Fun With Student Errors, 2

The question (for the final unit exam in my HS engineering class) was,

Explain how magnets are used to make the speaker in a telephone work.

One of my brightest students - who has a fantastic sense of humor - saw me a few hours after the test. "Have you graded my test yet, Ms. Hat?" she asked.

"No, why?"

"Oh ... you'll know when you read it!" she replied with a mischievous smile.

The next day, I graded it. Apparently this student had neglected to study the chapter on how telephones work. She wrote:

Well, back in 1504 Alexander Graham Bell figured out that sound waves actually have metallic properties and therefore can be attracted by a magnet. So then the guy who invented the actual telephone figured out that the sound waves that humans are able to make have a very specific charge that can be attracted by a specific magnet. So that's the one they use in telephones. Just kidding! I have no idea how phone magnets work.

I laughed so hard that I wished I could give her credit.

Teach Your Children Well

I read a blog post here today by a mom of two toddlers who is worried that her daughter, who likes to test boundaries (as most 3-year-olds do), will turn out to be a disrespectful, difficult person. It prompted me to write about my experience with disrespectful, difficult kids at school.

I have 14-year-old student (let's call her Nan), who has been having lots of difficulty in her Spanish class. Nan and her teacher Mr. S. have butted heads since the beginning of the school year. Mr. S. is a new hire who is not going to make it to next year; he's had too difficult a time relating to the kids, and he knows it. (He taught college in the past, and he is going to teach at a private boarding school next year, where I am confident he will be great.)

Mr. S's difficulty relating to his students does not excuse Nan's in-class behavior, though. She mouths off to Mr. S. on a daily basis. She texts her friends in class and yells at Mr. S. when he tells her to put her cell phone away. She refuses to participate, answering the teacher with a hostile stare. She has cussed out the teacher, openly challenged him in front of the class numerous times, and even walked out.

I'm Nan's advisor, so I called a meeting with Nan, Mr. S., Nan's mom, and an assistant principal. We talked through some of the frustrations Nan has had in Mr. S.'s class (for example, he rarely updates his online grade book, and one quarter her grade dropped from a B to an F in one day when he finally entered a big set of grades.) These frustrations are legitimate, and we worked out a plan for Nan to be given weekly grade updates by Mr. S.

And then we started talking about Nan's behavior. Specific, horrifyingly inappropriate instances of disrespect were presented. Nan sat there, staring into space angrily. "Nan, will you please respond?" I asked her. She refused.

But Nan's mom did respond. "I know that's not how Nan should act at school. But I'm not going to tell her to act otherwise. Nan is her own person, and no one has the right to tell her what to do."

And suddenly Nan's attitude made so much sense.

I've had similar meetings with parents of defiant kids many times. I've never found a parent of an extremely defiant kid to be a loving-but-firm disciplinarian. Never.

On the other hand, If a kid has a parent who is willing to set limits, that kid will still cross the line sometimes (or even often) - it's a natural part of being an adolescent. But kids whose parents are willing to take on a role of authority have a noticeably different attitude when their behavior is corrected by a teacher. They get red in the face, or teared up, or awfully quiet. Sometimes they are defensive on the surface, but when gently confronted after class, they drop the act and admit they are wrong. Sometimes they even apologize. It's obvious they know they've acted inappropriately.

Our kids make their own decisions. But the greatest gift we can leave them is the ability to know when they've been wrong.

Warming My Teacher Heart

A 7th grader passing me in the hallway:

"It's my birthday and I'd like a treat. Can we do an experiment in class today?"

When a Learner is Treated Unfairly

Yesterday, one of my 7th grade classes had their worst day of the entire school year. Even in September, when we were getting to know one another and they had to get acclimated to my expectations (and I to their personalities as learners), we didn't have any days this bad.

There was not one thing that made it bad. They were just incredibly unfocused the whole time, distracting one another and themselves with all sorts of strategies. I am sure that many of them, when they went home and tried the evening's assignment, probably had no clue what to do. They just did not take class seriously, replacing an active learning attitude with one of distraction.  (It honestly doesn't help that, in a 22-student class, there are 16 boys.)

Most of my lessons are student-centered and hands-on. We had been doing lab activities for the previous three class days.  I've been working on making my lab activities open-ended and inquiry-based - i.e., designing experiments that get the students to think creatively, ask big questions, and work hard to find the answers. This lab had been enormously successful, but now it was time to debrief. We had to have a full-class discussion so that all the big ideas floating around in the students' heads could be examined and distilled into some more-formal scientific knowledge. And debrief discussions, although they encourage a high degree of participation, are teacher-led and less student-centered. It is important for students to learn how to function in a teacher-centered classroom, even if it's not my favorite type of lesson.

About 5 students were focused and participating for the entire 70 minute class. (Usually, almost everyone participates and focuses, responding well to my nudges when they start to veer off course.)

At the end of the 70 minutes, the students were supposed to go to lunch. I informed them that their behavior would not keep us from finishing our lesson, which was supposed to end with a pre-lab background discussion for the next day's experiment. So we stayed an extra 14 minutes (for what should've been a 6-8 minute discussion; we lost a lot of time because I would stand and wait quietly every time they got disruptive).

The only thing I didn't like about this? It was so unfair to the poor 5 students who had been positive participants. I thought about it, and this is what I told them:

"I know a few of you have not been disruptive today. I really appreciate your respectful attitude, and I realize that it's very unfair that you have to be late to lunch. I'm sorry for that, and I'm just as angry as you are that you are having to pay for other students' misbehavior. But my first priority as a teacher is to see that you learn. And what would be even more unfair than keeping you late, is letting you go now and miss the end of the lesson. Please know that the only reason I'm keeping you is because I wouldn't be doing my job if I let you go without learning what you need to learn."

Sometimes the fairest decision is still a little unfair. I guess that's a fact of life.

Sometimes even the big kids are still just kids

Students at PCS stay in their last-period class for an extra 30 minutes, four days a week. This is time for reading. The older students read novels related to their humanities classes, and the younger students get to read (approved) novels for pleasure. (I personally wish ALL of them got to read for pleasure for this half hour a day. What better way to instill a love of reading in a group of students who, for the most part, were not read to as younger children?)

The reading time is called DEAR - Drop Everything And Read. (We had DEAR when I was a kid, too - did you?) DEAR is supposed to be a calm time, with disciplinary sanctions (demerits) for students who do not read silently. I teach DEAR three times a week - twice to 7th graders and once to 10th graders. The 7th graders, predictably, have more trouble with the silent environment than the 10th graders do.

Until today.

Something had gotten into the 10th graders, and there were periodic muffled bursts of laughter from various areas of the room. This sort of illicit laughter is, of course, contagious. I was trying to read my own book, but having trouble not giggling along with them.

And then... pppppppppppttttttttttttttttt. A long, audible passage of gas from a 10th grade posterior.

Even I couldn't help but give in to the giggles at that point. In fact, the whole class lost it, and I was there with them, tears streaming down my face. The last 10 minutes of DEAR were basically lost.

And my students got to see that I'm a human like them, with a sense of humor that I occasionally can't contain. It was worth the lost class time.

I am so ANGRY

Anyone who checks in on pop culture at all (an often-depressing enterprise which, nevertheless, helps us teachers to relate to our students) has heard of the Rihanna-Chris Brown incident.

A recap for the rest of you: Rihanna is one of the biggest singers in R&B. She is 21 years old. She sang that annoyingly repetitive song "Umbrella" a couple of summers ago, and was the reason that you couldn't get that "Under my umbrella-ella-ella, hey hey hey" refrain out of your head after hearing just about any radio station.

Chris Brown started as a child R&B star, an extraordinarily talented singer. Female students I know have had crushes on him since he was 15. He is now 19.

Rihanna and Chris Brown have dated for a year or so now, I guess. Sort of a king and queen of the R&B world.

When the Grammys were on a couple of weeks ago, Rihanna was supposed to show up to perform. She didn't. It turns out she was in the hospital, and her date for the ceremony (Mr. Brown himself) was in a jail cell. He had beaten her, as was proved in the police reports and, later, in this leaked photo:

Were the bruises, abrasions, and fat lip what made me mad? Well, yeah. I was royally ticked off, thinking that the only possible good thing that could come of this would be that it would be an object lesson for the young adolescent girls I teach: This is what abuse looks like. If you see it or experience it, GET AWAY and TELL SOMEONE.

But that's not the only reason I'm angry now. Last night, I read that Rihanna and Chris Brown are back together. And I'm trying not to be angry with Rihanna - the victim experience is incredibly complex, lots of manipulation going on, and we need to help victims rather than being mad at them. But I can't help it, I AM mad. My students look up to this woman. This woman who just returned to her abuser. I don't know how much work it will take to undo the influence that comes from their role model making such a decision ... but I think it will be a lot. I don't want to be mad at her, but I am. (And then there's the boys - what a wonderful message for them, that you can beat up on a woman and expect her to return to you.)

And I'm so, so angry.

What makes a good teacher?

As my last post shows, I've been thinking a lot lately about what it takes to be a good teacher ... and what it costs. (One of the two teachers who resigned from PCS was, ironically, a really good teacher. But a bad fit for our school environment.)

Two bloggers have had very good things to say about teaching in the past few days. Maybe a meme (a classical Dawkins meme, not an Internet meme) has been naturally spreading, spurred on by the change in government in our country and the talk about what will, and will not, change in education.

One is Cheri Block Sabraw, from the fabulous story-telling blog Notes from Around the Block. She had one post early in the week, and another a day later, talking about good versus bad teaching.  She and I got into an interesting discussion in the comments of the second post. Worth a read.

And then there was Jen, who posted to The One Minute Writer. If you haven't visited this blog, you should! It provides a writing prompt every day, and a timer so that a response can be composed in 60 seconds. Jen wrote the One Minute Writing of the Day a couple of days ago, on the prompt "Reading." I never would've said I could describe a good teacher in one minute, but Jen did. Try to read this and not get at least a little choked up:

One-Minute Writing of the Day:

Writer:  Jen

I had a dyslexia that went undiagnosed for a long time... and made it all the way to 3rd grade not knowing how to read. I didn't understand the concept of looking at the 'letter shaped pictures' and seeing words instead of shapes... Then Miss Albers kept me in during recess and made me learn how to read, while everyone else was outside playing. I thought she was punishing me by keeping me indoors...

Now I know she was showing me the true doorway to the outside. :)

I don't think I have anything to add to that.