(Mis)match

One of the TAs for my lecture course this semester is an MA student who took several courses with me as an undergraduate. She's excited at her first opportunity on the other end, and I'm enjoying our conversations about the craft of teaching. She says she wants to emulate my way of "leaving things open," entertaining several approaches to a problem without ever showing my cards, and the community this promotes the classroom.

But there are other parts of being on the other end which she's experiencing for the first time, too. Barely a week in, one of the students in my lecture and her discussion section wrote to tell us they will be missing class this week because a loved one is in hospice "and it seems like his final days are approaching. ... I will make sure to keep up with the readings and responses and if there's any way to get notes or slides or whatever from the lecture that would be great but no stress. Sorry for the inconvenience."

No stress? Inconvenience? "You're getting an early dose of one of the invisible realities of teaching," I wrote to the TA. "Suddenly you're a bystander to students' lives, where all sorts of things happen. Sometimes they'll tell you, sometimes they won't. Sometimes, as here, there's a weird mismatch between the gravity of what they're describing and the tone of the message. This can make it hard to know how to respond." I forwarded my response to the student as an example of tone.

The TA gets it. "The mismatch in tone of dealing with grief is very human; I understand that and feel deeply for her. If there is anything additional that I can do, then I will." We're barely a part of this student's life, but in the strangely personal/formal role of teacher we can be present and available to them, as a person and as a student.