In terms of my professional life, I’ve always seen myself as a “teacher” first and foremost. About 18 years into my career I found myself in a formal teaching role when a local community college hired me to join their adjunct faculty. Most of my “teaching” prior to that time had been in the corporate or small business arena, so teaching college students, most of whom were between the ages of 18 to 24, was a new experience for me. Since that time I have been associated with four different institutions of higher learning. I’m now in my 23rd year of teaching at the college level, and I’ve noticed various patterns over that time.

One of the patterns I’ve noticed is how students often respond to the things I teach them. You see, I have acquired the practice of having my students regularly submit, on a weekly basis, a Learning Journal where they are expected to interact with the things they are learning. I expect them to not only capture what they were taught, but far more importantly, I expect them to expand on that and share how they perceive what they learned, how my teachings impacted them, what they might implement, etc.

As to the pattern I’ve noticed with my students, a large percentage of them often do one of two things:

A) They state that they agree with what was taught. (That’s what most of them opine).
B) They occasionally state that they do not agree with what was taught. (This comes from the occasional cantankerous student who rejects virtually every single thing I teach – I had one like this last semester – but it also occasionally comes from an otherwise balanced student who is a bit of a free thinker.)

How do I feel about this?

Mixed.

Let’s take the first group – those that agree with what was taught. I have two distinct impressions about their agreement.

On the positive side, I am delighted they embrace what was taught. It’s always empowering for a professor to see a student respond positively to a given teaching. On the other hand, I worry. Is the student merely saying they already knew about and embraced a given teaching? Perhaps they are saying, in essence, “I already knew that and already had embraced it long ago. I’ve learned nothing I didn’t already know. Duh!”  If such students actually did already know and embrace a given teaching (which is an unproven, unverified premise) then what do they need me for, other than validation?

I have corresponding impressions of the occasional student who comes right out and says he or she disagrees with something I tried to teach them. Again, I see something potentially positive about such disagreement; it suggests to me they are critical thinkers and not blindly accepting what someone is feeding them. I consider that healthy. However, I try very hard to provide cutting-edge content that is sound, rigorously vetted, and empirically grounded. Thus, when a student rejects what I am teaching him or her, I almost sense that student comes into class with a predetermined filter that essentially takes the position: “I know what I know; I’m not here to be educated. I’m here to see if your teaching already comports with what I already know. If it doesn’t, I reject it out of hand without further consideration.”  If that is the case, I find that troubling, as it suggests an unwarranted smugness and a closed mind.  Such students are almost certainly short-circuiting their opportunities for learning and benefitting from such learning.

I’m not sure how to reconcile such conflicting views. However, any student who automatically rejects something I teach on the grounds that it represents something they previously did not know tells me they are selling themselves short and stunting their intellectual growth.

Hopefully those instances are few and far between.