Do we Have 80-Year-Old Students?

I was at a meeting earlier this month (on my campus) about developmental education. We had a broad conversation about ‘what works’ and what we would like to do. The person leading the meeting has a background in writing — including developmental writing courses; I’ll call him George for convenience.

George told the story of one particular student he was having trouble with. The student was polite and all that, but could not write a coherent paper. After grading some papers with agony, including one responding to Angela Davis, the instructor (George) had a conversation with the student. Based on that conversation, they decided to have the student write about a different topic — the student’s own experiences in a war (World War II, in this case). The result, according to George, was a well-written essay (far longer than required). The lesson George took from this was … let them write about something meaningful to them.

My response to this story was:

We should look for 80-year-old students in our classes, who happen to be stuck inside a 20-year-old body.

You see, my lesson from the story is a different. Students are complex human beings (there is no other kind). For ‘good students’, they can focus on academics and see what we expect of them. For ‘struggling students’, they have difficulty keeping their history and current life challenges separate from what we ask of them in a classroom. The student in the story was 80 years old at the time, and had much to deal with; of course, writing about something personally important is meaningful. However, society in general … and occupations in particular … demand that we communicate about ideas that we do not necessarily care about.

The lesson, for me, is this: Students need to learn how to separate and focus. Many of our students have had challenges in their lives; sometimes, this is just a math challenge. Other times, they have faced significant life issues and trauma. Just being able to talk about these will help a student focus in class. Sometimes, they do not realize that the challenges they have faced will be a benefit in a math class. To some extent, the affective factors can prevent cognitive work; just articulating the issues behind the affective can let the brain focus on the cognitive.

It’s tempting to say that “the lesson is to show students that we ‘care’ about them as people”. Many of us do care about our students. However, my observations do not support this conclusion in general. I think the lesson is more subtle than ‘we care’ or ‘make it relevant’. Maybe the lesson is more like “give them credit for making it this far.”

Our students have faced a lot of life, whether they are 20 or 80. For some, they have overcome more challenges in 20 years than I will have faced in 80. We seem to be more gracious to the 80-year-old than the 20-year-old. I think we should look for all of the 80-year-olds in our classes, especially those who are stuck in a 20-year-old body.

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