That Time I Only Had One Student

Or, When One Student Showed Me the "Higher Ed" System for What it Is

Aug 29, 2023

The episode is done and can be viewed or listened to here https://www.therepublicanprofessor.com/2023/08/17/the-time-i-only-had-one-student-w-dr-lucas-j-mather-ph-d-the-republican-professor-ep-141/

This was me a couple weeks back when I came up with the idea:

I'm using the good ole status update to produce an episode I've had on my mind for a while I'm thinking of calling,
"That time I only had one student".
My philosophy of teaching changed over the course of 20 years, and may change yet again in the future (possibly), but here's a way it changed: I used to think the professor had a lot of responsibility for what the student experiences in the classroom. I think that's more or less the aim of the "student-evaluation" system that was present when I first began teaching. The whole point of that system is that in inculcates this hyper-responsibility in the professor. Such professors would take responsibility for how students experience the classroom.
Colleges, in my experience, could do things much differently with student perceptions of the classroom beginning from the very first encounter the student has with the college. In terms of how college is funded, lenders (e.g., the government, but it used to be banks), could also do things much differently beginning with the very first encounter, to set expectations of what college is supposed to be.
The way my teaching philosophy changed was, I began to take less and less responsibility for how the students experienced the classroom, and to expect more and more from the students. I began shifting , appropriately, expectations of learning from me to them. I began enforcing the reading instead of apologizing for it (for how hard it was). Sympathy was often taken as license not to do it. I began using high frequency low stakes evaluations of my own in the form of quizzes worth 3 points each of the total grade, graded as follows: 0, 1, 2, or 3. If there was no evidence of the reading or note taking from class, a 0. If there was some, but less than half in the judgment of the professor, 1/3. If there was some, but more than half, but there was something wrong, 2/3. And if it hit the nail on the head, which was easy to do if someone reviewed notes regularly before class and did most of the reading carefully, then that student got a perfect score.
This was worth 30% of the grade. So, if one was a good student, one could easily get 30/30, an A+ on this element. If one had some bad weeks, and got several 1s or 2s, one could still pull a B- or above on this : 24/30. If one was habitually a poor reviewer of notes, never went to office hours (or rarely) for help with the reading and lectures, and didn't do much of the reading, the score would never be higher than a C, and would often be lower for that element. Because there were 2 grades for these quizzes that were Fs, one was a D, and one was an A. The Bs and Cs were only there when the professor looked at 10 weeks of these quizzes distributed over 16 weeks in a semester (one of which would be the first week, one of which would be the midterm, and one of which would be the final, and maybe some of which that had student presentations or student-led discussions.
How do I know this was a success : Not because most students liked it. In fact, in my estimation (rough), most did not. But the best students did like it, because it helped distinguish them from the others. And there are not many of the best students by definition. (In case you forgot).
One time, most of my class dropped, and I was left with one student who scored a B+. No one got an A that semester. Most got Fs. One kid passed, got a B+. Yes, that really happened.
I've gone through a lot of suffering for my principles in the "Higher" "Education" system. I suffered for doing the right thing. I was not rewarded for doing the right thing. This, right there, I had to process deeply and profoundly. First, I had to discern, really, whether (and, or to what extent) it was really true, that is to say, whether it was true.
(Really true means true)(You don't need the word "really").
It took me a long time, but I began to see, I am not responsible for the mess of our cultural decay, but I suffer because of it. I had to make a choice (not an echo), was I going to contribute the the cultural decay, or not.
I chose not to.
I chose it over and over again, over a period of years.
Education is a two way street. The professor only makes himself available for students who want to learn. The professor is there for such students, and is there above and beyond, often, for such students, for the true professor enjoys the student who gets this, the student who puts their heart into it, digs deep, puts a shoulder into it. If the colleges aren't encouraging it (and I think they should shame students who don't do this, from the very first moment that particular student encounters this particular college) (and the lenders ought to, as well), it isn't up to the professors to fix that. The evaluation system as it exists now (but not as it existed for the first many hundred years of college, the period in which being a college took shape and began to make sense at all), not only doesn't get this, it actively distorts this. Other factors do as well.
It was a little weird, driving an hour to show up to a class with one student in it, and teaching the class as if it had 30, but what I discovered about teaching that semester is, yes, one student is worth it. And sometimes, one student helps you see the whole system more clearly than you ever saw it before, in bracing terms that reflect cold, hard reality. But, that reality at the same time bears the warmth rightly generated when just one life is changed at a time.

The Republican Professor

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