“Are we doing anything important today?” asks the early college student as she walks in to the classroom on a sunny afternoon.

I am passing back assignments from last week’s class.  I give her a puzzled look and ask her why she is asking the question; “well I have to leave for a cross country meet.”

I ask, “When do you need to leave?” and she shares

“In less than five minutes.”

As I thought about the exchange and continued to return papers, I fumed inwardly and wondered how to respond to this question that must rankle every instructor.  I decided this had to be a teachable moment. When I returned to the front of the room where she was waiting to exit, I shared quietly, “if you take nothing else away from this conversation, know that you should NEVER ask that question to an instructor, EVER again.” She looked a bit bewildered as I continued, you asked

“If we were doing anything important today?”

I replied, “I am wondering, how do I gauge the importance of today’s class to your cross country meet?  Your meet is both an individual and team event and so is this class, you miss out on the class content and the class misses out on your participation and involvement.  I am not going to ask you to skip your meet but I am going to ask you to think about why it is important to never ask an instructor if we are doing anything important today.” As the student continued to look befuddled, I shared we come to class prepared to deliver what we always hope is important content and we seek to engage you in meaningful dialogue with your peers…of course you will miss something important, otherwise I would have canceled class.  Now, go run your heart out, talk to a classmate (or me) about what you missed and come back next week ready for class.

Later that night, I received a note of apology, thanking me for the explanation, and recognizing that she should have emailed me before class to let me know that she had a conflict with our class and requesting information on how to make up the work.  I was able to smile, knowing she would probably never ask that question again; and recognized that sometimes the greatest gifts we impart to students have nothing to do with our course content but how to recognize their role as learners and being more fully human!