Let’s Be Kind to Our Students

By Allison Henrich, Seattle University

In the past month, I’ve had a student hospitalized for a panic attack, a student grieving the loss of a high school friend who took his own life, a student whose father is in a coma, a student who had a family member pass away after a battle with COVID, and a senior advisee who was a straight-A student before the pandemic but who contemplated dropping out of school in her last quarter because the demands of her classes at the time were too overwhelming. And these are just some of the issues my students are dealing with.

I used to be a stickler for rules. Late homework was not ok, and don’t even think about asking to retake a quiz you “forgot” about. I like tricky test questions and pushing all of my students to present solutions to problems, regardless of how uncomfortable it seems to make them. I felt I needed to teach my students about professionalism. I needed to stretch them beyond their comfort zone to a place from which they could grow, discovering strengths in themselves that they didn’t know they possessed.

Allison Henrich with some of her students.

Not anymore. I hope my students are learning the calculus concepts and life skills I am trying to teach them, but if they aren’t, I’m at peace with it. What I do hope my class is doing for my students is providing them a space where someone is paying attention to how they are doing and listening to their needs. Someone is asking them every week questions like, “Who are you checking in with or connecting with today?” (Six Daily Questions to Ask Yourself in Quarantine) and, “Is there anything that is preventing you from thriving in our class that I can help with?” (Asked and Answered: Dialogues on Advocating for Students of Color in Mathematics by Harris and Winger). And when a student gives me constructive criticism or reveals a serious issue they are dealing with, I follow up. I change a classroom practice to better support them. I reach out to a student to find out how I can ease their burden while they’re dealing with a significant mental health or life event.

Some of you are nodding and saying, “Absolutely! I’m being flexible with deadlines. I got rid of exams in my classes altogether, and I’m checking in with my students regularly. Their health and well-being are my priorities.” You are doing the work to care for your students as humans, and their lives are a bit better for it. Thank you. 

Others of you are saying, “Yes! A student’s well-being is the most important thing.” But you are still holding your students to the same standards you held them to in 2019. In fact, you are requiring students to do more work and more stressful work, perhaps because you’ve redesigned your classes with the main goal of avoiding cheating incidents or maybe because you are unsure about how to organize a course that is delivered virtually, so you’ve thrown the kitchen sink at the problem. Or if you are requiring the same things of your students that you did in 2019, you’ve done so assuming that students have the same systems of support that they had in 2019.

I’ll admit that I’ve done most of these harmful things this quarter. I have four different types of assignments/assessments due every week in my calculus class. (The kitchen sink approach.) I expect my students to attend class, although I also have them watch videos to learn material outside of class, and I have them take all of their quizzes outside of class. It didn’t dawn on me until a few weeks ago that we used to do all of these things within class time pre-pandemic, and now I’m asking them to do hours’ worth of extra work each week. I thought, “My students have access to drop-in tutoring and office hours over Zoom. They’ve got all the same support they had pre-pandemic.” Except they don’t. There’s an illusion that my students have this support, but they are so Zoom-fatigued by the time their Zoom study group or office hour begins that they can’t face it. To add insult to injury, some of my students who were able to get into regular counseling sessions pre-pandemic no longer have access to mental health care because the mental health care system has been so overwhelmed by requests for care during the pandemic.

I am reflecting on my teaching practices, listening to my students, and trying to improve things for them. How can I better care for my students as humans? I am adding to my agenda to think about how the systems I set up in my classes might be placing undue burdens on my students that they can’t handle with everything else they are dealing with right now. If you can relate, please join me in thinking about how we might educate more humanely in this challenging time.