As a liberal first year composition teacher who, on better days, believes in the decency of mankind, I was terrified by an 18 year old girl on the first day of my first class. I don’t remember how we arrived at the conversation, but at some point after we tediously outlined the syllabus, she said it and I knew immediately that we were all doomed.
“Oh, I’m definitely voting for Donald Trump,” she offered. The rest of the class fell silent, all of their eyes darting toward me, somehow already knowing that I would be deeply troubled by this statement. Maybe my septum ring gave it away. Maybe they were filled with the same blend of terror and bewilderment at hearing such a sentiment from one of their own–our generation, after all, is known for being characteristically filled with glossy-eyed democrats. I traced her face for any cues of irony. I found none.
I don’t recall exactly how I reacted. I like to think that I played it cool, though, that I somehow assuaged the tension with a bipartisan-friendly joke that would have made Marco Rubio and Hilary Clinton both buckle with laughter; Rubio reaching across the aisle to pat Clinton on the back.
Chances are I wasn’t that suave. I wanted to scream, cry, and jump on the first flight to Switzerland all in the same instant.
I didn’t want to expose my bias to the class. Especially not that early on in the game. But I fear, knowing myself as well as I do, that whatever my response was, did not do much in the way of veiling. I wondered, though, later on: what is the real benefit in playing this hiding game with my students? Why should they not know where I fall on certain topics? The professional zeitgeist certainly seems to discourage such actions. From what I can gather, it is frowned upon for a teacher to let his or her bias show in topics like these. I can see why this is the case in theory (you don’t want to make any students feel shunned or like they can’t or shouldn’t vocalize their beliefs in class and on papers, of course), but is there not a way for a teacher to express his or her opinions in an inclusive way? With care and sensitivity, I think there is. And, what’s more, there is a way in which doing so can inspire better in-class discussions. None of my own teachers, regardless of how successful they believe they may have been in achieving this, have ever been able to truly mask their own biases.
Students are likely to feel less self-conscious in verbalizing their own beliefs if we, the teachers, also do not flinch in doing so. There are ways in which we can influence the culture of a given classroom and I think this is one of them. I am in no way, however, claiming that teachers should run rampant with their opinions, dashing down students left and right. Like I said before, it has to be done carefully. Perhaps simply addressing how your own opinions are bound to creep their way into your rhetoric on the first day of class could work–telling them that it in no way will affect your students’ grades nor your views of them as people. Remind them that we all arrive at the classroom from disparate backgrounds and constitutions and that this is not only the cornerstone of argument, democracy, and good discussion, but it is also (when the mind is open) the way that some of the best learning is achieved.