Medical Teacher, 2019

https://doi.org/10/1080/0142159X.2018.1508830

Hey, New Faculty . . .

Every year, our School of Medicine puts on a daylong orientation for new faculty. Several colleagues and I have shared responsibility for a topic called “Lecturing.” We rotate each year, depending on who’s available. Our assignment is to talk for eight minutes on how to teach.

One year I tried a “Top Ten Do’s and Don’ts.” I am not a top-ten kind of person and, in attempting to become one, conspicuously violated my number-one “do”: Be yourself. Another year, along similar lines, I tried the catchy “Pearls and Pitfalls.” One of my “pitfalls” was lecture hall technology. The message, an important one I thought, was “use no technology that worries you.” When I recommended chalk as the only safe, reliable, and worry-free technology, I saw the organizers exchange frowns. (Since the classrooms had been equipped with multimillion-dollar computer projection systems, chalk had become heresy.) On a heretical roll, I digressed briefly into the metaphysical connections between the lecturer, the chalk, and the board. The organizers frowned again, more deeply, and I thought that would probably be my last year.

However, as these things go, a fluke in the rotation put me back on the program the very next year. Since the organizers wouldn’t rotate me off, I would need to take control myself. No more distilling teaching tidbits! No more “be organized, be interesting, be on time”! Those just didn’t seem to be the most important messages for new faculty. What really mattered was attitude, and I decided to talk about what that is and where one might find it.

*

In my 40 years of teaching, I’ve observed an interesting pattern among the most promising new teachers at the medical school. In the first few years, they lumber along—seeking advice, taking evaluations to heart, and making steady improvements. The evaluation ratings from students slowly inch up. Then, in a single, seemingly discontinuous step, the next great teacher is born. As if a switch had been thrown, last year’s awkward novice is this year’s graceful teacher-of-the-year.

Might there be wisdom to glean from this observation? Something essential that I could share with new faculty?

What magic throws that switch? (Or is it magic?)

The transformation seems to rest on the ability to let go of a self-conscious “How am I doing?” that preoccupies our earliest teaching efforts. Without that preoccupation, we are free to think about our students and their needs. One day, the focus is still on me: Will they think I’m smart? Are they paying attention to me? Who is better than I am? Who am I better than? How can I finesse this thing I don’t understand? And the next day, because we are somehow ready, our focus is on them, our students: Who are they, and what do they need?

There is a necessary period of self-absorption that lasts several years. We may subscribe to the principles of good teaching (how can we not?), but we cannot live those principles without an initial period of intense self-absorption. During this time, we are learning the material we’re supposed to be teaching; we’re experimenting with style, reflecting on image, dissecting our evaluation numbers to a tenth of a point, fretting over how we compare with our peers, making excuses, blaming the students, and blaming the material.

If we dare observe our colleagues who make teaching look easy, we are convinced that we must not have been endowed with The Gift. We can’t seem to make it happen like they do, and the reason, we think, is not lack of effort, but lack of The Gift. We realize, only in hindsight, that it wasn’t our time yet. We were not quite ready. We were still simmering in our period of growth, still learning the technical aspects of the trade. This period, the adolescence of our teaching, is by its nature self-conscious. It must be, in order for us to do the inside work that needs doing. And, in my opinion, we cannot choose to skip it, since we are growing the confidence to eventually turn outward, toward our students.

Then one day, with a reasonable set of skills and partially executed teaching plans under our belts, we enter the lecture hall and look out at our students. For the first time we see them, really see them. What had been a blur of faces, a composite “them,” is now a sea of individuals. How had we missed this before? We study them. They look vulnerable, eager, serious, worried, cocky, bored, aloof, sweet, tired, amused, mysterious, wistful, ambivalent, kind, lonesome, distracted. They pull us in, and we are curious. Why is he ambivalent? Who wants her to be a doctor? What is his fear? Who might she disappoint? Does he have plans for Thanksgiving? We catch their eyes; it’s 8 o’clock—time to begin. For once, there is no rushed pressure to dive in. We feel confident, almost leisurely. There is time to breathe, smile, and even reveal our contentment. “Good morning, it’s a privilege to be with you. What happens here matters. This is for the long run. Stay with me. Let’s go!”

The transformed teacher is tethered to her students. No matter what happens from here on, the focus is clear and the tether will hold. The work is different now. It is more joyous because it is personal. It is freer and more natural. There is room to move and to be ourselves. We have entered the seemingly effortless phase that had eluded and mystified us before.

And, in a strange and unexpected contradiction, the work becomes more difficult. It keeps us up at night. It matters more that we are expert and that we are clear. It matters more that we are useful because we know our students depend on us. The stakes, now that we have the courage to acknowledge them, are higher. There is a new, more critical judge in place—ourselves. The inner judge is, and forever will be, harsher than any student evaluation, harsher than any peer. The standards become absolute, the sights infinite. There is always more to learn and more to learn to teach. There are always new students, at their own beginnings, to bring along. And, yes, some of those students are ambivalent.

*

There seems to be a window of opportunity for the transformation of new teachers. I say this not from a theoretical standpoint, but simply from observation. I have never seen an older colleague transform in this way. Either it occurs in the early years of a teaching career, or it probably won’t occur. There are senior colleagues who have never been good teachers and never will be, despite repeated poor evaluations. They suffer the pointed comments from students (“retire him, save the school”), yet if anything, they get worse, as rigor sets in and poor evaluations are worn as badges of honor. “I know best. I was clear. Students know nothing. Students are lazy. Teaching evaluations are nothing but popularity contests.” With that fatal final disclaimer, it’s over. There’s no backing down, because to receive positive evaluations now would mean nothing more than winning a “popularity contest.”

Some of the clearest thinkers, writers, and masters of organization freeze at the brink of becoming outstanding teachers. They cannot take the final step, because to turn toward their students, open and unprotected, would mean giving up too much. Their need to outsmart, have the last line, be the center of attention, make it look hard, or be long-suffering trumps their desire to become a great teacher. Despite good effort and real talent, a flaw in the teacher’s internal wiring undermines the connection. Students hear the cynical undertone, or are stifled by the showmanship, or just vaguely sense that all that could have been done was not done. Their instincts correctly say, Back away, something is amiss. Eventually the window of opportunity, which never had a real chance, closes.

On the other hand, teachers with only modest skills can transform. There is the teacher who is adequate, but not technically gifted. Clear spoken, but not eloquent. He is corny and clumsy and, knowing his own limitations better than anyone, preemptively self-effacing. But none of this matters, because the students know he is with them. The students are content not to be entertained or spellbound, content to be instructed solidly in good faith. It is a wonder to behold: an average plodder of a teacher holding a class in his hands.

*

So, new faculty: Enter your period of self-absorption. Spend your necessary time there and develop your skills. Be patient and alert for the moment when you are ready to turn outward toward your students. You will feel the tug. Once that switch is thrown, there will be no looking back. These are the beginnings of attitude. Welcome aboard!