Hospitality in the Classroom—Part I: A Key Ingredient

The following excerpts of David’s upcoming book, Teaching to Learn, Learning to Teach: Reflections on Education as Transformation through Dialogue (Summer, 2014), are used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers.

I learned a teacher’s hospitality from the best-loved teacher at Carthage College, Dudley Riggle. Dudley is one of the finest human beings I have known. He has a profound theology of grace, and everything he does is informed by it. He is a quiet, unassuming person who thinks carefully through everything he says and does. He was the chaplain at the college, and he preached some of the best sermons I have ever heard.

Meeting Every Objection

I have this enduring feeling about his sermons that they persuaded you because they met every objection that you might have had in the course of listening. As I listened to his sermons, some reservation on my part would arise in my mind. And just as I was formulating it, Dudley would then say, “You might be thinking . . .” And he hit the nail on the head every time.

As such, his sermons were profoundly dialogical in very pastoral ways by anticipating your responses and addressing them. By the end of the sermon you were right with him—experiencing some new-found freedom or ready to love others in a richer way or prepared to share as never before.

Pulpit to Classroom

Dudley carried the same forethought into the classroom by anticipating how students might feel and then putting them at ease. That forethought is one of the best exercises I know for good teaching. Put yourself in the place of the student, and try to imagine their experience in your classroom. Imagine what it is like walking in the first day, looking around for a safe place to sit, getting yourself oriented to what this class will be and who will be in it, and what will be expected.

Dudley imagined all that and sought to anticipate the students’ concerns at every step of every class! This was not easy in light of the subjects he taught. His most popular class was “Issues in Living and Dying.” This class required enormous sensitivity on his part, because people brought with them so many personal experiences of death and grief and so many fears of what lay before them. Many students were in the midst of tragic situations even as they were taking the class. The capacity to anticipate the student experiences of the class were crucial for this course. Dudley was always up to the task.

Students as Guests

While I was at Carthage College, I consulted with many of the faculty about their philosophy and practice of teaching. When I asked Dudley, here is what he said. “Much of my approach to teaching has to do with hospitality. I arrive ten minutes early and greet my student guests at the door. This enables me to ask how they are doing and to relate to each one personally. When they enter the room, they will see on the chalkboard the list of things I plan to do during that class period. This way, there will not be any guesses for them about how the class will proceed. I start the class on time, make announcements, proceed to do what I write on the board, and end the class on time. This seems to be a way of being respectful of the students. I learn their names at the beginning of the course and call them by name when they have questions or comments. I get their papers back on time. I see all these matters as issues of hospitality—making them comfortable in the classroom and taking them seriously.” “I find,” Dudley concluded, “that if I take them seriously as students, they will take themselves seriously and do their best work.”

Hospitality is a Key Ingredient

This image of “hospitality” and the insights that have followed from it have informed so much of what I have tried to do in the classroom. The idea of being a host has led me to develop many new aspects of my relationship with students. It has also made me realize that hospitality is not something added on to the learning experience, like seasoning to a meal. Rather it is an important ingredient of the recipe itself for good learning.

 

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