Understanding First-Generation Students
I proudly wear my first-gen cord at commencement each May, and I am so proud of the first-gen students with whom I march. But what does it mean to be first-gen, and how do we help those students get there? To begin to answer these questions, three stories.
Story 1: The Small Moments of Disorientation
It is the summer before my first year of college and I can’t sleep. I’ve got a lot on my mind of course but what’s keeping me awake is this- I don’t know what to do in college if I need to use the restroom during class. Do I raise my hand? Just walk out of the room? Is there some third option?
Story 2: Understanding Students’ Hidden Struggles
I am a grad student, teaching a late afternoon/early evening seminar at a commuter campus in a major city. One student consistently leaves class for 10-15 minutes (always an hour in) and he is always slightly winded when he returns. He’s not going to the bathroom, he’s not going for a smoke; what is he doing? Eventually, I confront him. He comes to campus from work. Class starts before 5 and the closest parking lots are full, so he parks several blocks away, where there are only metered spots. He’s leaving to feed the meter; winded because he’s running back to class.
Story 3: The Complexity of Campus Life
I am an administrator at a small liberal arts college. It is January; we are running information sessions for mid-year transfers. The students have copies of the spring semester course catalog and I am explaining how advising and registration works. One woman approaches me after the session; she is shaking and sweating and it is clear that she has not followed my presentation. Her question concerns when classes meet and it takes a while for me to understand her confusion: our college abbreviates Thursday as ‘R’ in the class schedule; her previous institution abbreviated it ‘Th’. She hadn’t followed my presentation because she was unable to decode the coursebook.
Disorientation is a Core Experience
These are stories of disorientation. To be first-gen is to feel disoriented in all corners of campus (not just the classroom), at all hours (not just while faculty are on campus). Hidden curriculum courses help; they explain what a syllabus is and how to read it, introduce institutional jargon and underscore the value of mentorship, etc. Faculty development workshops help, too, by teaching faculty to make their syllabuses legible and to direct students to campus resources. But these programs are not panaceas. They reduce disorientation but they cannot eliminate it because we cannot possibly identify all its sources (like abbreviations in the course schedule or the rules for going to the restroom). If we want to make progress on helping first-gen (and other non-traditional learners!), we need to ask why college is so foreign to them and what we can do to reduce its disorienting effects.
Asking the Right Questions
“We need to ask why…” I mean this existentially ( institutions need to reflect on their values, practices and policies) but I also mean it practically- we need to ask students what’s getting in their way. This is tricky because the students don’t often know what’s getting in their way, or because they may be hesitant to say. It’s also tricky because we don’t have the language to ask the questions and, if we’re being honest, because we sometimes don’t have the inclination to do so. (Notice in story 2 that I confronted the student. Rookie teacher, rookie move- one I regret to this day. Did your graduate program train you to teach? Mine didn’t.)
To ask students what’s interfering with their success, and to help them remove those obstacles, is to practice empathy and invitation. It is the prime directive of student-centered teaching and advising. Yet how much of this work is being offloaded to cost-saving online training modules?
How many faculty or staff members receive training in student-centered advising? How many have teaching loads or workloads that empower them to spend the time and energy required to do it? How many of us are around on Fridays, weekends, after hours?
Shared Responsibility for Student Success
To help first-gen students, we (all of us who work in higher education) need to talk with them and try to understand what’s getting in the way of their success. We cannot put the burden on a few sections of Hidden Curriculum 101 or a pre-semester orientation module. It is our shared responsibility, our shared privilege, to invite these students into our offices and classes and workspaces and campus spaces, to ask them how they are experiencing the spaces and to help improve those experiences. If we need more resources in order to have these conversations, we should ask for them. When was the last time someone on your campus did?