Thread by @MillennialProf_

Brief thread.

Hi, Faculty Friends:

Your students aren't trying to manipulate/grift/cheat you. If you are, that's about them.. not you. Most of them are doing the best they can w what they have & what they know.

So when they say they're struggling/someone died:

Believe them.

There is literally nothing you have to say that's more important than your students' mental health, well-being, or family. Nothing. No exam, no lecture, nothing.

When you make students ashamed to express vulnerability or pain, you are absolutely discouraging their trust.

Both my grandparents were killed in a car accident on the same day. Also, my mom had aggressive cancer all throughout undergrads. I was an AMAZING student, still, & the indignity of having to prove their deaths and her illness was devastating to me.

I was asked by a history prof to bring a newspaper obituary, a program from their funeral, and any other "proof" I had that linked our relation. It was already a traumatic experience to lose half my family out of nowhere; it was doubly so to be treated as criminal because of it.

And here's the thing: Even if I had been lying, so what? Refer back to my second tweet. There is NOTHING any of us have to say, share, teach, pontificate about, etc. that's more important than loving a student as a person, first. They are living lives, not just attending school.

Students often undergo all kinds of crises you won't see: poverty, illness, sexual assault, broken hearts, family tragedies, stressors of every variety.

You go through those things, too.

Isn't it better when someone gives you the benefit of the doubt?

Also, making anybody ashamed to express grief, sorrow, stress, anxiety, etc. just because YOUR EGO can't handle them missing YOUR BRILLIANCE for an hour and a half on a Tuesday says so much more about you than it does about whatever's motivating their absence. Truly. It does.

Believe students. Love students. Trust students.

They want to get smarter, to do well, and to be trusted by you.

It costs you nothing to give them that. Not one cent. Nothing.

Believe. Your. Students.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.