Years later I thought of this story in a research methods course I took at Humboldt State, as part of my MA program. We had this smart but rather mousy, old fashioned professor who just lectured to us from behind a podium. On the last day of class, he was handing back our term papers, and as he called out our names it was immediately apparent that he didn’t have any idea who any of us were. I was shocked that a professor could have a class of students for fifteen weeks and fail to learn any of our names.
I have always tried to get to know my students. And I don’t mean just learn their names. Names are easy. I have the students introduce themselves to one another on the first day of class, and then I go around the room and say all their names. Perhaps it is a sad commentary on education in higher ed in particular, but the students are always amazed that I can learn their names so quickly.
In office hours during the paper conferences I require, I always make a point of asking where students grew up, where they went to school, whether they have siblings, what they do for work or play. I often find that I know one or more of their high school teachers, or even that we have a mutual friend or acquaintance.
One year I had a young woman who told me she grew up in Hamden. I asked her to name her first grade teacher, and she said, “Mrs. Zito.†I smiled and asked her if I could use her cell phone for a second. (I didn’t have one at that time). She smiled oddly but gave it to me. I dialed my mother on my student’s phone, and when she picked up I asked her if she remembered the student, and of course she did, and so I put them on the phone together. Zito is my mother’s surname by her second marriage, and she taught mostly first grade in Hamden for thirty-six years.
This semester I have three students who went to school with my siblings. (My half-brother and half-sister are half my age). Two young men went to elementary school in Hamden with both my siblings, and one young woman went to high school in Guilford with just my sister.
The other thing I really like to see, and that I sort of pride myself on, is that my students really get to know each another. One thing I do at the beginning of the year is require them to participate in discussion without raising their hands for me to call on them and without using me as an intermediary. I tell them that they are all mature enough to respond politely and respectfully to one another without interrupting and without getting my permission. And I tell them that when they respond to a classmate’s comment, they have to respond to him or her by name. It is awkward at first, but quickly they learn one another’s names and soon the practice is standard and familiar for our class.
By now, I see all sorts of friendships and relationships that have begun in my class. There’s at least one relationship that I have watched emerge this semester, and many friendships that have developed, particularly from the response groups they are required to work in every third class.
I know friendships and relationships would and do emerge from any class, and so I’m not trying to take all the credit here, but I do think that my efforts to get to know my students and to require them to learn (and use!) one another’s names, and then to work together frequently in small groups, fosters friendships and relationships. And it’s nice at the end of the semester to watch the students leaving class in small groups of new friends. To me, these relationships are at least as important as the books and the essays.
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