Thank you for all of the comments from last week’s post. I read each and every comment because, no matter how you lean, you make me think – about what I wrote, about what you wrote, and about whether I need to modify my perspective. So, I care because you educate me.
One thing that I concluded (as was said by some commenters in a variety of ways) is that the term “caring” can carry a variety of meanings. Most commenters seemed to “care” in their own specific way. My follow-up question would be, “Based on your style of caring, do your students know that you care?” I ask this because, it seems to me, if a Professor does X (as some form of caring) but the students do not perceive X as a caring act, have we failed to optimize the educational opportunity? Again, I start with the assumption that the research on caring is correct - that students learn more when they believe their educator cares about them – and that as long as we choose to work in a law school, we have chosen education as a profession. Absent oppositional research, the decision to ignore caring is a decision to have one’s students (as a collective) learn less. That is a direction that I cannot take. While I never conflate catering with caring (one can easily care about another without catering to them), I will continually look for the best proven methods to demonstrate to my students that I care.
Finally, one post (Roman) contemplated a student’s emotional learning style. This is an area of research that falls under educational psychology. While that has not been my area of focus, I have read enough articles to know that educational researchers have recognized the importance of emotions in learning.
This week, as I sit down with all the folks in The Lounge, I want to continue the dialogue about the legal academy and caring. The importance of the topic reached new heights this past weekend as one of my colleagues, Professor Diane Courselle, died. The posts to Facebook and other social media profoundly proclaimed one thing: Her students deeply cared about her (in large part, because she deeply cared about them).
Her “Ethic of Caring in Teaching” included, among other things, sharing her passion for criminal defense work as well as her passion for cooking and music. In the academy’s current dialogue about safe spaces, these acts, beyond the daily grind of doctrinal teaching, built a community for students that included spaces, on and off campus, where they felt safer discussing their thoughts, issues, concerns, and more. These included legal as well as personal matters. As an educator, I hope for and work toward such a space for each and every student.
The students are showing us the depth of that community in comments like “You [Professor Courselle] made the world a better place … If I was still musically inclined I would lead the [j]azz funeral in your honor.” Additionally, Professor Courselle’s pedagogy affects the way her former students now engage in the practice of law. One posted that “You [Professor Courselle] have had an indelible influence on me, particularly in the way I talk to clients, victims, and bureaucrats.” It is this result, from guiding the student to become a better person AND a better attorney, that most supports an Ethic of Caring in law school.
And in the end, isn’t that the clarion call from the ABA, the Carnegie Foundation, and a host of practitioners? Over the past decade or more, we’ve continually heard how the legal academy is producing wonderful theorists, but theorists with little to no ability to actually engage in the practice of law. We can argue about whether the evidence supports such a conclusion, but, we cannot argue about the fact that a notable number of practitioners (and judiciary) feel this way, or to put it another way, this is what they care about. Thank you Diane for creating students who care about how they practice law, care about how they live life, and care about you. Rest in peace.
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