First Person

Welcome to the 13th Grade

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By Mike Davis

Community colleges around the country are referred to (both lovingly and derisively) as the 13th grade by their students. The aptness of the moniker may be a product of the attitudes of the students; it may be attributable to the foibles of certain faculty members; but the aptness itself is, at least occasionally, inescapable.

In my years as a graduate student at Princeton University, I have supplemented my income by teaching at private and public universities as well as community colleges -- and I can say that my pedagogical strategies change drastically from one context to another (despite a certain egalitarian impulse that tells me they shouldn't).

I started teaching at the college level quite early in my life. Because of a high grade on a final exam in a geology course, I was invited to become a lab instructor as a senior at the University of North Texas. It was my first teaching assignment, but I don't remember feeling the slightest bit nervous about it. One of my professors had told me that the secret to teaching college students successfully was to treat them like adults. "Treat them like adults, and they'll act like adults," he said.

"It's that simple?" I asked, incredulous.

"It's really just that simple," he insisted.

Because I started teaching geology before I was of age to buy alcohol, my primary reason for treating my students like adults was so that they would treat me like one. But whatever my motivation may have been, there was no arguing with the results. My students did well on their assignments; my evaluations were extremely warm and enthusiastic. If I could be so successful as a lab instructor teaching geology, I just knew that Hollywood would end up making a movie about the way I taught literature (as soon as I got my chance).

After I started precepting literary survey courses at Princeton, I found that the Hollywood scenario wasn't meant to be, as my colleagues in the graduate program were all just as good as (or better than) I was at reaching students. But I continued to treat my students like adults, and my students continued to act like adults who did well on their assignments and who were generally warm and enthusiastic about my teaching style on their evaluations.

When my fellowship money ran out while I was still working on my dissertation, my wife received a job offer that took us back to Texas, where I ended up teaching at a public institution. The students may not have had the standardized-test scores of the average Princeton undergraduate, and they may not have had the benefit of 12 years of private schooling, but I taught Chaucer and Milton exactly as I had taught them at Princeton. As someone who could never have afforded to attend an Ivy League institution on anything other than a fellowship, I felt a sense of obligation not to try to simplify or gloss over the things that I had learned at Princeton. I continued to treat my students like adults, and my classes continued to go well.

A year later, my wife received another job offer that landed us in Pennsylvania. I wanted to keep teaching without having to commute into Philadelphia, so I ended up taking adjunct positions at a couple of nearby community colleges. This was where I expected to encounter the genuinely disenfranchised. In my youth, I wound up befriending a lot of brilliant kids who resisted what they perceived as the authoritarian structure of college or who wanted to find themselves or who ended up becoming strung out on drugs -- kids who blew their chance to attend college when their parents were willing to foot the bill. A lot of them ended up in the military and found themselves (eventually) enrolled in community colleges, willing to work hard and looking to rise from the ashes of their old lives.

Those people really do exist at community colleges. And it's a joy to teach them. In my composition and literature courses, I've encountered talented and intelligent students who simply lack the means to attend more traditional institutions (at least for the first two years of their college careers), and I do my best to prepare them for earning their degrees at any institution (no matter how pricey or rigorous). But I confess that I have also encountered the occasional students at community colleges who seem not to have analogues at the level of the public or private university.

I treat them like adults, but it doesn't "take." Those of you who are considering teaching at a community college may want to develop specific strategies for dealing with these types of students. The names have been changed to protect the innocent (or, in this case, the oblivious), but the problems persist.

Shirley: I have encountered only one Shirley, but I want to start with her because she seems so compellingly strange. About 10 minutes into her first class with me, Shirley raised her hand to ask if she could go to the restroom. "This is college," I said, "you're adults. If, in your judgment, you need to leave the room for any reason, feel free to just get up and go." Shirley was practically out the door by the time I finished my sentence. And for the remainder of the semester, she left the classroom about 10 minutes into each class. Maybe she went to the restroom each time. Maybe she prowled the hallway. I really don't know, but it seemed as if she left the room merely to prove to herself anew each Tuesday and Thursday that she was allowed to do so.

The Shirley Solution: Even though Shirley presumably came into class knowing that she intended to step outside for a few minutes, it didn't occur to her to take a seat near the door. For the first couple of weeks, she kept taking the same seat in the middle rear of the classroom, which meant that she had to walk in front of half a dozen students each time she decided to exit. My suggestion that she get into the habit of attending to whatever was taking her outside before class began met with no success, as she wanted to hold me to my promise of freedom. Eventually, I had to insist that she take a seat next to the door since there appeared to be no way of curtailing her peregrinations without retracting my earlier pronouncement about how my students were adults. Designing a seating chart for one student was not particularly consistent with my teaching philosophy, but it seemed to be the only solution.

Jay: I seem to encounter a guy like Jay in every one or two classes. Jay is a drug addict who is going to school so that his parents don't throw him out of their house. Jay shows up to class because he is afraid of what his parents will do if he flunks out of community college (after having flunked out of two or three more-expensive institutions). Jay is usually well behaved, although he sniffles rather more than one would like. He sits placidly waiting for the class to end because he got high before coming in and will reward himself by getting high again as soon as class is over. The problem with Jay is that he is just invested enough in the idea of passing his classes for tests to make him nervous. Whenever there is a test, Jay makes a quick visit to the restroom for a fix. While he is in the stall, I have no doubt that Jay thinks the fix is all he needs to get him through the test. But when he returns to his desk and looks at the exam, he can't help noticing that he feels far too good to be taking a test. After a few deep breaths, Jay picks up the exam and hands it to me. "I've got somewhere I need to be," he says, his eyes dancing madly but never quite alighting on my own, "so I guess I'll have to take a zero on this one."

The Jay Non-Solution: Despite many opportunities, I have never managed to help get Jay through any of my courses successfully. What Jay does when he leaves the room before a test is, of course, only a matter of conjecture on my part (though the conjecture is based on certain telltale habits and the almost alarmingly frank autobiographical details that Jay tends to reveal about himself in his essays). I don't feel comfortable confronting students about suspected drug habits, so all I've ever managed to say to Jay is something nebulously constructive, such as, "Jay, whatever you're doing when you step out of the room before a test obviously isn't helping your performance on the test. How about trying this one without leaving the classroom?" Unfortunately, Jay's response is something along these lines: "Tests make me nervous, and when I'm nervous, I have to run to the bathroom. I'll be right back, and I'm definitely going to finish this one." But when he comes back, he doesn't finish. I simply don't know how to help him.

Louis: I encounter Louis with depressing regularity. The only lesson that Louis seems to have learned from his shoddily managed school district is to equate attendance with education. Louis never misses a class unless he is genuinely ill. And he always brings me mountains of documentation after an absence to confirm that he was ill -- no matter how vehemently I insist that I don't need to see it. He doesn't ask questions or contribute to discussions or make his presence felt in any way, but he expects his attendance to be noted. Louis doesn't try to undermine the class, and he never falls asleep, but he has absolutely no intention of passing the courses he takes. He doesn't do the reading, hands in assignments only fitfully, and never pays any attention to the parameters of the assignments that he bothers to "complete." I confronted my first Louis about his puzzling behavior. After handing back his third failing essay, I asked him to stay after class. "What you wrote was interesting as a sort of journal entry," I said, "but it wasn't even close to what I asked for. I wanted 500 words concerning the short story we read last week. You gave me less than 100 words on your mother. I wanted a typewritten, proofread essay. You gave me a bunch of handwritten phrases without transitions or coherence. Whether you want to make an effort to pass this class or not is up to you, but I just want to make sure that you understand there's no chance of your passing if you don't meet the requirements of the assignments."

"I couldn't write about that story because I never read it," Louis said.

"Why didn't you read it before attempting the assignment?" I asked.

"I lost my book," he replied, shrugging.

"OK," I said. "Instead of suggesting that you buy another book or borrow a copy from someone for assignments, I'm just going to ask you, out of sheer curiosity, why you bothered to do the assignment at all if you knew that you were going to fail it."

"I didn't want to come into class empty-handed," he said.

He had come into class empty-handed before, so that answer didn't make sense to me. But the more overwhelming question that his answer raised -- the one that I lacked the courage to ask -- was why he bothered to come to class at all (empty-handed or otherwise) when he knew that he was never going to satisfy a single requirement for passing the course. I have encountered at least a dozen Louises, and they always leave me flummoxed. They usually end up in my 8 a.m. classes, and I wonder what motivates them to drag themselves out of bed on February mornings, scrape the ice off their windshields, drive to their local community college, and ignore me as I talk about subject-verb agreement. I want to shake them by the shoulders and make them tell me why they bother, but I'm not entirely persuaded that they know the answer.

The Louis Non-Solution Since critical thinking is part of what English courses purport to teach, people like Louis have a way of making me feel like a complete failure as a teacher. If I can't get a kid to figure out that, according to the most rudimentary logic, he should withdraw from my class, then I have to wonder what conclusion I am capable of helping him to reach. I have to fight the urge to drive Louis out of my class like some kind of wounded bird that has had time to heal and must be returned to the wild. He doesn't belong in my classroom precisely because he is incapable of figuring out why he doesn't belong in my classroom. But the only way to make him see how completely he is wasting his time is to talk to him like a child. Unfortunately, I have no talent for talking to children. That's why I went into adult education in the first place. I suspect that the solution for a person like Louis is something that he missed in elementary school. If you can teach me how to teach him that lesson (whatever it is), I will be grateful for your advice.

The vast majority of my students are just as puzzled by Shirley, Jay, and Louis as I am. I don't mean to leave the reader with the impression that community colleges are overrun by academic pariahs and the socially inept. It's just that I don't remember encountering students like these at more traditional universities, and the basic principle of my theory of adult pedagogy doesn't seem to apply to these anomalous students. For the most part, it's true that if you treat students like adults, they'll act like adults. But at the community college, I can attest that there are some students who, if you treat them like adults, won't notice.