Compassion in the Classroom

On Tuesday, my best friend’s newborn died. She was two days old.

On Wednesday morning, I zombied through classes, trying to push grief out of my mind to do my job. I wanted to tell everyone what had happened, but I thought about how I would feel as a slightly disaffected college freshman and decided not to.

At lunch, I ate alone, as usual seeing no coworkers and talking to no adults. I IMed with friends about how we didn’t know what to think or feel or say. I cried in the bathroom.

Before my afternoon class, I ran into my supervisor, and in addition to telling her I needed to set up a meeting to talk to her about next fall, I told her what happened. “End class early,” she told me. “Take care of your friend.

She was showing me compassion, and reminding me to show it to myself as well.

I have always been compassionate with my students, especially because I know college, especially those first few years, is so hard. It’s hard to be away from your family. It’s hard to learn to manage homework, a job, a social life, and sleep. It’s hard to feel isolated and homesick, sometimes while also battling a mental or chronic illness on top of it.

But other professors think differently. They have zero-tolerance policies on late work, on missed classes, on tardiness. They think that in giving an inch, students will take a mile. 

And sometimes I worry if I should follow their lead. I wonder if my leniency with my students’ absences and missing work is holding them back somehow, like I’m teaching them that life is easy and anyone can be manipulated to give them what they want. Millennials, after all, are stereotyped as lazy and privileged, having everything at their fingertips.

But this week has taught me that there's nothing more needed sometimes than compassion. The genuine look of relief that crosses my students' faces when I tell them they can have extra time on an assignment, or that they can make up an absence to go home and be with their families during hard times, is the same look I gave my supervisor when she told me to take care of myself and my friend.

Yes, sometimes I might be seen as a pushover. I might be seen as "easy," and might be perpetrating some of my students' attitudes that life is a candy dish they make take from at any time. But I figure, why chance it? Why miss the chance to really help someone when a lot of times as a professor, especially an adjunct professor, I don't feel like I make much of a difference at all?

I figure even if I can help one student get through a tough spot without having to fall behind in school, I've done my job.

On Wednesday, I got an email from a student whose brother had just passed away. She was going home for a while to be with her family. Unable to keep from getting too personal, I told her to take the time she needed, and that I would catch her up when she got back. I told her that I just had a loss in my life and understood. And for the first time, I really did.