On Teaching: "Teasing"

Yesterday I slipped back into an annoying old habit, and I don’t intend to let it happen again today. Without even realizing it, I spent a good part of the day “teasing” my students – prodding, badgering, and pestering them as though I were one of their pals. It’s a behavior I used to exhibit regularly with my students – one which I thought I had left behind for good. I no longer admire that kind of behavior in teachers, and I plan to cut it out of my teaching style once and for all. I don’t like the teasing approach to teaching primarily because it suggests an attitude toward students that I find offensive. When I am teasing my students, I am doing it because I am not fully aware of who and what they are. Instead of seeing their true natures, I’m seeing them as merely physical “objects” that can be prodded, badgered, and pestered. Only a “mechanism” can be prodded, only a “thing” can be badgered, and only an “object” can be pestered. If I was seeing my students as they truly are – as talented, diverse, gifted, and infinitely inventive creations of an infinite universe – I would understand that they are not objects to be teased, but wonders to be appreciated. It’s interesting, in this regard, that the original meaning for tease was “To cut (tissue, for example) into pieces for examination.” This suggests, again, that teasing is done to some “thing” that can be taken apart, poked at, fiddled with, studied, and then perhaps cast aside. My students are not things. They are forty-two wonders of the world, and as such, they should be admired, respected, and cherished, not prodded, badgered, and pestered.