Students Know Things You Don’t

The best thing a teacher can do is admit they don’t know something. If you can admit that without coming off as insecure or condescending, your students will respect you more. Even better, they’ll learn more.

Think about that. The whole point of higher education is to teach students to think for themselves, to question and challenge authority. And yet many of us professors act so surprised when students challenge ours. Sure, sometimes it stings when a student asks a question or points out a fact that you missed. But guess what? We’re human, and we don’t know everything. Nobody knows everything. Students can and should still teach us.

Our students are adults. They have 18+ years of life experience. Sure, they’ll be naive in different ways. A couple of them can’t seem to figure out alarm clocks or laptop chargers. But for every student like that, there’s five who know advanced statistics or gender theory. In fact, some of them may know more than we do on a particular topic. When that happens, the worst thing a professor can do is try to one-up them.

Watching that is sad. I’ve seen that happen. As a student, I remembered when professors tried to one-up me. When they did that, they made me feel like shit and discouraged me from working harder in their class.

Here’s the bottom line: When a student says something novel or surprising, odds are they’re actually trying to impress their professor. You know what? Act impressed. Why? Because you are. Don’t bury your surprise and then come up with some bullshit excuse to point out a flaw, or say something that “maintains your authority.” Students can see right through that, and it weakens your ethos.

Of course, sometimes a student will genuinely try to upset your balance and challenge you because they don’t like you. The same strategy still applies. One time, I had a gifted student in my grammar and linguistics class who already knew everything in my syllabus. At first, I thought we’d become spirit sisters. Instead, this student went out of her way to show off her knowledge. Let’s say I was explaining something in class to normal people. This girl would sit back and judge, waiting for a moment when I tried to simplify a concept. That’s when she would pounce. “Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that.” So I would let her elaborate.

My insecurities began to rise. I wondered if she was going to turn the class against me, convince them I didn’t know my own subject matter, file a complaint with the chair and get me fired because I hadn’t exposed everyone to a detailed, historical account of pronoun usage in 19th century Europe. Oh, the things professors worry about….

You know what? None of that happened. Of course, I had to let go of my aspiration of forming a deep bond with a student who saw my class as a platform to strut her stuff. That saddened me. She seemed enamored with other professors in the department, and that made me downright jealous. Imaginary me would drop down on her knees and shake her fist at the clouds, yelling, “Why the fuck doesn’t she like me!” But I kept all that inside and just focused on the class as a whole. Of course, I came dangerously close to losing my cool once or twice, but that’s the gift of Asperger’s. Even if I’m boiling inside, my outside looks like Antarctica. So I made it. The other students obviously thought she was a genius, but that didn’t matter. The real point was that everybody got what they came for. The normal people learned about language. The smart gal and her little crew got to feel superior twice a week. Everybody left happy, and better off.

Some professors think their goal is to convince their students they’re a genius. They’re dead wrong. One time, I overheard a professor having a conversation with a student in his office. He said, “You know, Voltaire once said we’re living in the best of all possible universes.”

The student guffawed. “Wow, let me just let that sink in for a minute….” As I walked past, my eyes met the professor’s. Part of me expected a thumbs up. Of course, I knew this guy. He had corrected me on three separate occasions, details so trivial it made me excuse myself to the bathroom where I rolled my eyes, laughed hard, and then engaged in three minutes of deep breathing. By the way, try that sometime. Works wonders at faculty parties.

But 9 times out of 10, students appreciate a classroom that allows them to learn and discuss things they know that others don’t. That’s the whole point of my assignments: go out and learn something about a book, an author, or an idea that the rest of us don’t’ know. Teach it to us. That model seems to work pretty well.

I’ll always remember the best moments with my best professors. They obviously knew a helluva lot about their topics. They led amazing discussions. They taught me a lot I didn’t know. That’s why it made me feel so great when I was able to say or write things that that seemed new to them. When one of these professors said, “I hadn’t thought about that before,” or wrote on my papers, “Didn’t know this! Thank you so much!” that’s how I knew when I was learning. Do that.