Oh the humanity!!!

My students have finally become human.

I am currently a tutorial instructor for a first year history course that deals with colonialism, revolution and the various repercussions and impacts of these two factors on different cultures throughout history.

The first two and a half months have gone roughly the same way as I enter the class seven minutes before it starts.  The students are sitting quietly around the room, separated from one another by a buffer of at least one empty chair and all of them have their heads quietly bowed either on a last-minute reading of their text or praying that I will not make eye-contact with them during the seminar. Once the class begins they will quietly raise their hands, regurgitate one idea from the readings and return to a passive vegetative state. I have used a great deal of my best material to at least get them to crack a smile. When this occurs they glance shyly around them and then return to normal. For those of you who are unaware, these are not 5-6 year olds at their first day of kindergarten.  These are 17-18-19 year old children who, for most of them are living away from their parents, siblings and friends for the first time. They are shocked that I do not call if they miss a class, it appalls them that I do not care what the date was that the Bastille was stormed and they cannot comprehend that nothing bad will happen if they play tetris throughout the whole lecture. The tetris does not happen in my tutorial, we simply observed a first year who needed more practice attempting to impress the several rows sitting behind him by constructing a Swiss-cheese wall on his laptop, in the middle of the lecture. One of the other T.A.'s commented, loud enough that the instructor must have heard, that if you are that bad at tetris you should stay home and practice instead of demonstrating your complete lack of prowess in front of a whole row filled with teaching assistants. Strangely, the student did not return after the mid-lecture break.

This week I walked into class and I could sense that there had been an almost imperceptible change in some of my students.  They replied to my query on their well being instead of staring blankly at their books.  This week their heads came up, they smiled and we had small talk for the entire seven minutes before class began. They shared opinions about the flu shot, dorm life, pop-culture and the weather in Peterborough. When it came time to discuss they talked about different aspects of the reading and we were able to draw parallels and contradictions between the 1970s' bombing of Cambodia and the Battle of Britain in WWII. When I walked into the lecture the next day, some of my students were even sitting near each other and talking.

I think the change all began when I met one of my students on the way to class and we were chatting about non-class material as we entered the room. The students may have heard laughter and made the connection that I am just as human as most of the other people that they will meet in this world. Who knows. I am still unsure of when I made the connection that my teachers and prof's were human. It may have been the day that a friend and I taught Miss Winslow how to flick a bottle cap across the room in grade 11 English. It may have been the day that I saw Mark Bowald and Jim Vanderwoerd in the bleachers at Redeemer hockey games.

I guess that is the strange thing about humanity; once you see it in someone else, you will never look at them the same way again.

tot ziens