(This is an adaptation of an article that originally appeared in Verdadera, a student run publication for Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, CA, April 2008)

When the Verdadera staff asked me to write the essay for this issue, my thoughts immediately went to how my husband talks about his interactions with his students and how it seems so different from my recollections of high school. I have no memories of voluntarily going into teachers’ rooms at lunch or after school to just hang out and chat, but from the way he describes his days, casual, friendly visits from students sound like a regular occurrence at Monta Vista. And while I don’t think I’ve set foot in my high school since I graduated, my husband frequently tells of former students stopping by his room on their breaks to talk about their experiences at college. He even receives emails from some of them.

This all seems to indicate the relationships many of his students have with him are very different than any I ever had with my teachers. If I thought about them at all, I probably viewed my teachers as creatures from another planet, not as living, breathing people with their own families, children, lives and histories of their own. They were just something I had to endure for a period of time in between the important, interesting parts of my adolescent day. Many of my husband’s students seem to see him as a real person; they ask him questions about his likes and dislikes, they seek his opinion on books, colleges and movies, they are curious about his family, and (at least from his perspective) enjoy his stories about his son. There seems to be a more informal, friendly give and take in his classroom than I recall as a high schooler. Maybe it’s because I’m hearing about it from the teacher’s perspective that it sounds so foreign.

On the other hand, my son’s relationships with his teachers appear to mirror more closely my own. While there have been a couple that he’s occasionally visited after school with his buddies, for the most part he seems to want to avoid contact with them as much as possible. He sees them more in their role as “the teacher” than as a person trying to perform a difficult job under less than optimal conditions. I have found it interesting that he has a habit of assuming his teacher doesn’t really like him at the start of the school year until we’ve met for the first parent-teacher conference, at which time he hears all these positive things about himself and his view of the teacher generally rises substantially. Not surprisingly, his initial (usually flawed) belief of his teacher’s opinion greatly influences both his interactions with the teacher, and with his enjoyment in the class.

As a parent volunteer in all his elementary classes, I was able to form my own relationships with his teachers. Due the different role I played in the classroom (‘adult helper’ rather than ‘child student’) I saw them in a very different light. I had a more objective perception of them as regular people whose job was to teach. Some did it better than others, and some enjoyed it more than others. Because I was able to follow my son and his classmates over a course of several years, I was able to observe how they interacted with different teachers in sometimes widely diverse ways. I saw how the more gentle, nurturing teachers helped the shyer, less confident students blossom, while these same children almost faded into the woodwork with some of their other teachers. At the same time, some of the more rambunctious boys were calmer and more focused with the more forceful teachers. The mix of student personalities within the classroom also played a big role in how everyone, students and teachers, treated each other.

Now, as a full fledged, supposedly “mature” adult I am once again in the role of student, enrolled in a professional certificate program through the UC Santa Cruz Extension. This is a challenge for me as I have been much more likely to play the role of teacher and mentor for the last fifteen years. So, for the first time since I received my Master’s degree back in the 1980’s, I am worrying about things like readings, papers, exams, and grades. My five pound textbooks are cluttering up our living room, along with my highlighters, pens and notepads. The ever-present knowledge of reading waiting to be completed keeps me from fully enjoying moments of sitting and doing nothing. It is really easy for my stress about getting all my work done to turn into resentment at my teacher for ruining my weekend.

While in the classroom, I find myself getting annoyed when the instructor goes off on tangents or appears disorganized. I feel irritated when the assignments are not clearly delineated, and I begin an internal critique of the professor’s teaching ability. Yet, I am also much more aware of my own processes now than I ever was before. I realize that at least part of my reaction is due to my own anxiety about appearing to be the “good student,” and this contributes to my annoyance and irritation with the teacher. I can see now how even though I may not have liked or even respected many of my teachers while I was in high school, I always wanted them to see me as the “smart student”. It was important that teachers respect my academic skills, and those who showed the least respect for me, or at least left me the most confused (and thus feeling “stupid”), were always the ones I gave the most trouble. As a teen and even as a college student, I was not able to separate the individual teacher from the role and see who they were as a person. If I felt “stupid” in their class, they were a bad person.
Now, with the perception that comes with experience, it is getting easier for me to step back and take a larger view of things. At the same time that I am analyzing my own personal reactions to my instructors and judging their teaching skills, I am also thinking about teachers in a much broader sense. Not only am I married to a teacher, several of my friends are or were teachers, I have had numerous teachers as clients, and I have worked in schools alongside teachers. I have been both a preschool teacher and a college instructor. I have also served as teacher to many therapy interns in my role as clinical supervisor. For years, I have been listening to teachers talk and this has given me many opportunities to think about them and their work.

While it may be difficult to see it as an adolescent, the relationship that develops between student and teacher is very much influenced by not just the particular individuals involved, but also by many factors outside their direct control. Each is playing out a role in a much larger drama which involves not just their individual personalities, but also the rest of the kids in the class, the culture of the school, and the view the larger society holds of teachers, education and learning.