I agree, all difficult questions, but good one none the less. Like you, I was very excited when I got to graduate school and was able to study what I wanted without fear of the grade.
Sure, i have to earn at least a B in a class in order to keep my assistantship, but the feeling is different. I just do the best work I can because once I earn a PhD, no one is going to ask me what my GPA was, everyone just assumes I am some kind of “smart.” I think it is unfortunate that we have to be in graduate school before that general smartness is assumed.
I like the title of the blogpost, mostly because I felt like the student who got Cs. At the end of the day, I am in graduate school, as is the kid who studied really super hard and never went out on the weekends and did not have a work/life balance and OMG SCHOOL ALL THE TIME!!!! And I think I had more fun.

This is where I’m grateful I teach a subject I love. I often get so bogged down in my own theory reading as a graduate student that, far from being just another thing on my plate, my teaching Intro to Women’s and Gender Studies this semester has reminded me why I love this stuff!
Ido agree that we have to reconceptualize the notion of teacher. I was petrified when I first knew I would have to teach. Thanks to another program I’m involved in, I realized it’s not my job to make students learn, but rather to try and be of maximum service to them everyday. In this way I don’t have to know it all, and I often don’t. I can be humble about my shortcomings and use the knowledge of the students studying different subjects if I get stuck in a lecture somewhere. (I think it also helps that WGS is interdisciplinary and requires me to know a little about a lot of subjects)!

I think it may depend on the subject. In Sociology, there are certain definitions students need to understand, but my whole goal is to challenge students’ perceptions of what is true and natural.
An example I often get in my Intro to Women’s and Gender Studies class period on sex and gender is “women are just naturally more delicate then men, or, men are just naturally better at strong things because they’re strong.”
My answer to the student(s) who write these statements is automatically “says who? Let’s unpack that a little bit.”
Science also has a way of changing over time, so maybe ‘maybe’ is an okay word to use. I agree with what another commenter mentioned above about the ‘universally’ v. the ‘conditional’ true statements. It’s not so much about being absolutely right, but rather allowing for a little wiggle room sometimes.

O Yesim, you are speaking to my soul!!!!!

I also have a no technology policy in my class, students learn to take notes by hand and I encourage them to talk with each other in and outside of class about the materials we read.

I so agree with you, as you found on my blog, that internet connectedness is not real connectedness. I also encourage students to learn each other’s names and require them to use each other’s names when speaking in class. It is so easy to yell at someone online because you do not really know them, much harder when you look at them and call them by name in the class.

One last thought: “It should be a tool, not a world wide web that is wider than the human.” YES YES YES!!!!!