I thought I would follow Greg’s example during the last call and write not only about a case when I was demotivated by a teacher, but also a time when I demotivated a student.
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A recurrent situation throughout my undergraduate studies was the following: I go to some teacher’s office hours to ask a question, and the answer I get is: “Don’t worry, I won’t ask you that in the exam.”
While this didn’t demotivate me to continue studying the subject matter, it completely put me off asking questions to those teachers, and eventually even approaching others (with a few wonderful exceptions). Getting that reply made me feel insulted, because it conveyed the assumption that I was working only for the grade, which was not true. I studied out of love for the subject and to satisfy my own curiosity. I didn’t have the maturity to speak my mind, so after this happened to me a few times with different teachers, I decided to keep my questions to myself because I lost hope of getting them answered and I dreaded getting that answer again. Although I did very well in my studies, my mind started wandering during those teachers’ lectures, and for a long time I felt sort of guilty and silly for trying to learn “the wrong things”.
How could this have been avoided? I think I would have liked receiving any of these answers instead:
- “The answer to that requires X and Y, if you want to read about that and come back we can discuss it then.”
- “A proper answer is long to explain, roughly it goes like this…”
- “Check book X, I think I saw it mentioned there although I’m not sure.”
- “I don’t know the answer to that, and I don’t know how to help you.”
Any of those replies would have been better because, even if I had left the teacher’s office without a solution, I would not have felt misunderstood, and I would not have lost trust in that teacher.
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Fast forward some years, I am teaching a problem solving session for an undergraduate course. I am just finishing enumerating the assumptions needed to solve a particular exercise when a student asks: “How do we know we can assume that?” And my answer was… *roll drum* …
Me: “Because otherwise we cannot solve the exercise.”
Student: *facepalm*
And a well deserved facepalm it was. When I saw his reaction I instantly realised that had made the same type of error that other teachers made with me. I had assumed his question was: “How do I know in the exam/homework that I can do this?”, when he was really asking: “In what real life circumstances does it make sense to accept this assumption?” I am still baffled as to how *I* could make this mistake, given how much that sort of answer bothers me. Facepalm indeed. Guess what: that student didn’t ask me a question again for the rest of the term.
How could this have been avoided? I should have asked him to expand on his question before replying, and I should have thought more about my answer. I think teachers need to remember not to make assumptions, constantly question what covert or unconscious prejudices they and their colleagues might have, and watch what they say. Maybe it is true that the majority of undergraduates only care about the grades (who knows, I wasn’t like that). But even if this were true, we can’t take the risk of demotivating those who are committed to learning just for the sake of learning.