Credibility First - Part 2 - Take Your Work Seriously

Imagine this scenario.  

You go to a gym and hire a personal trainer, excited to meet your fitness goals and willing to pay for it. When you arrive, the trainer:

• gives you snacks.
• chats with you about movies and music for 10 minutes. 
• jokes with you throughout the session.
• asks you about your hobbies. 
• About halfway into the session, she hands you a relatively small weight and asks you to do bicep curls but doesn't show you how to do it properly.  
• You do a few with very poor form because you don't know the right way to do it. The poor form is okay with her because "the point is that you do it, not how you do it." 
• She praises you for your effort and says, "Look how strong you are." 

When you leave that session, you may like your new trainer on a personal level, but you will leave feeling that your time and money has been wasted.  You won't be sore the next day, indicating that you didn't challenge any muscles. You won't know any more about fitness when you leave than you did when you entered. And, I'm going to guess that, while you may like your new trainer, you won't respect her work.

You won't achieve your goals, and you won't return to this gym.

Yet, there are people who think this is what classroom teachers should do. Give snacks, make it fun, and build relationships first.  And the result with students is the same as it was in the above scenario. They like the fun and relationship-y teacher, but they don't achieve their goals, and they don't respect the teacher's work.

As a teacher of 25 years, I do understand that relationships matter, but I also understand that they cannot come first.  In fact, adolescents find it kind of creepy when you try to establish a relationship too early. They can sense a scam a mile away, so they know if you are forming a relationship in a manipulative way. After one first day of school, my nephew (who was then in middle school) said, "She's weird. She smiled way too much." For him, her relationships first approach came off as false.

So, please allow me to propose a different model - credibility first.  If you give students confidence that you know what you are doing and will help them achieve, they are more likely to be open to the teacher-student relationship you hope to establish.

Let's revisit the gym. You show up for your personal training session and you:

• notice the trainer has her certifications posted on the wall. This helps you feel confident that she is trained.
• see that she has weights already laid out in a circuit. You know your time won't be wasted and she isn't depending on your to tell her what you should do.
• hear explanations of proper form, explanations of what you should feel as you lift, and feedback on what you are doing in an encouraging and jovial way. This helps you feel confident you could do it later on your own.
• feel challenged throughout the session even though she has a lighthearted manner. You know she is getting the best out of you, and you'll be the good kind of sore tomorrow.
• have a nice chat after the session. You like that she wants to get to know you a little and may feel inclined to share a little more after next week's session.

Do you see the difference? Knowing the trainer takes her work seriously makes you more comfortable with her, not less.

Let me divert to yet another context.  I have been attending a liturgical church for about a year.  For those who don't know, liturgical churches involve a lot of scripted time that is repeated regularly. Every week, we say the creed and the Lords' prayer. Every week, we sing the doxology. There is some call and response (e.g. Officiant: "This is the Word of the Lord" Congregation: "Thanks be to God.") 

Having had little prior experience with that kind of service, I assumed before my first visit that it might be kind of dry. In fact, it has been quite the opposite. Not having to generate my own response to everything has allowed me to notice certain parts of the creed differently in different weeks. 

• Some weeks, it may be "Creator of heaven and earth, all that is, seen and unseen" that sticks with me.  
• Other Sundays, it might be the fact that Jesus "suffered under Pontius Pilate" that my mind dwells on. 
• Replying to an officiant's "Peace be with you" with "and also with you" encourages empathy throughout my week.  
• After communion, we say a post communion prayer.  It includes the line, "And now, send us out to do the work You have given us to do."  Because we say it so often, I look forward to that line and think about it throughout the week.  

This is is so far from a dry recitation; it buries words deep within me in a way that only repetition can. And it happens because the clergy take their work very seriously.  This is never more obvious to me than when they prepare and administer communion.  During the offering, one of the ministers lays out the wafer plates and pours the wine and water into several goblets. They each do it a bit differently, but they all do it with care.  It's clear that it is a responsibility they don't undertake lightly.  Lest you think this means they are stone faced about it, let me assure you that watching them administer communion is one of the highlights of my week because they do it with such joy. They look the congregant directly in the eye as they hand them the wafer, saying, "Take this in remembrance that Christ died for you." They know my name, so I get a very personal, "Beth, take this in remembrance that Christ died for you." They pray for and fist bump small children who are not yet taking communion, and those kids walk away knowing someone cares for their spiritual health and also enjoys their presence in the church.  As I described watching my pastor during communion to a friend, "I love watching his joy during communion.  It's like he just can't believe this is part of his job."

I said all of that to say this.  Credibility first isn't sour and joyless.  You can show your care, your passion, and your knowledge of content simultaneously. And this will attract students to your work. You will still end up with relationships if you don't make them first.  You may never establish credibility if you do.

What does this look like in the classroom?  I imagine there are a number of ways it could look, depending on your context, but I'll tell you what I did in mine:

• I started the first day by telling students why I went into education, what degree I had (diploma posted on the wall next to my teaching certificate), and my years of experience. I said, "I'm not bragging; I just want you to know you are in good hands.")
• I gave them an outline of the year, so they knew I had a plan from the start.
• I assigned seats in rows. I know that is a controversial one, and I'm not saying you have to do it. For me, it communicated from the start that there was someone in charge and that I was the person to whom they should pay attention.
• I promised that, while not everything would be fun, everything would be worthwhile.  I made it fun where I could, of course, and I had an amiable classroom demeanor, but I made it clear that fun wasn't the goal; learning was.
• We established some procedures and routines that I assured them would make things run more smoothly.
• I meant what I said. There were never false promises or empty threats.
• I explained my reasons for what I was doing whenever possible.
• I laughed at myself when I made mistakes. Taking your work seriously doesn't have to mean taking yourself too seriously.
• When I screwed up, I did everything I could to make it right for my kids.
• If I got through all of the planned things with a few minutes left, it was only then that I chatted with them about hobbies or pets. I also used lunch duty, morning door duty, and after school interactions for those kinds of conversations.  I attended sporting events and concerts and plays to show that I cared about their extracurricular interests. 

I assure you, most of my students felt we had a friendly relationship. I just didn't start there.  

When I left at the end of last year, I got a lot of lovely notes and emails from colleagues and parents and students, but the one that touched me the most was an email that came from a former student. I can't make a better point about credibility first than she did, so I'll end this post with the opening line of her email. 

"I want to thank you for quite literally changing my life. You were the first teacher to take my grades seriously and helped me when I needed it."