What’s the Story?

By: Edward Sidlow, Professor of Political Science

I walked into the room where our department faculty meetings were held. Several faculty members were there and the meeting was to start in a few minutes. The department head had not yet arrived. One faculty member engaged in a diatribe about how miserable our students are. “They don’t do the reading. They don’t know what’s going on in the world. They don’t engage in discussion; getting them to talk is like pulling teeth. Their writing is awful, and they are not intellectually curious.” When she took a pause, I filled the void with a simple statement. “You should hear what your students say about you.” The room went silent, but at least the tirade ended.

Indeed, our students do talk about us. They claim some of us are arrogant and full of ourselves. Others are disorganized and much too slow to return written work. Still others are pushing a point of view and intolerant of students who disagree with them. Some appear not to care and are so self-absorbed and egotistical that by mid-term, students find it hard to go to class. And, the students say, more than a few professors don’t know how to dress.

But all is not lost. Some of us seem decent and caring, even compassionate. Some of us are quite organized in the presentation of our material and appear thoughtful, open to questions, handling disagreements gracefully. Some of us make class discussion fun at best and, at minimum, interesting. These professors are the ones who have full classes and waiting lists. They are also the faculty who are recommended by students to their friends. Some of us even know how to dress. There is an active and dynamic student grapevine, and yes, our students talk about us.

I served as a faculty member at three universities over the past 40+ years. The demographics differed a bit with each, but the presence and character of the student grapevine was the same across all three. I had the good fortune of being sought out by students, and while I fear appearing immodest, the grapevine spoke well of me and I won teaching awards everywhere I taught. Early on, I accepted my success grudgingly, but over time, I embraced it.

My teaching covered American politics and government and I was determined to never have my classes thought of as boring. To that end, I immersed myself in biographies of American political figures. I also did research that had me in state legislatures and Congress, and always managed better access to the players than I deserved. My projects involved interviewing legislators and/or their support staff. And every interview protocol had a question or two for the classroom. Typically, I asked what was the strangest (funniest, saddest, most gratifying) thing you’ve seen or experienced in your time here in Congress (statehouse)? The biographies and the research provided a deep well of interesting stories, and the stories were what kept students coming back. No matter how strange the story, it had to illustrate an important point in the day’s lecture or discussion. I know now that it was never me, or the academic material, that the students came to class for. It was the stories.

When I was a young faculty member in my 20s and 30s, I bristled at the comments from students to each other or on class evaluations that said, “he tells such wonderful stories.” I wanted to be a serious academic and I taught at prestigious places. I wrote articles for journals, and books. I wasn’t a damn storyteller. To get under my skin, my graduate assistant one year, who would stop at my office to pick me up for the walk to class, would say as we approached the classroom, “Let’s go tell a few good stories.”

I started teaching decades before email and the Internet. It took these technological innovations for me to recognize fully that my use of stories had real meaning in the classroom. Students from schools where I taught before I came to EMU find me on the university website, and connect with an email. Often the message will be, “I was watching the news and saw something that reminded me of a story about… that you told us in class 30 years ago.” It’s nice to be remembered.

My students have taught me that telling relevant stories can be a successful teaching strategy. I have recently retired, and have made my peace with being a storyteller. But there is another, equally important story here, and that’s the story that our students tell about us. And that story is a large part of our legacy. Our teaching, writing and academic service are the hallmarks of our professional careers. Teaching has the greatest impact on our students, and they talk about us. They go home for holidays and tell stories about their professors and their classes. I think it would serve us all well to remember that the stories that we tell in class are only part of the story, and they are certainly important. It is also wise to remember that the stories that our students tell are important as well. It is our good fortune if the stories we tell in class allow our students to tell stories about us that we can be proud of.