"The Students Professors Must Reach"

"Met with unexpected compassion, the self-righteous bully dissolved, revealing the vulnerable, self-doubting young person beneath. After he stopped crying and pulled himself together, he was able to listen to what my wife was trying to teach him. Knowing that his professor cared about him, he persisted in the course and ended it a better writer than he had started.

One of the blind spots of professors is that almost all of them were excellent students. School was typically a series of triumphs from kindergarten on. This can make professors unaware of how scary and frustrating college can be for young people, especially those who came from under-resourced schools that didn’t prepare them well for the experience. It’s pretty easy to teach the young people who are well-prepared for college, are confident that they have every right to be there and have faith that they will succeed in their educational goals. The real challenge for faculty — the one that separates the best teachers from the average ones — is connecting with and supporting the students who are none of those things."

http://www.samefacts.com/2015/11/education-2/a-favorite-teaching-story/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%2011.23.15&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All

Helping people who aren't like you.

Related: How nepotistic are we?