The Pain of Attack

This week I learned that I am the target of a formal complaint, my first, by a former student. This is an adult student; I teach at the community college level.

The attack seems to be aimed largely at who I am as a person; that my open and honest personality is being perceived as inappropriate and offensive. This despite the fact that I am honest from the first day of class about who I am and how I teach. This despite the fact that on more than one occasion I reacted to this student’s concerns about the way a particular subject was being handled in the classroom and immediately took steps to validate not only his viewpoint, but the potentiality that his viewpoint was silently shared by one or more classmates.

He was offended by the fact that I claim “fall in love” with my students, and so take steps to set boundaries. I ask students to address me by my title (Mrs. or Ms.) and last name, not my first name, the more generally accepted informal manner of instructors at this level. He was offended by the fact that when he expressed concern over subject matter and how it was handled in the book we were reading, that his classmates didn’t agree with his viewpoint. He felt that I allowed a disrespectful atmosphere to be created because they did not agree with him. When I then opted to allow students to forgo of a viewing of a video that someone who shared his viewpoint might find offensive, and at some point in that offer that I made eye contact with him, he was outraged. He left out the part that I made eye contact with most of the students hoping to let them know that they would not be penalized in any way if they weren’t interested in the video that was scheduled to play that day. He did, however, leave out the fact that I sought him out separately to further validate his feelings and thank him for bringing the subject up.

He was offended that he now knows that I was hurt as a child, although the specifics of offense were not discussed, and that I was abandoned by my parents. He was offended that I used humorous stories about my family to teach lessons on paragraph structure or literary character development.

He accused me of not being sensitive to different learning styles, while openly pointing out that I had used discussion, power point, writing and videos in my teaching. He feels that I need training in sexual harassment, sensitivity training and to learn more about teaching to different learning styles.

The kicker here is that he is a good student, not someone who blames me for a bad grade. He didn’t feel the class was academically rigorous enough. Of course it wasn’t; he really didn’t need the class academically, but the school requires it. He did learn, his writing did improve and he did earn a very high grade. I suppose in his mind, his view is made more valid by the fact that he earned a high grade.

It is difficult to react appropriately to a complaint about my personality and personal style. Initially I was concerned that if a student thought my personality was inappropriate, then I would be reprimanded by my superiors and potentially fired. When I first read the letter of complaint, I felt the need to apologize for the way I presented and supported the material. I’m not sure what is sadder: the fact that this student chose to attack me, or the fact that I felt the need to apologize for being me.

Last week two current students pulled me aside to speak privately. One thanked me for sharing my personal story about returning to school. She has been working for years towards transfer to a UC and when I spoke about graduating with my AA degree and walking in the ceremony a full year before I transferred to a four year university, she realized that she too needed the validation I spoke of. She is very grateful; she says that she is inspired by me and my story, and she has since shared my story with the people in her life. Another student, the same week, thanked me for sharing information about my dysfunctional family because she sees many similarities between her situation and mine; she feels connected to the course, more than she usually connects in school. That connection is likely going to help her succeed now and in the future.

So why does this one complaint bother me so much? I suppose it is because it dances dangerously close to the buttons that surround my abandonment and abuse issues. Reacting to pain as a child tended to lead a question by my parental units about what I had done wrong to provoke the hurt. The assumption seemed to be that I had done something wrong and deserved to be hurt, or that I brought the pain on myself. Being blamed for the wrong done to me seems to be a running theme from my childhood. I spent my entire childhood, and an oversized chunk of my adulthood, wondering what was so fundamentally wrong with me, something I was so blind to that I couldn’t change, that would cause my bio-parents to leave me, or other adults feel that they could assault me without consequence.

A colleague pointed out that intelligent people tend to try and understand what part of a difficult situation they actually own. I have gone over and over the time spent with this student in my head, but it seems that the only thing I could have changed that would have made this student happy was myself. I can’t do that. I won’t do that.