Promoting Integrity at the Classroom Level:
Share Appropriate Information
In advocating the we need to share personal information with students, I am mindful of Pamela Johnston's (2005) complaint that, after one of her undergraduate professors told the class to call him by his first name that she felt "annoyed, rather than put at ease, by a professor who tried to break down the student-teacher barrier, treating our classroom as a community of equals." However, sharing information need not break down the student-teacher relationship.
In fact, I agree with Dr. Johnston's concerns about faculty members who try to create a "community of equals." I talk about establishing a "community of scholars" which does not mean that our scholastic abilities are equal.
Part of sharing personal appropriate personal information is to break down some of the walls between student such as Dr. Mary Lee Schneider did in the undergraduate classes I took from her. In the five or ten minutes before class, Dr. Schneider would chat with us about sports and movies and other topics of interest; the kind of friendly conversation that might develop between strangers who regularly see each other on the bus, in the cafeteria, and so forth. Through these informal chats, Dr. Schneider showed concern for our welfare which is a mark of an ethical professor (Kuther, 2003). However, even after she served as my dissertation director, I still did not consider her my friend. Had she tried to be my friend, I do not think I would have had the same respect for this very friendly professor who did much to advance my professional abilities.
Yet, as Karen Langley (2003) demonstrates, students crave to have some personal knowledge of their professors. My students know several "intimate" things about me: that I almost failed out of graduate school because of my drinking, that I have a domestic partner, that I have little dogs. But they only know these things at a superficial level. Details of my past drinking or my current relationship and lifestyle are none of their business.
In "Getting to Know an Instructor: One of the Most Important Jobs for a Student" does not advise students to become a professor's friend. Instead, I promote the idea that students should find professors who can serve as mentors. If students try to cross the line, we need to remember, as Johnston (2005) clearly states, "[that] because I'm the professor, it's up to me to remind my students that we are not friends, that there are some lines they cannot cross."
