I'm really grateful to Pam for sharing her story, because I'm now a pregnant proffie myself. I'm not obviously showing yet (right now I still just look like I could be getting fat), but I still have 160+ hours at the front of a classroom over the next 5 months before the baby comes...and they'll start figuring it out pretty soon.
Reading about the comments from her students left me aghast last semester, but better prepared now to deal with whatever comes from my own students. Most of them are very polite and reasonably tactful people--or as tactful as you can expect teenagers to be, anyway--but there are just so many of them. So while it's a small percentage who, shall we say, don't really observe appropriate boundaries in their relationships with their professors, sometimes the sheer numbers just get to me. Now I'm ready to frown in a puzzled manner and ask them to repeat what they just said. If they actually have the balls to say it again, I'll say, "Wow, that is a really inappropriate comment to make in a professional setting. You might want to think twice before saying something like that to a professor in the future."
Other suggestions for dealing with remarks would be welcome. And I'm going to make sure I buy stretch pants.
Thanks, Pam, and congratulations!
