Called to Teach. Группа авторов
questions and answers can derail our curricular plans for the day or at least slow them down considerably, but our responses to offending students have the potential to make or break the entire semester. In particular, regardless of the answers we provide to bad questions and regardless of our technical responses to poor answers, as those who are called to teach we must first and foremost respond to our offending students with respect and gracious compassion, for numerous reasons.
First, practically speaking, a poor professorial response will negatively impact the entire class for the remainder of the semester. When students temporarily derail class by asking ill-advised questions that are clearly addressed in the syllabus or when they talk at the back of the room and then ask about the subject that was just discussed, a poor response from the professor to the offending student can have devastating effects upon the entire class. If the professor opts to treat the offending student with dismissive snobbery (“Someone didn’t read his assignment last night.”), condescending shame (“Surely you can do better than that.”), or sarcastic mockery (“Did Joel Osteen help you with that response?”), the entire class will notice. That type of harsh, professorial response will surely reduce bad questions in the future, but it will also reduce all questions and comments. Even if the other students know their classmate asked a bad question or offered a poor answer, most students will back away from the educational endeavor if they perceive the professor to be mean, condescending, or overly impatient.
Second, a poor professorial response will negatively impact the offending student. Many of our international students come from honor/shame cultures where teachers and their opinions are held in especially high esteem. As professors who are called to teach, we must be hospitable hosts who recognize how our responses can either increase or decrease a student’s sense of honor or shame for perhaps years to come.
In reality, regardless of our students’ culture of origin, honor and shame play a significant role in every setting that involves humans. As a result, there may be no better moment for a professor to exemplify her or his sense of calling than when the professor is forced to respond to a bad question or a poor answer in front of the entire class. That moment is precisely when the professor most needs to amass all of her creativity and resourcefulness in the hope of turning a negative experience into a positive one—or at least neutralizing the threat that the situation poses to the offending student’s honor.
If a student realizes that the professor sought to preserve or to enhance her or his honor amid a potentially embarrassing situation, that student may well read more diligently and think more deeply about the subject matter of the course moving forward. Regardless, when other students in the class perceive that the professor advocated for the offending student and sought to neutralize a potentially embarrassing situation, they too will take greater risks and engage in the educational endeavor more deeply because they perceive the professor to be one who has their back as well. Furthermore, it is in that moment—when a student has the potential to lose face in front of his or her peers—that the professor demonstrates to the offending student, to the class, and to herself what it means to be “called to teach.” When the professor lives out the spiritual conviction that God values all persons by ardently seeking to preserve honor and save face for even her poorest students, the professor begins to understand what sets apart those who are “called to teach” from those who simply enjoy the life of the mind.
Transformative Moments
Finally, as professors, we may hope to eliminate as many of the Student #1 type of offenses as possible—failing to read the syllabus and unfocused attention that leads to repetitive questions; however, when we teach with a sense of calling, we may well embrace the poor answers of Student #2. Instead of a problem, Student #2’s answer provided me with a tremendous pedagogical opportunity—one that I could not have staged on my own. Poor answers may well lead to transformational moments if we handle them properly. Student #2 applied real-world instincts and logic to the subject matter of our course. Her poor answer challenged me as a professor to define better the hermeneutic I was seeking to teach and to illustrate why an academically informed hermeneutic is more helpful than the one she brought with her to Waco.
In other words, all professors face the challenge of helping their students to inquire, reason, and write in line with the scholars from their own discipline.47 We all face the challenge of demonstrating why our academic discipline matters. That objective can only be accomplished, however, if we show our students the benefits of migrating from the angle of vision with which they entered to the angle of vision with which we hope they will they depart.
Years ago, I recall Professor Mikeal C. Parsons from Baylor University’s Department of Religion explaining to his graduate students that professors in the Humanities are not simply called to answer the questions that our students ask. Rather, we are first and foremost called to teach our students to ask better, higher, and more important questions. When I think back on the professors who most impacted me, each of them taught me to ask better questions.
Student #2 started out well, but she ended up offering a poor answer that grew out of her misguided, semi-Gnostic questions. Her responses rightly assumed that God has a word for God’s people, but she failed to consider the word of the Lord that was first addressed to the original recipients of Genesis, Acts, and Romans. In addition, she believed that the sixty-six books of the Bible are interconnected—notably, both Paul and Luke saw a similar type of connectedness between the events of the Old Testament and their day—but the student focused her attention on commonplace, English words rather than major, biblical themes like the redemptive work of God during the times of Moses, the Babylonian exile, and Jesus—redemptive works that transcend modern translations of ancient events and texts. In essence, she opted to focus on English conjunctions rather than God’s saving activity throughout the Scriptures.
Regardless, poor answers like the one that Student #2 voiced can set the stage for a teachable moment. If a caring professor can invite her to ask better questions and to try out better interpretive approaches, the door to transformational education may be opened. Professors who foster transformational moments, however, will first need to start at a similar beginning point as their students, and they will likely need to mine for the gold that lays amid the dross of the student’s initial answer.
Perhaps the professor who responds to Student #2 will explain how a quasi-Gnostic reading of the text actually defies the very standardizing purpose of the Scriptures, which the student herself passionately affirms. Perhaps the professor will describe the types of criteria Biblical Studies scholars frequently employ when identifying a quotation or an allusion to an earlier work. Perhaps the professor will demonstrate the exegetical payoff that accompanies informed interpretation of a singular biblical text instead of attempting to weave together all sixty-six books of the Bible at a single moment. Yet regardless of the tack professors may take, professors who are called to teach must recognize the grand opportunity that poor answers can sometimes provide when we aim for transformational education.
In other words, professors who are called to teach should realize that at times bad questions and poor answers can provide professors with a kernel of genius with which to work. If we can find and highlight that kernel of genius amid the student’s comments while allowing the chaff to fall away, we may be able to teach students to ask better questions and articulate better answers. Furthermore, professors who are called to teach should realize that one student’s misstep can benefit every student in the room while simultaneously making the professor a better teacher. In essence, one of the most important challenges facing professors who are called to teach surfaces when she seeks to identify the insightful but miniscule kernel of insight that is present in a poor question or answer and to demonstrate how someone in her own academic field might cultivate that same insightful kernel into a full-grown plant.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I am arguing that our sense of calling as teachers and professors is revealed (perhaps, most clearly) in the way we respond to the repetitive, unnecessary, or ill-conceived questions that our students raise as well as the inadequate answers that they offer to our questions. Bad questions and poor answers may indeed impede our lesson plans. As a result, at times we need to think creatively about eliminating those dynamics in future classes. At other times, however, bad questions and poor answers provide