Things I Know 26 of 365: I need to know my teachers

No more teachers’ dirty looks.

– Alice Cooper, “School’s Out”

“Do you like your facilitator?” one of my kids asked the other day about the facilitator of my grad class.

I paused.

“I don’t know her.”

I truly don’t.

This course has featured no welcome e-mail, no bio on BlackBoard. Nothing.

In the course chat, I learned a little about her church, but not much about her.

Were it not for the tacit trust I put in the university’s hiring processes, I might worry she’s a pimply-faced high school sophomore who fits his grading in between Dungeons and Dragons sessions.

I don’t know her enough to like her.

I’ll never know her the way I would were we to share physical space. I’ll never know the color of her hair. I realize the strangeness of that statement, but it’s nothing to the strangeness of the not knowing.

Her face looks like as she gives a class time to ponder a question will forever be a mystery to me.

Does she pronounce my name with a drawl? Would she appreciate my humor? I’ll never know if she’s someone who stands the entire class or leans against a wall or desk.

I’ll never know.

These things I’d like to know.

If I’m to like her, these things help me decide.

If I’m to respect her, I need to know her.

She is responsible for facilitating my learning around curricula and learning, yet I can tell you not one thing about her pedagogy.

I imagine these weeks we’re together in this course to be similar to the early days of an arranged marriage. Contrastingly, though, we both have designs on an annulment.

It’s easier to dislike her if she exists as this disembodied set of deadlines and dropboxes.

My own little Milgram experiment.

A key piece of learning from my grad program has been my understanding of my drive to connect my learning to relationships.

My mathematical matriculation through AP Calculus was due solely to the care and academic craftsmanship of Mr. Curry.

I’ve yet to feel that care or craftsmanship in my courses.

This is not whining.

This is me attempting to understand why my otherwise voracious appetite for learning, understanding and creating meaning absolutely vanishes in these courses.

In no small part, I need to know my instructor as much as I need to know my content.