On “Hidden Curriculum”: Teaching Students How to Be Students

“The “hidden curriculum” refers to the unwritten, unofficial, and often unintended lessons, values, and perspectives that students learn in school, distinct from the formal curriculum. These are the unspoken messages and norms conveyed through the school environment, teacher behavior, and student interactions. “

I had an opportunity earlier this year to participate in a professional development workshop on teaching first-generation black male students. I went into the workshop expecting to hear some of the usual information about how black male students are most often accustomed to being silenced and pushed to the back of the classroom. I was looking for strategies to counter that phenomenon and bring them to the front. I walked away, however, with a new term I had never heard before—Hidden Curriculum.

The workshop facilitator threw this term out casually, and in the moment, I became a black male student, pushed to the back of the Zoom classroom, and I sat there turning it over in my head trying to make sense of it. I realized that I didn’t want to acknowledge that I didn’t know what it meant. Ironic, right? Finally someone spoke up and asked for a definition. Whew! What a relief!

Later, I reflected on how this is not just something college students experience, but professionals also—of all races and genders. But perhaps it is a more profoundly palpable experience when you are a minority professional who is accustomed to dealing with impostor syndrome connected racial stereotypes that condition us to believe that we must always know, and that any acknowledgment of not knowing might be attributed to race. That’s a discussion for another time though. The main point is that hidden curriculum exists at all levels and it impacts everyone depending on the informational context and situation.

Hidden curriculum refers to the many areas of knowledge we assume our students know simply because they are students. Those things, however, are not common knowledge, especially is one is a first-generation student because no one has had the background or the information to adequately instruct a first-generation student on how to be a student. They might not understand why, given their newfound freedoms, timeliness is an important thing, or that they need to make positive impressions on their professors. They might not get that part of the college experience is supposed to be developing your own disciplines and routines that will set you up for professional success later in life. They might not, in fact, understand that college is to adult professional employment—the very career paths they have set their sights on—what boot camp is to military service. They may not know what to do with challenging experiences, understand that it’s okay to not know things, or even that failure is not a demeaning and humiliating experience, but a mastery challenge. I’m sure they don’t think of exams, quizzes, and in-class discussions like lifting weights to build mental muscles. So someone has to explain these things to them otherwise it remains hidden curriculum.

This phenomenon became crystal clear when a student approached me after class one day and asked, “Soooo … how do I get books?” I was a bit shocked at first, and I thought, “Well, you go to the bookstore.” I wasn’t being sarcastic, but it never occurred to me that freshmen students might never have had to actually purchase books before, or that what was basic knowledge to me would not be basic knowledge for them. Then I started wondering…

• Have my students ever heard the term “Syllabus” before?
• Do they understand the syllabus as the map for the course?
• Do students fully understand the web-systems we use to teach our courses?
• How many of my students really understand their “why”—the reason they are in college? Right now, are they here simply because their parents said they had to make a choice and do something with their lives (work, military, or college)?
• Do my students understand why the rules of my classroom exist? (Especially that cell phone policy)
• Do students understand the necessity of using the office hours I make available?
• Do students understand the necessity of forming personal relationships with their instructors?

This list of questions continues to grow everyday. I have learned to assume nothing and to explain everything—to put myself in the position of the student, to read their reactions, and to be attuned to their possible insecurities.

I’ve started circulating an assessment survey at the beginning of every semester that asks a lot of seemingly basic questions like: Have you ever written a paper longer than one page? Have you ever heard of MLA? Have you ever read a novel or book in its entirety on its own? Do you like or hate writing? Do you struggle with focusing when you read? You learn a lot when you simply ask questions. It informs the strategies you’re able to formulate to corportately and individually assist your students. This practice has helped mitigate my frustration and has transformed my capacity for patience. Rather than immediately defaulting to irritation or an assumption that they’re just not getting it … or even maybe I’m just not teaching it right … I am now learning to interrogate the disconnection in a different way. I now search for the possible missing curriculum that might bridge the gap between hearing and understanding.