Teach – Page 4 – The Renegade Coder

Complaining is something I do quite a lot. Typically, the complaints go against power structures like corporations and institutions, but I also dabble in a bit of downward complaining. Is that alright? Let's talk about it. Recent Discourse Lately, I've been seeing a lot of folks in education circles tell their peers that it is unacceptable to badmouth or complain about students. Oddly enough, I've had trouble digging up these discourses, but I at least have some tangential proof: https://twitter.com/dhasty01/status/1491744150319943680?s=20&t=HW--GEAMjuE06qcoN0sXcA Given that I've done my fair share complaining about students in the past on this very site, I thought I'd take a second to sit back and reflect on my actions. Is what I did okay? Is it ever justifiable? That's what I want to talk about today. Summarizing the Evidence I don't have a big enough audience to get cancelled over talking badly about students, so it's not like someone is trying to force me to reflect. Rather, I find the discourse itself somewhat annoying, so I figured I'd take some time to point out the few times I've complained about students and why I think it's at least somewhat reasonable. In my first semester of teaching, I had a student take advantage of my flexibility by never turning in any assignments according to our agreed upon timeline. Because we never got that timeline in writing, I was never able to hold them to it. Eventually, I grew frustrated and submitted a grade for them without the work that they were withholding. From that experience, I learned to always get agreements in writing, and I documented that story here. A couple semesters later, I had a student who repeatedly showed up late to exams. In general, I don't think this is a big deal. However, they put me in a tough position where they wouldn't allow me to collect their exam in front of other students. Had they not shown up, we could have scheduled a makeup exam. Instead, they showed up late and took advantage of my kindness and lack of experience by refusing to turn over the exam. Eventually, I ended up writing a similar piece about them and how I now know how to handle similar situations as they come up. Again, a semester or two later, I had a student who constantly played the victim. Every grade they received was an attack on the very core of their being, and I often took the brunt of their complaints. Despite how annoying this individual was, I never stopped giving them support. However, with every inch, they took a mile. Over the course of the semester, they bombarded me with nearly 20 requests, of which a good portion of them were requests for extensions and regrades. By the end of the semester, this student tried pitting me against my own graders by forwarding me their responses over grades. Of the three students, this one was the most frustrating to me, so I took to this site and wrote about it. As you can see, just about every time I've been compelled to rant about a student, it has been because they've tried to repeatedly take advantage of me in one way or another. Does that make me justified in complaining about them? I think so. Reflecting on My Experiences Having taken some time to reread my own narratives about my experiences, I feel totally justified in writing them. These were some truly manipulative and possibly malicious individuals, and I don't think it's fair not to be able to call them out on it. That said, I understand why it's generally not okay to complain about students. As educators, we hold power over our students in a variety of ways. For instance, we're gatekeepers to the fields that students want to be in. If students want to be successful, they have to more or less do what we tell them, which means we have control over their time. Given the corporatization of college, students also pay an enormous amount of money for an education. They're not paying to be belittled. They're paying to receive an education that they need to survive in the current economy. In other words, students can't exactly seek alternatives, which gives educators even more power over them. On top of that, I find myself in the unique situation of being a grad student and an educator, so I often get to see both sides. For example, I've been in meetings with faculty who have openly complained about grad students, and it was very annoying to me. As a grad student, I feel like I don't have a lot of control over my situation, and my grad program often expects too much of me. For faculty to then complain that we're not doing enough puts a bad taste in my mouth. This is mainly why I wait to complain until after the semester is over, so the students in question are less likely to know how I feel about them. With all that said, I believe most college students are adults with their own agency. They can make decisions within the constraints of various systems. As a result, if they choose to do something harmful, I don't think it's fair for us as educators to be forced to ignore it. As educators, we're humans too! We shouldn't have to be martyrs just because we hold power over our students. Similarly, the idea of having some dogmatic statement like "never complain about your students" is a little troublesome to me. As someone who considers themselves a leftist, I always find these sort of purity tests to be a bit frustrating. Even if it's generally a bad idea to complain about your students, are there not scenarios where it might be a good thing? At the very least, I like to imagine my stories of particularly harmful students to be important narratives for other educators. Drawing a Line On the whole, I don't have any problems with the idea of refraining from complaining about students. In fact, I might even specify additional rules: Don't complain about students in front of themDon't complain about students using identifiable informationDon't complain about students to other students In other words, I think it's fine to complain a bit in private, but it's never okay to badmouth students in the style of middle school gossip. I also think it's okay to talk about events you've experienced as cautionary tales for other educators. A blanket ban on complaining strips away the importance of storytelling in education. With all that said, I think one of the reasons I felt compelled to write this article is due to the fact that I'm in the process of writing my candidacy proposal. Throughout the process, I have received criticism for my interest in the ways students perpetuate harmful ideologies, such as meritocracy. Because we fixate on the power dynamic in progressive and critical work, it becomes hard to justify my work. After all, it's not as if students are the problem; they've just been socialized to hold certain beliefs. At the same time, it would be ridiculous to say that students can't cause harm, and much of the literature points to students being a major driver of attrition. After all, who do students spend the most time with? I only see them an hour a day at most. They see each other all the time. So, it seems valuable to be able to talk about these things without shutting down the conversation over dogma. That's all I'm saying. With that said, I think I'm done for the day! If you found this article at all interesting, I'd appreciate it if you took a moment to share it.