Should a lecturer be friendly with students?

Question

I have been thinking about this question for a while and did a few googling here and there; but, didn't get anything good. Probably, academia could help.

I am early in my teaching career as a lecturer (I am just 25 now) and also working towards my PhD.

My classes are very interactive and I sometimes become very friendly with my students. Sometimes, I make difficult theory so simple for them to understand in their own language or sense. Maybe that is good for students. However, it kills a lot of my time inside the class.

Sometimes, I can feel that students are trying to take undue advantages of this friendly behavior of mine. They try to become very frank when the papers are evaluated. They just sometimes make my time horrible so that they get a better mark than they deserve. Is it the outcome of my style of teaching?

In general, should a young lecturer be friendly with his/her students, either inside a class or outside of class?

I have felt that here students are more focused on grades than learning something new. (I am making it generalized; however, ratio-wise it is true)

Answer 1

Krantz in How to Teach Mathematics does actually want to become friends with his students (Sec. 3.1, Breaking the Ice):

Since I so enjoy a class once we have all become friends, I find the period of tooling up to that happy steady state generally too long and too painful. What usually happens is that there is a period of two to five weeks during which the students look at me as though I am from Mars... You should consider ways to make yourself seem like a human being to your students... Find some way to open up to your students so that they will open up to you... My view is that you should show students from day one that you are a person, and that you are going to spend the term doing your best to communicate with them.

But elsewhere gives this warning (Section 2.10, Grading):

You do not want to develop the reputation among students as an instructor with whom grades can be negotiated. I've had this rep, and I don't know how I got it... This process is unpleasant and (can be) degrading both for you and the student. Doing a careful job of grading in the first place, and posting carefully written solutions for students to see, can help to assuage much of student discomfort with grades.

Now, Krantz is a teacher "of long experience" (Sec. 3.1), and I can see this being interpreted differently/incorrectly if you are close in age to your students. Also, this will vary based on your institution and quality/maturity of students that you're getting. In my experience at community colleges, the strategy I was forced to start using early on was to be relatively strict at the start of the semester (adamantly not allowing any bit of variation from the course policies when students test them), and then becoming a bit more flexible and friendly later in the semester.

Added: More Krantz (Section 5.9, Begging and Pleading):

It really is true that if you look and/or act like a student then students will find you more approachable. They will more readily come to you with propositions that they wouldn't consider broaching with a more wizened (or older) faculty member. In short, younger faculty are more vulnerable. This is one reason for dressing differently from students and maintaining a slight distance. Again, this may sound cold. But I speak here from hard personal experience.

Answer 2

There is certainly nothing wrong with being friendly with students; all other things being equal, it is desirable to do so. However, it is important to ensure the being friendly does not detract from your authority and objectivity as a teacher/assessor of their work.

In regards to reviewing marking of assessment, you should make it clear to students that you are open to considering questions/objections on your marking, but once those questions/objections are made, you will make a professional judgment and decide on an appropriate response (including the possibility that there is no change in marks). Frank objections to your marking are fine, but frankness is a two-way street --- you are the subject-matter expert here, not them. In terms of process, you should correct your marking if you genuinely believe you did it wrongly (i.e., if the student gives a convincing explanation of a problem with the mark), but you should not allow yourself to be brow-beaten into raising marks simply because a student is upset, or unreasonably persistent. Listen to their explanation, make a professional judgment on its merit, and respond in a calm but firm manner. If the student seeks to persistently argue the point ---beyond what is reasonable--- you can calmly state that you are not convinced by their explanation and you do not propose to change the marks you have allocated. In the rare case where a student escalates to the point of rudeness, you should try to remain calm and friendly, but let them know they need to take it down a notch.

As a secondary point, take note of the laws of economics: if you incentivise students being horrible to you (by rewarding this with unwarranted increases in marks) then they will respond to this incentive by increasing the supply of horribleness. If you allow students to argue with you in a belligerent manner, and do nothing to draw attention to this, they will hold steady the supply of belligerence.

Now, since you're only twenty-five, you're not that much older than the students you are teaching. This is inherently going to mean that you have more in common with them, you may be seen as more approachable/soft, and you are more likely to be seen as a friendly figure with less authority. (And indeed, since you are junior, you probably do have less authority than the senior professors.) That comes with benefits and drawbacks. I recommend you try to maintain your instinct for friendliness, but ensure that you maintain professional objectivity and authority.

Answer 3

I am more or less the same with you. I am in my thirties however the majority of our master program is taken either by professionals or by students who are doing a second master program, so in general I am around the same age as my students.

I maintain my distance all the way. I rarely use names to address people for example, always Sir/Madame and formal you (this would probably sound very awkward in English, but it is not so much in French). This keeps me relatively unbiased during the evaluation of assignments, and grading.

The distance is not so wide to keep students from approaching when there is a problem with an assignment or a deadline, or from frictions when they thought they got a grade that they did not deserve. They feel this not due to my relationship with them, but due to my teaching style and general pedagogical approach.

I would say keep your relationship with students as formal as possible, and keep the teaching as pedagogical as possible. Your time is better spent not managing their feelings, but making the course better.