and hope that we'll be able to meet up again one day when the COVID-19 lockdowns have blown over once and for all.

Farewell, ladies and gentlemen. Do well in whatever you endeavour to do, and may we meet again some day. If not... INSTAGRAM AND TELEGRAM, NOT GRAM AND KILOGRAM PLEASE.