In many ways, teaching is often very similar to stand-up comedy. 

In both, a natural feedback loop is set up between the teacher (comic) and the class (audience).  When energy is generated and reflected by both sides, it grows and multiplies.  Each side feeds off the other and good teaching (good comedy) is the result. 

Teaching interested, responsive students is a joy, but we all know that some students are just not responsive - they are a bad crowd, they suck the energy out of the room.  So, like a good comic, a teacher must be able to immediately size up the audience. 

In my experience*, I have found there to be three basic types of students at the lower college level (maturing young adults).  Being able to recognize and identify these types is useful when attempting to deliver a quality educational experience to a diverse group of learners.

THE THREE BASIC STUDENT TYPES

1. THE “WHAT-DO-I-NEED-TO-KNOW?” STUDENT

The first type is the most common and probably comprises as much as 75% - 80% of the student population.  I call this student the “What-do-I-need-to-know? student”.  These students are generally conscientious and are focused on their college education as a total package, a venture.  In the classes I teach, they are often, but not always, non-majors and are taking the class as some form of requirement or elective.  In addition to this class, they have additional responsibilities with other classes and well as jobs, parents, love entanglements, and living arrangements.  In some cases they have families and children of their own.   They are asking: “what do I need to know and/or do to sufficiently satisfy the requirements and achieve the grade that I want from this class?”

My responsibility to the What-do-I-need-to-know? student is huge.  I need to be specific in my directions and expectations, and to make readings and assignments clear and understood well in advance.  I need to moderate my natural urge to go off on tangents and stick to the syllabus as closely as possible.  Their understanding and my expectations should closely coincide. 

The What-do-I-need-to-know? student is the bread and butter audience – the out-of-towners here for a dinner and a show.  They want to be entertained but won’t make the first move.  They generally don’t laugh until they see that everyone else thinks its funny. 

2. THE “TELL-ME-MORE” STUDENT

The second type of student is everyone’s favorite: the Tell-me-more student.  The Tell-me-more student eagerly digests everything that is presented to them and seems always to be in anticipation of the next move.  They have a hierarchical organization to their understanding that integrates their experience in this class with their other classes and then further incorporates that with their own life experience to form a functional game plan for life.  They always want to know more.

Tell-me-more students are the bright faces in the class.  They are listening, nodding back, asking questions and participating in meaningful ways.  They bring information to the class that adds to the discussion and help to direct the dialogue when it begins to lag or stray.  From a teacher’s point of view, Tell-me-more students are pleasure to have around.  They are good listeners.  They are a great audience.  They always laugh at your jokes.

My responsibility to Tell-me-more students is to provide them with the color, background, rationale and context to assure that they understand the information on multiple levels, and to provide them with appropriate references to sources of further learning so that they can continue to move forward on their own.  Once a Tell-me-more student has a firm sense of where they are going, a teacher is seldom needed.

3. THE “SAY…WHA?” STUDENT

Which brings us to the third type of student: the Say… wha? student.  Say…wha? students may or may not show up for class - it’s a toss up.  But when they do they are frequently late.  These students simply don’t want to be there.  For Say… wha? students, some outside force in the larger world that is completely beyond their control has conspired to force them to take this class.  They are determined that nothing – not you, not flaming images, not even a pile of freshly dug dinosaur bones – is going to make them enjoy it.  Say… wha? students don’t want to be in class.  Their reality is the entire world OUTSIDE of class and their presence here only interferes with the larger meaning of their real life.  Seemingly it is only when you physically call on them or somehow call attention to them (hand them back an assignment) that the reality of actually being in class collides with the workings of their chosen life style.

Interestingly, Say..wha? students can become some of the most profound contributors to the class.  They have nothing to lose.  They occasionally rise up out of nowhere and flash with pure brilliance like an old ice berg that has been melting quietly on one side before suddenly rolling over spectacularly to a new equilibrium.  But then, having erupted in inspiration, they return to the quiet desperation of their non-class existence and are not heard from again for at least another couple of classes.  They are essentially good hecklers.

To me, the most difficult part of teaching is agonizing over my responsibility to the Say… wha? student.  In some kind of James Olmos / To Sir With Love perfect world we would subdue these students with creative teaching and transform them into model students.  We would intrude.  We would grab them firmly by the chin and shake sense into them.  But truth be told, we really don’t have time.  None of us do. The What-do-I-need-to-know students are waiting for clarification and the Tell-me-more students are hoping for a little color commentary on what I just said.  We don’t have the time to stop what we’re doing to turn and watch and wait while Beavis in the back row digs slowly through his backpack to find his book and figure out what page we’re on (hint: we’re not using the book, we’re talking about a news article). 

My responsibility?  Like it or not, good teaching or bad, the reality is that I generally give the Say…wha? student just a little over half of a semester to establish a track record and demonstrate that he or she is a player. (It doesn’t take much, I have only flunked a small handful of students in ten years of teaching.)  But when I’m convinced that a student is truly disinterested – and believe me, I’m really sorry about this – I just stop intruding into their little non-class reality and go back to filling the heads of the rest of class with quality mush.

In the end, it boils down to who really is the comedian, and who gets the last laugh.

It’s really only fair.

* The author has taught Earth Science, Historical Geology lab, Art and Science, The History of Technology and Nature Studies as an adjunct at Eastern University (Boston), Millersville University and Pennsylvania College of Art and Design.  He also teaches Harmonica Essentials and Bonsai to adult learners.