Polymathematics

Week 4

(First, sorry this is a day or two late.  Unavoidable.)  Well, nothing deep and philosophical happened this past week.  I had a reprieve from one of my classes for a couple of days while the students were away for their outdoor education program, and it's amazing how much less work it is to have 2 preps in 4 periods of teaching than 3 preps in 5 periods.  (For non-teachers, "3 preps (preparations)" means that I teach 3 different courses, so I have to prepare three different classes, and I teach two of them more than once.)

I taught this in several classes, and it went well, as it usually does.  One of the students who didn't do so well on his first test showed me that he might end up doing okay, but that he needs a lot of extra help.  I'm not sure if he's mature enough to get it when he needs it, but I'm more optimistic than I was before.

The B+ girl from week 2 will take her next test on Wednesday next week, so look for an update there.

But one of the things I try to get across on this blog is an aspect of teaching that non-teachers don't always understand.  And that aspect shows itself in these mundane weeks.  Sometimes I'm dealing with crying children who believe that their future is at stake because of the 2 points I took off of their test, and sometimes I show up, teach some math, give some words of encouragement, help a few kids understand, and then I go home.  Some teachers have the emotional strength to give 100% of their heart and soul every day to their teaching, but most of us would burn out on that after a while.  Teaching isn't usually highly intellectually challenging (though it can be sometimes), but it's emotionally challenging.  Spending September 11th, 2001 in a classroom was surreal.  So is planning out how I will tell my students (in a month or so) that I'll be missing school in (probably) February to go to China to pick up the child my wife and I will (FI-NAL-LY) be adopting almost a year after we thought she'd be home.  How personal do you get with the kids?  Is it your professional duty to be emotionally involved?  Can you be both professional and emotionally involved?

Sometimes it's good to have a non-descript week.

Week 3

Oh horror of horrors.  Earning a B+.

"But that's a good grade," I say.
"Not to my parents."
"I don't care what your parents think;  that's a good grade."
"But I think I could have done better."
"I think so too.  And now that you see what kinds of mistakes you made, I'm pretty confident you will next time."
Sighing..."But I don't think I should have lost 2 points here."
I explain why I think she should have.  And I continue, "The truth is, you can be annoyed at me for taking off 2 points if you want to, but I think you should be more annoyed at whatever it is in your life that made you think that this wasn't a good grade.  You're going to make yourself sick.  Literally sick.  For your own good, you need to stop putting that kind of pressure on yourself."

So, okay, that conversation actually took about 15 minutes, but those are pretty much real sentences that were spoken.  Turns out she's never actually gotten anything lower than an A- before.  And I expressed serious doubt that she would earn anything other than an A for the term.  There was crying.  There were apologies for crying.  There was more encouragement from me.  I think she left feeling determined to do better next time.  I can't decide if that's constructive or ironic.

How am I supposed to react here?  Quash her drive for excellence?  Encourage rebellion against her own parents' expectations?  Short of actually convincing her that her grade was good (an unlikely prospect, in my experience), I basically got nothin'.  I've found that the phrase, "I'm worried that..." paired with some genuine concern can work wonders in diffusing the angst of the grade, but only temporarily.

Do you have kids?  Here's my unsolicited advice:  don't falsely inflate their confidence, but help them feel okay about who they are at whatever level of accomplishment is good for them.  Being upset about a B+ is just. too. much. pressure. for a 14-year-old who should be lively, energetic, and free to seek out learning just for fun.  Encouraging those qualities is what will produce a bright, articulate
adult who enjoys a life of the mind and who will find a fulfilling career doing something he or she loves.  Pressure just makes them resentful and rebellious.

Week 2

Well, in my second week, I gave a couple of small tests.  Nothing big, and no students got below a B-.  That was intentional (and lucky, since I would have given lower grades if anyone deserved one).  Early on, I resort to basic behavioral conditioning.  Most of my students did their homework and paid attention in class, and I want them to correlate that with success.  So I give them some.  It's a crude tool, but I find it effective.  The first full-sized test (in the class that hasn't taken one any yet) is Monday, and we'll see how that goes.

Of course it was inevitable that some of my more annoying students would start to show themselves.  As usual, they will be mostly boys (although I've had some doozies of annoying girls, too).  One asked if we could have class outside because it was such a nice day.  As if we could adequately review for a test without a chalkboard (and let's hear it for chalkboards over whiteboards!!  woo-hoo old-school!).  My answer was "no", of course, but I continued with a much more detailed answer, too.  I'm of the opinion that teachers should teach transparently.  I regularly let my students in on my strategy and my motivations.  When they do really distracting stuff, for instance, I tell them that I want them to stop not because I merely said so, but because I have to concentrate pretty hard to be able to teach them, and I don't want my teaching to suffer.  So anyway, I answered this kid with something like this:

No, we can't have class outside.  But in addition, I want to point out something about your question.  I know you didn't mean to be adversarial, and I'm not mad at you, but questions like that just reenforce the classic picture of lazy-students-wanting-to-get-away-with-anything-they-can versus mean-old-teacher-whose-job-it-is-to-make-students'-lives-miserable.  I do claim the ultimate authority in this class, but I'd much rather that we learn by playing on the same team instead of opposite teams.  So I'd rather you didn't ask questions like that.

For the more immature (like this kid), that kind of talk is a little hard to digest.  But the more mature kids truly appreciate being spoken to frankly, and I have rarely regretted being open like that.  I might feel differently in a school that didn't have such great kids, but it works for me.

And yes, I am going to try to blog every week about my teaching this year.  With the adoption coming up (January or February?  I think?  I hope?  I mean, I really hope it happens 3 months ago, but at this point I hope it's coming soon so my life isn't so up in the air, and so I can get on with the important business of being a dad, for goodness sake!), it could be a very interesting year.  So...tell your teaching friends to keep up with my soap opera of a teaching life (ha!).  Maybe something really fascinating will happen.

Week 1

Well, the end of the first week of school.  I successfully remembered almost all my kids' names after 4 days, which is something of an accomplishment for me.  I'm not the best with names.

I think the first week is all about getting your class to buy in to how you're going to teach.  Convincing them, for example, that reviewing things that seem easy in the first week or two is laying groundwork for later, and shouldn't be taken as a sign that future work will be easy.

These classes seem to have bought in pretty well, and I haven't found any really annoying kids yet, so this might be a fairly good year.

Boring, boring post.  But then, school dominates my year from September to May, so I suppose it might also dominate my blog.  I promise that things will be more interesting later in the year as we get closer to that little change in my life that I've been previewing now and then.  You know...the minor matter of adopting a baby.