The Inspired Teacher by Donna Quesada

Author:Donna Quesada
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2016-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

Dharma: The Lesson for Teachers

Since first penning this chapter, another incident in class compelled me to seize the Scantron forms of two young men who had been exchanging answers. Afterward, I felt sad rather than angry, and defeated rather than victorious. Even though you got them? a friend asked. Yes. Because when someone cheats, the tendency is to assume an object of the action: Who got cheated? As the instructor, it’s easy to think they cheated you because they’re getting away with something in your classroom behind your back. We feel sour and betrayed, and we certainly can’t trust them. So, as advised by fellow profs and well-meaning veterans, we devise tricks to outfox them. At the very least, we stagger alternate versions of the test so that no one sits next to anyone else with the same version (something I neglected to do in this particular instance). We separate students, we surprise them, and some of us even stand on our desks.

The students, in their turn, invent new maneuvers. They create bathroom emergencies where they can access information hidden under their clothes, they clear their throats, they engrave key terms on their pencils and shoes, and they write in shorthand on their backpacks. They devise their own Morse code, with coughs and winks: one blink for True; two for False. They text each other. And in our turn, we prevent bathroom visits, we separate them from their buddies, and we watch. One colleague collects cell phones on test day, depositing them all into a cardboard box until all tests are turned in. And the go-round repeats itself year after year, in the coffee room as well as in the classroom, reliving itself in the confessions and exchanges between frustrated instructors.

It’s a power struggle, with you as the teacher vying to maintaining control and authority. And like an invisible pollutant, it’s the by-product of anxiety that arises with any unwanted but lingering conflict, fostering an equally unwanted punitive quality in the classroom. The silent tension is driven on by your belief that there is a price offenders must pay—for their own action and for its deterrent effect on the others watching.

But if we have the courage to point the wagging finger the other way, just as an experiment, it would allow us to ask if we’re concluding falsely. Certainly cheating has reached epidemic proportions and needs to be regarded as such. But is it that they don’t respect their teachers and the classroom, or anything else (especially honesty) as a basic virtue? Is it that they aren’t interested in learning? Maybe it’s not about any of that. But if it is respect they lack, we could ask ourselves where we failed to earn it, and if it’s interest they lack, we might fashion new ways of awakening it.

Maybe they simply don’t trust themselves. We might then ask ourselves how we can inspire that much-needed faith. Consider the tragedy: We don’t trust them, and they don’t trust themselves, either!

When Buddhism went from India to China, it fell into easy kinship with China’s native Taoism.

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