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Class:Section 71 - ENG 112 - Spring 2007/"Piecing It Together"/Teaching, Learning, School Violence and Safety
From UMassWiki
Teaching, Learning, School Violence and Safety
Stephanie Jo Kent & John Gallagher
A 50 minute discussion was held among teachers of ENG112 Introduction to College Writing. The general flow of conversation progressed from self-focused responses (the matter of student safety was named immediately) to larger concerns about the role of the media and the inter-connections and communication channels among and between various departments and services internal to the University. Discussion eventually focused on the teacher-student relationship and the desirable degree of interaction/communication among and between parents, students, faculty, other service providers on campus and their/our interface with other institutions (previous schools, legal systems, mental health facilities, etc).
Roughly, concerns were brainstormed according to three areas: self (primarily as teachers, also as persons), students, and questions for the administration. Some comments do not align with the given categories but seemed relevant to include. The listings in each categorical column approximates the sequence in which issues were raised; illustrating how the discussion itself bounced back and forth among varied foci.
| Self Concerns (teachers) | Concerns we have about/for students | Questions for Administration |
| Media focus on teachers having seen Cho’s writing | ||
| What does “that kind of writing look like”? | ||
| Role of 1st Amendment | ||
| Want them to feel safe | ||
| Role of a sense of safety in effective pedagogy | ||
| Is physical safety more important than other kinds? | ||
| Nikki Giovanni’s comment | ||
| “he was a mean, bad kid” | ||
| Increasing publicity about teachers and teaching | ||
| Should have done something? | ||
| Scary: Giovanni’s quote indicates a different level of ‘fixability” | ||
| Lack of control about what students write and say about us | ||
| in public forums | ||
| Media rhetoric: Cho presented as “a monster, inhuman – not a person” Also racialized, a resident alien | ||
| The desire to “other” | ||
| What would I do? Morbid, paranoid scenarios…how would I respond? Would I rise to the occasion? | ||
| Seems protocols were followed (by teachers) and then “a void” – can we expect more from a large university? Who talk with next? What should happen next? | ||
| Model of the teachers there: “heroic” | ||
| Every teacher in a room Cho entered was killed | ||
| Have already been concerned about boundaries and a student’s unhealthy attachment | ||
| Unit One invites “unhealthy attachments”? | ||
| “I have felt safe…[is it because?] I know my students” | ||
| Students have continued “business as usual” | ||
| Are our interventions & responses triggers? | ||
| Are we connected to the vast range of available resources on/of this campus? | ||
| Research does show many positive effects on student’s academic performance in other non-writing classes from having engaged the exercise of personal writing | ||
| they feel a stigma about seeking services | ||
| PAUL HELIKER’S LETTER: “raw, heartfelt, also spurious, puts himself at risk” | ||
| Cho previously court-ordered to counseling – institutional interconnections? | ||
| Are we mentors or teachers? What ought the teacher-student relationship consist of, be like? | ||
| Overreacting? Obviously have to respond, start dialogue, but before one even knows what has happened? (quick response, too quick?) | ||
| Distance/lack of separation between teachers & students: scholarly distance = a hierarchy, age sometimes close = less distance, or – if not having same experiences now have had them = more human, teachers are persons, too. Is this a desirable disjuncture? | ||
| Why do they stop talking with us (when they have been doing so) | ||
| Peer assessments – former high school classmates joked, “he will become a psychopath” (real suspicion in back of minds) | ||
| So many things we do not know about them | ||
| What are the protocols here? | ||
| (at another institution) held weekly meetings among faculty assessing the progress, performance of each student. Do we want a return/maintenance of high school? |
The representation above is not intended to be a literal record, rather it is designed to capture the main points of discussion, attempt to organize them somewhat, and depict (roughly) the sequence in which they occurred. No recording was made (other than notes on a chalkboard), so the representation is necessarily subjective and faulty according to the vicissitudes of memory.
After the brainstorm, we made an attempt to distinguish between factors over which we can exert some measure of control and those that we cannot affect.
| Teachers can control? | Teachers cannot control? |
| First unit essay (the way we ask students to “open up” then “stop” | |
| Increase clarity about protocols | |
| Address attitudes about approaching authority (our own? The students?) | Students “go away to college” in order to “grow up”, “mature”, “become functional adults.” How much “support”, how much “community”? |
As readers: be active, engaged, take responsibility
| How much surveillance/power (Foucault’s panopticon) without reverting to high school? Check up on, like athletes? We are not as attentive to students, systematically – particularly male students SPIRE include academic advisor’s name & contact info (problematic label/emphasis on “academic”?) |
| Our own reactivity? | |
| “in the end, if someone is resolved to violence…” | |
| Age segregation: “peer interactions can be so cruel” | |
| a “more holistic community: parents, teachers, peers” | |
| “a richer language” for the continuum anchored by “friend” and “authority” – what terms, language symbolize, represent the “give-and-take” of teacher-student interactions? That “certain closeness” (although this is “not the right word”)… | |
| Freire’s pedagogical notion of being a nurse: caregiving, interpersonally responsive…not hierarchical in the same way as Doctor-Patient, more about guidance, modeling from adults (not peers)… | |
| We are professional/academic colleagues, not a buddy to hang out with… | |
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