There are lots of different titles for students who enter college without a major. Undecided. Undeclared. Exploratory. Open major. These are all attempts to put some kind of qualifier in front of a student and to give the faculty context as we try to guide our charges into picking an academic path. We are humans, after all...and we crave order and labels.
This past fall, I was honored to have been chosen to guide a class through a one-credit, low stakes course called "Exploratory 101: Finding YOU." Though I found the title a little overwhelming (at 47, I'm still "finding me"), I really enjoyed where the university was headed with the concept. The title didn't include "finding a job" or "picking a vocation," but conveyed that the person should come first. When I say the course was "low stakes," that term did not equal "unimporant." Instead, the class was meant to NOT put additional burdens onto students regarding grading and evaluation.
The experience itself was far different than any class I've ever taught. Unlike my business, management, or information systems sections (or even my Batman class, for that matter) there was no common thread of context. Students were not in the room with the same expectations of how specific content would fit into their major (or their vocation, for that matter). Instead, these young people were sharing an open opportunity to explore who they "were."
I don't think the enormity of this responsibility hit me immediately; I had plans for dynamic guest speakers from all parts of our university, career guidance exercises, Myers-Briggs-type self assessments, and more opportunities for self reflection than you could shake a case of leather-bound journals at. Picking a major and a career path would be linear, right?
And then, I started really paying attention.
In addition to in-class activities, I frequently assigned online discussion postings. From here, I started picking up an undertone of the stresses of uncertainty. No direct "cries for help," but enough verbiage to make me wonder just how the class was actually, collectively, feeling. In one of the next classes, I handed out pieces of paper and asked the students to write down a question about anything with the promise to answer them in front of the class; I asked them NOT to include their names so the discussion could be anonymous. I gathered the questions and shuffled them so that the papers would be picked at random, making it impossible to tie specific words to any given student.
Some of the questions were expected; "Mr. Tonkin, how did you pick a career path?" "Do you like your job?" "Why did you want to be a teacher?" Those were easy ones. Then came questions like "how do I avoid being a failure?" and "how will I know what I'm supposed to do with my life?"
Over and over the same feeling came through: The fear of failure. The dread that a single wrong decision could derail an entire career. In the minds of many of these students, there was no place for ambiguity or mistakes. There was only pressure to get everything right; saying the wrong answer was a recipe both for humiliation in class and failure in life.
I found myself calling back to my old high school math teacher, Mr. Terza. Until his geometry class in junior high, I had HATED math. It was a subject that had never come natural to me and I dreaded getting called on in class or being asked to explain how a problem worked. All of that changed during my first week in class. Mr. Terza called on a student to explain a calculation; the student replied "I don't know." Mr. Terza's response? "It's ok not to know. That's how we learn!"
It's important to mention here that Mr. Terza, while being a fantastic teacher and a great man, did NOT tolerate nonsense in his classroom. There was no screwing around and he would yell and enforce discipline when needed. In my entire time in his presence, however, he NEVER berated a student who didn't know the right answer. I may have lost everything Mr. Terza ever taught me about calculating angles and volume, but I never forgot his refrain:
"It's okay not to know. That's how we learn!"
Returning to my spot in the classroom, I realized in my interactions with these students that many of them did not grow up with a Mr. Terza. They have, however, come of age in an era of standardized testing, teaching to tests, and high-stakes (and sometimes costly) exams. They work their way through school systems that are increasingly based off of rigid criteria being taught by teachers who have less control over how they pass on knowledge all the time.
These students have been indoctrinated that there is a single right answer and correct path and that all decisions are based on irrefutable logic. Many of them have been pressured by parents to pursue lucrative careers that have nothing to do with their individual interests. Still others feel the pressure to pick a path on their own that their family will embrace and approve of.
So what's an educator to do? How do we put these students' minds at ease when they don't have it all "figured out" on the first day of freshman year?
I think a good starting point is simply being human and fallible...and in having a sense of humor about it. When I think of my favorite teachers of all time (including Mr. Terza), their amazing intelligence isn't the first thing that strikes me...it's their humility. These folks could admit mistakes, laugh at themselves, and come back and admit when they had told us something wrong. They could lose a debate with a student or make a mistake on an equation; they showed us that NOBODY is right 100% of the time (a lessons that we could all benefit from in 2020).
Giving our students access to really good information is helpful too. Inside Higher Ed estimates that a little over 1 in 4 college grads (27%) ends up in a career related to their major (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/08/02/new-data-track-graduates-six-popular-majors-through-their-first-three-jobs#:~:text=After%20those%20jobs%2C%20however%2C%20the,a%20broad%20array%20of%20careers). That statistic is NOT bad news. The take away is that college (or any kind of relevant and useful post high-school education) helps shape young people into critical thinkers who know how to work well with others. I also share resources like the Department of Labor's O*Net (https://www.onetonline.org/) where you can find starting salaries, career outlooks, job descriptions, and all kinds of useful information. Although this resource provides "money" info, the site also provides great information about what these careers actually look like.
Connecting our students to people close to their own age and lifestyles also helps bridge generational language barriers. I'm a proud GenXer, but I was thrilled to have some younger millennials pay visits to our classroom. In addition to having a closer generational culture connection, these young professionals shared "war stories" about changing careers and putting fear aside to pursue their dreams. They talk about how scary making misktakes was at first, but how stepping out of their fears put them on their paths to big things.
It's so important to let students know that success doesn't look the same to everyone. Some students, indeed, want to make "the big bucks," and end up in careers like finance and banking. Chance are, though, the ones who "make it" in those fields end up loving more than just the money. I like using examples of colleagues who walked away from big paying science or business careers because they found a passion for teaching. Most of these folks also had a moment where they didn't know the answer to the question of where their life should go next.
"It's okay not to know. That's how we learn!"
I probably quote Mr. Terza 100 times a school year. After only five years of retirement, he passed away back in 2008, far too young. I have no doubt that Mr. Terza was living his mission every day in the classroom. I'm convinced, however, that this man knew full well that he wasn't teaching geometry. Or advanced mathematics. Or even calculus. Mr. Terza was teaching students NOT to be intimidated by inquiry. To be able to make mistakes and to admit they didn't know something without fear of being made into a negative example. To explore possibilities under the knowledge that a single wrong answer did not make for a useless human being.
As I put a cap on my 13th semester as a full-time college professor (and a doctoral candidate), I am grateful that I had a teacher who was willing to let me fail for the sake of learning. We should all be so lucky to be in the presence of a person who can turn wrong answers into an opportunity to be better without fear that we are already the worst.
To my students, at the end of 2020, we will spend a LOT of time learning from all the mistakes we've made. I promise to be kind when you don't know the answer if you'll promise to try not to be afraid of trying. Let's end this conversation with one last quote, in honor of the late, great Tom Terza:
"It's okay not to know. That's how we learn!"
Comments
Post a Comment