Try to squat down so your eyes are just below the level of theirs. When they're looking at the computer, look at the computer. When they're looking at you, look back at them.”
i think this is one of the most impactful things i discovered independently while teaching. pulling up a chair to sit with a student rather than peering down on them from up high levels the playing field; something i always tried to do, but never in a fellow kids-y way. i'd like to think i nailed “relatability” by just,,, having a personality and treating people like colleagues and not lessers. by engaging with the problem in their mode and with our shared skill set
i miss it. but not the marking lol
For years I taught sitting down, behind the long tables they provided in our classrooms instead of desks. Students were sometimes put off by it; visibly confused, they seemed to expect me to stand at a lectern and read notes. Eventually they got used to it and it worked well.
I know this because one semester I team-taught a class with the chair of the department. I was still a student, mind you. The course was a general junior level elective on science fiction lit. I stood to teach, because, well, that's what you're supposed to do, and now the Boss was watching.
Around midterms, I was so exhausted one day I sat. And later, in our semi-regular meeting, the chair said I should just teach that way all the time. My whole demeanor changed, and the students immediately responded.
Of course, now I teach fully online, since nobody takes covid seriously any more (nobody in charge of my school). But in the handful of years I got as a professional, not a student, in a classroom of my own, I stood a lot, and I sat. I moved around a lot. It kept me from getting dull and stuck in a rut. I'd sit on tables cross-legged (in a way, I learned, was weird. By "weird" I mean multiple physical therapists have commented on it now. Apparently most people feel a stretch, or can't do it at all. My joints are fucked up). I once nearly fell off. I wandered the room, checking everyone's screens, mostly not to make sure they were working (many were not, I assure you), but because it was easier to ask me a question about their thesis statement if they didn't feel they were asking the entire room.
Here's a punchline for you. There was a huge asshole in my phd program. When I say he's an asshole, I mean he once grabbed a student who'd just finished a long conversation with another teacher -- a woman, that's important -- and then proceeded to badly mansplain what the woman had just explained to her student. He told everyone who'd listen his dissertation was going to be on what made good poetry, because there's a single verifiable standard that can be used for all poetry through all of history.
The punchline is: in a class we had together, he said you must stand to teach. When I brought up that the chair himself had said that wasn't true, he said he (the chair) was wrong. 1 In light of the above, it's clear this dipshit needed to feel superior.
And, surprise, that's exactly right. He made students call him "doctor." He did not have a doctorate. He once moved an entire class online because he hadn't noticed a Latin class, signed up for it late, and didn't notify the office. He just decided he'd go online and attend the class when he should be teaching.
He was the only person in the memory of the grad student body who had his assistantship revoked, for that last one.
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obviously don't simply accept things authority figures say, but also the chair had been teaching for nearly two decades, published a couple of books, and continued to insist on being in front of students despite having the option not to, as a chair. He had to be in the classroom at least a little to be able to do that job. So this person clearly knew what he was doing, is what I'm saying.
