"The individual student: Our most precious asset as teachers"--from China Post

This afternoon, I bumped into the following China Post article written by Daniel J. Bauer, which was run on Sep. 29, 2002, the day after Teacher's Day. Since I cannot find the article online, I typed it up in 10 minutes.

It reminds me of the time I spent with each student. Yes, each student deserves their teachers' attention.

The individual student: Our most precious asset as teachers

Daniel J. Bauer

Sep. 29, 2002

One of the most effective ways to teach English composition is to use what I call the coaching method. I try very hard to fit coaching time into my writing classes.

The students come to class having handed in three-page essays the previous week. By the beginning of class I’ll have already circled mistakes or style problems, and return their pages with a grade. We start class as a whole group, no coaching yet. We use textbooks to study prescribed pages, and then, with 30 minutes till the dismissal bell, I’ll say, “OK, time for coaching now.”

The students divide into small groups and work on assigned writing or discussion tasks. While the group work, I quietly call students individually to my desk for five or six minutes of private coaching on the composition I’ve already put back in their hands. We go over the correction code (VT for “verb tense,” WF for “word form,” and so on), and I answer questions and comment on their writing.

Coaching is terribly time-consuming. It takes weeks to cover everyone in the room, but eventually, every young friend gets a turn at it. Then, when new homework assignments are turned in and corrected, we start the coaching cycle all over again.

One of the things I like most about coaching is that it is an individual encounter. No one else but the student and I look at the words on that paper, and the student is able to get full attention, away from the ears and elbows of classmates.

One time several years ago, as I finished a coaching session a student stood up and thanked me. “You’re welcome,” I smiled, “but I was just doing my job.” From his expression, you’d have thought I had just smacked him with a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. He fell back into his chair and said, “Please don’t say that. You’re not just ‘doing your job.’ You’re a teacher. You just taught me!”

He was right, of course.

As teachers, we spend huge gobs of time and energy on large issues and large groups. We met with colleagues around long big tables. Hallway we walk down on our way to class are like jammed aisles in sports stadium. Classrooms have 50, 60 or more students in the. The stacks of homework we carry in our hands seem as tall as mountains. With so many and so much, it is all too easy to lose sight of the importance of “The One.” We overlook the beauty and the significance of the individual encounter with the individual student who, from time to time, needs a special touch of extra care.

Yesterday marked the traditional holiday that honors Confucius and the role of teachers in Chinese culture. During these very hours, articles and editorials and columns like this one are emphasizing the importance of education in our society. In our concern for the masses and the grandeur of education, how many of us will remember the incalculable value of the individual student?

I am still grateful today to the student who reminded me that I was not just doing my job when I gave him a few minutes of attention. I need to remember more often that when I am able to take a moment to treat a student as an individual, I am perhaps being the best kind of teacher I can be. Whenever any of us teachers write a thoughtful letter of recommendation, or pauses to chat or crack a joke with a student, we are doing the right thing. Whenever we respond to a student’s e-mail or phone message, or put our work aside to welcome the visit (and maybe the tears) of a troubled young friend, we are sending a powerful message. That message is that, even in our most overly-populated and insanely active schools, the individual student is still our most precious commodity.

If the previous sentence is not true, then our schools are only assembly lines and our teachers are only technicians.

On Teacher’s Day, I think we teachers should especially remember that the most bustling classroom is only a place full of students who are individuals, each one-of-a-kind. We should not forget that, in the end, the screw that holds the whole engine of education together is the individual student. Without him or her, we wouldn’t have any schools at all, or any teachers, or hopes for the future, either.

 

Father Daniel J. Bauer SVD is a priest and associate professor at Fu Jen Catholic University. He is Chair of the English Department of Fu Jen’s School of Continuing Education.

 

(Typed up by Hsin-jung Lee, Feb. 13, 2015)

 

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The individual student_Our most precious asset as teachers