Tending to Students

When people ask what I do I tell them I teach. I’m a professor at a local liberal arts college - a small, historic school that is rooted in tradition, academic rigor, and commitment to excellence. I teach a range of students, from freshmen who have just stepped foot on campus, to guiding seniors through research projects. I go where I’m needed, I meet students where they are.

That’s why I don’t just teach. That’s why when I do teach, I often veer drastically far from the presented syllabus. I am generous with office hours and watch my email constantly. Because more often than not, these students are struggling. Because of professors who refuse to be sympathetic. Because of parents who won’t let go, or won’t be supportive. Because of drama in dorm rooms or on sports teams. Because these students - though adults by every legal definition - are young, and scared, and often putting on a brave face to hide their own fear and anxieties about what lies ahead for them.

Unlike many of my older colleagues, I don’t believe that my courses are going to be the most important that students will ever have in their collegiate career. I don’t believe that the information that they will learn in my classes is going to be so vital as to not be able to spend some time throughout the semester, throughout each class meeting, just checking in on each individual. And while I appreciate each person’s need to set individual boundaries regarding communication and availability, I would rather be available and present for my students in case of a crisis - to offer an ear, a hand, a reminder to breathe deeply, or to get some rest - than to have them feel that they are alone in a time of need.

My job is to educate, to support, to encourage, to lift up every student who comes into my classroom, in whatever way I can. Each individual arrives with their own challenges and strengths, their areas of blindness and self awareness. And I tend to them all in the best way that I can, while we talk about research techniques and organizing ideas in papers, proper citations and how to avoid plagiarism. LIke a hothouse full of unique and delicate plants, I spend semesters learning about new classrooms full of students and how I can best help them bloom. For every student who is eager and ready, there are more who have been so neglected - as individuals and students - who have only ever considered the possibility of just getting by that they could never even picture themselves as the bundle of potential greatness that they are.

There is no one person, system, or aspect of society to blame for the wild inequities that students face, for the anxieties that so many of my students are riddled with, for the self doubt that is so crippling as to prevent them from even trying. The students I encounter have already beat countless odds to make it to a private college setting. And now I do remediation to extend support, compassion, and coping strategies to these students who are in many ways personally and academically ill equipped for the tasks at hand. I tend the soil, I provide light and water, I fertilize, I whisper nurturing words. I work to undo years of toxic thinking, shaming, and systemic racism that has created students who believe that they could never be good enough. And while the work extends far beyond classroom hours, invades into my waking thoughts and carries with me throughout my day, I love what I do. It’s at times exhausting and frustrating. Yet for all the times that it feels truly Sisyphean, there are moments of great joy and satisfaction as a student achieves greatness based on their own merit, by dismissing the ideas that they have carried with them for years that they were less than capable of achieving great things.

I teach. I hold hands, I support, I express compassion, I share of myself, my time, my energy. I cry with students, I celebrate with them. I tend them as they grow, often trembling and scared, out of the confines that had been placed around them, to bloom into their true, astounding selves.