My recent column on teaching in troubling times mentions the need for flexibility, and one of my dear colleagues noted that the idea of flexibility needed to be fleshed out. I agree, with one of my first thoughts being I don’t think I’ve ever read anything that explores how flexibility works in teaching situations. If you have, please share the reference in a comment.
In the natural world flexibility is tested in times of extremity. I live in the woods at the top end of a hollow that faces west. During storms the wind barrels through here, making the trees bend and branches twist and turn. Sometimes branches are ripped off, and occasionally a tree goes down, but most stay standing, ready to weather the next storm.
I’d say we’re teaching in a storm right now—so we need to
bend. But where do we bend and how much? Even though times are tough for everyone,
it’s hard for teachers not to feel caught in a bit of a bind. We do have
standards to uphold, and students have been known to take advantage of teachers.
We want to be flexible, but we also want the requests to make course changes
and the asks for special accommodations to be legitimate. When we bend, we want
to do so without damaging our ethical obligations as teachers.
Analyzing the situation starts simply enough. We can be
flexible in two areas, the first being course-related issues. If something
isn’t working—whether the pace of the course, the online discussions, the
access to resources, or the technology—it’s pretty easy to ascertain whether that’s
a widespread problem. If so, then we can adjust with the goal of fixing the
problem or at least making it better. It’s more challenging to be flexible when
standards are involved—say, to make an assignment easier or less complicated, cut
the length, or extend the deadline. What circumstances justify those kinds of
modifications?
Could we all agree? We’ve got to bend in the direction of
learning. Instructional policies and practices must always and only be about
learning. But the learning potential in a course is broad and doesn’t always
involve content. What if we opt not to discuss a set of assigned readings and
instead ask whether the young have a responsibility to take actions that
protect the old? Is that a bend in the direction of learning? Beyond
course-level flexibility are those requests from individual students—for more
time, for the chance to redo an assignment or make up a quiz, for extra credit,
for counting effort—and those are much harder to sort out and through,
especially in times of extremity. Does it make sense to take some time to think
about the request before offering a response? Often the student request comes
laden with emotion, which makes it easy to let emotion clutter the response. Am
I saying yes because I want the student to think I’m a good person? Do I want
to say yes because it’s easier than saying no?
Beyond the most important consideration—what the request
will do for the student’s learning—there are fairness and equity issues. Course
requirements should apply to all students equally, but does that mean all
students must do the same things? Content can be learned in different ways, but
different has a long history of not being equal. In this case, that’s less
because of bias than on account of the imprecision of grading measures. These
issues are larger than any individual request, but they bubble up whenever a
student asks us to be flexible about a requirement. Then again, bending in the
direction of a student can make it easier to see how learning looks from that novice
learner perspective.
If ever there was a time to be flexible, this is it. Our
courses were interrupted and, in most cases, significantly altered midstream. We
need to adjust and maybe in directions that make us stretch. It’s a time of
great anxiety, high stress, and fear for all of us. If ever we needed to be
there for each other, that time is now. Teachers need students to be
understanding, and students need teachers to be flexible for all sorts of good reasons.
So we reach out. The wind blows, the tree bends and then straightens, rooted to
the idea of holding on and standing tall.
