Detached, but clearing the boredom from my eyes; indignant, but mentally rehearsing humility. As the bell for the end of the period rang out, I tucked away my notes and pulled out the objects of offense: four papers, each bearing a hastily scrawled condemnation of my hard work:

B+

I approached the front of the room and cleared my throat as my professor gathered his things. “Excuse me?” I piped. “Professor Buerger, I was hoping to talk to you about my papers this term? I’ve pretty consistently been getting B-pluses on them. I’ve looked at your feedback and at the rubrics, but I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. I’d like to get an A in this class, and I’d love some direction on how to better approach the last paper.” I waited.

He fiddled with his glasses, stuffed his papers in to the side of his briefcase. “Hmm? Oh, yes,” he began absently, sending a cursory glance over the stack of essays in my hands. “Don’t worry about that,” he said dismissively. Without ever making eye contact with me, without looking at my work, without so much as acknowledging my name, he said simply, “I just don’t give A’s on the first few papers because I don’t want students to think there’s nothing they can improve on. If you’ve been getting B-pluses on the essays, you’re on track to get an A.” And he walked out the door.

In that moment—standing in my English 101 classroom as a 16-year-old Running Start student trying to navigate my first quarter of community college—I was confused. Frustrated. He didn’t want students to think there was nothing to improve on, but he was unwilling to offer constructive criticism or instructive directions? Now, as an instructor, it not only makes my blood boil: it consistently informs the decisions I make about my curriculum and my students. Beside the fact that my experience in that class left a bad taste in my mouth for Humanities coursework and arguably sent me down the misguided path to pre-med that would take four years and several thousand tuition dollars to bring back around to my eventual English major—besides all that everyday-impact stuff, it also left me with a distinct sense of the responsibility an instructor has to respect their students time, work, and abilities and to steward their influence over their students well.

That sense of responsibility, respect, and stewardship is perhaps the most central mantra of my classroom. Am I prepared to steward class time well? Am I attentive to students needs both in the moment and in the broader context of their success in the institution of education? Do I use their time productively? Am I attentive to both where they are lacking and where they are successful? Am I attentive to both where they believe the course is lacking and where they believe it’s successful? Does my feedback honor the time and energy they are putting in to the course? Working through these kinds of questions and applying the answers to the practice of teaching has, I think, been the central work of my experience as an instructor so far. These questions proceed from that central mantra and their answers are informed by it. In turn, the answers to these questions become the guiding light by which I engage with my students and with the curriculum.