Tough Lesson: Power Imbalance in the Classroom

"With great power comes great responsibility." --Ben Parker

I may not have a superpower, but at the helm of my classroom, I have super power. Daily I must remember the imbalance of power across the teacher-student divide. 

I had a tough lesson on this concept yesterday while at mentor training. I like to think I'm a good student in professional development settings. I strive to engage and to question, to be the learner I want my own students to be.  

But I blew it. Now I'm struggling to look at the experience honestly for this blog, and instead I'm feeling defensive. Yes, I used my phone from time to time (Necessary texts! I'm an important person!). Yes, I used the internet to check a vague unattributed statistic the teacher stated as fact (Of course I did! I'm a critical thinker!). And yes, I used my laptop for some note-taking and, okay, email-checking (to keep myself from talking too much and dominating the room's discussion!). 

But when, at 2:30 p.m. I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping as if someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door! (Whoops--unsolicited burst of poetry.) The tapping was actually the teacher, and she wasn't tapping. She was looming over me, asking what I was doing on the computer. I stammered through my explanation: I was emailing my mentee the key points of our learning-project assignment, figuring this would be a way to take notes and give my mentee the info at one fell swoop. 

The teacher wasn't having it. She scolded me. She told me that wasn't what I was supposed to be doing. She then asked me if I'd been "texting him all day." Trick question! Yes, I had answered a text from him earlier in the day (when he asked if he should send parent correspondence through the gradebook application or school email), so I said "yes," which caused me to inadvertently admit to texting "all day," sounding like I had some creepy texting relationship with my mentee. 

I was flustered. I was embarrassed. I was angry. I'm still angry. The power imbalance created by our teacher-student roles gave the teacher--not me--control of the classroom, the behavior, the interaction and the learning. 

At that point I emotionally checked out. I spent the last hour of class replaying what all had gone wrong, licking my wounds, pouting, and then feeling bad about letting myself down as a professional.  

I'm sure I'll remember the negative emotional learning from yesterday long after I've forgotten...whatever it was I was supposed to be learning. And that, my friends, is my lesson of the day. The classroom power structure favors the teacher lopsidedly. By remembering what it feels like to be on the short end of that power stick, may I honor the responsibility I hold as teacher.

Day 16: If you could have one superpower to use in the classroom, what would it be and how would it help?
Reflection: I started this entry thinking I would write about how great it would be to have the superpower to speed read!

From today's Amazon box. I need a speed-reading superpower.

But I was only a sentence or two in when I realized I needed to write out the mentor-training incident. I'm still not satisfied with the last line, but I feel better having written this.