Teaching

[Antrax]

mikegoo, I've repeated the same point twice. It's not true you can reach any student; but you have to pretend it is to always give the maximum of yourself.
Antrax

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"If it comes down to a choice between being unloved and being vulnerable and sensitive and emotional, then you can just keep your love." -Victor Mancini, "Choke"

[BraveHat]

But must you pretend so, in order to give the maximum of yourself to the job? The reality is something about the classroom situation reaches the student, even if that something is the idea You don't belong here or This material is uninteresting. Shouldn't the teacher's job be to focus on the material itself, for the sake of those students who are interested, rather than try to "reach" the uninterested children (read: try and force them to be interested)? If the teacher is trying to "make" the material interesting, it can only mean that the teacher himself doesn't already find the material interesting as is. If the kid doesn't care about the material, nothing the teacher can do can make him care, but if the teacher tries to manipulate his interest, he can certainly make the student want to care. But wanting to care and actually caring aren't the same thing. One induces self-deception and the other learning.

[BraveHat]

I sort of went off on a tangent there, but my point was if you treat all of your students with respect, they'll naturally give some back in return. If you resist the urge to try and change the one's who don't want to be there, they'll have no desire to give the teacher a hard time.

I just can't see how it's the teacher's job to make the students learn or even pay attention. It seems only common sense that it's the teacher's job to cover the material as best as he/she can.



[This message has been edited by BraveHat (edited 10-25-2002 09:15 PM).]

[Antrax]

[BraveHat]

Why? Why can't the teacher simply describe how it works and answer any questions accordingly?

[Antrax]

Because it's bloody boring, and over half the class won't understand it that way. And they will NOT ask questions. People who don't understand don't ask, they just idle. It's the TEACHER's job to ask the class to find out whether or not he did his job well -- ie the material was understood by everyone.
Antrax

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"If it comes down to a choice between being unloved and being vulnerable and sensitive and emotional, then you can just keep your love." -Victor Mancini, "Choke"

[BraveHat]

[Porro]

[BraveHat]

[BraveHat]

Even shy and insecure people (aren't we all a little insecure?) investigate a question they have when an aspect of something they are interested in is in doubt. They might not investigate by asking the instructor, they might do it by going on their own wit or instinct, but in either case, the instructor's attempts to spice up the material aren't going to aid in that pursuit.

[BraveHat]

And of course, it boils down to being able to distinguish between those who can't understand something and those who just aren't interested in something. The former can be helped, while that latter can't.

[Chuck]

If they need incentive to learn tell them they can't leave until they understand the material.

[EEEM]

I don't know about you guys... but when I don't understand, I ask. Simple as that.

[Lepton]

I sit at the back of the room and answer questions the teacher poses to the class under my breath. I used to sit in the front and answer all the questions out loud, but that didn't do much good for anyone else, and it wasn't like that strategy helped my learning. Actually, it didn't help my popularity much either.

[Antrax]

[Aarondalf]

You are my hero Antrax...

(And I thought *I* had tickets on myself. Sheesh.)

[Beartalon]

I like Antrax's suggestion about apportioning the questions best.

I have experience on both sides of the teacher's desk. On one side, if you count Sunday School, and tutoring maths, English and sciences, I've tried to help many kids learn, usually in very small groups and often on one to one mentoring. I've also been a student, both in regular school, university and again as a mature student in college.

As a teacher, my experience with kids that don't listen has been varied. Some had ADD or ADHD, so they required a lot of direct attention and appealing to things they are interested in, otherwise their attention is diverted. Some have misdiagnosed or undiagnosed learning disabilities and their defense is to act the clown or just misbehave, from mild to wild disruption in the class. Unless the parent(s) or school were able to diagnose, I was at a loss. Some were undergoing familial changes, dysfunction or stress. Again, all I could do was suggest a counsellor.

As a substitute teacher only there for a short time, mith, being able to figure out what's happening and why would be incredibly difficult.

The parental involvement during school years must be there or the teacher can hit his head on a brick wall. I ensure that the student I am trying to tutor has not been bullied by his parents into being tutored and that the parents are involved in the tutoring. If I get lack of interest from either side, I don't tutor.

As a tutor for people beyond high school, I found that many people asking for me help did not want help to understand, they wanted me to do the work for them, which I refused to do. The ones that I did help had to first prove to me that they had tried well.

As the college student, I watched my class dwindle from over 150 down to only 33 graduates in the last semester. 22 of those students were co-operative education students, who had to maintain a B average (75%) in order to achieve both the diploma for the program and the co-op diploma. That took a lot of work. The other 11 didn't take the co-op option and weren't required to get the B average, but to progress, you had to maintain at least a B to ensure you could pass the higher level concepts.

The students who didn't care failed. They were allowed to fail. In college, it was their own responsibility to come to class, study and pass. The parental involvement was next to nothing.

Some kids just don't care or don't appear to care because they can't or refuse to see the real-life application. Other than capturing their interest, I don't know of any other good way of being able to reach everyone at all levels in the same class at one time.

[Beartalon]

As for asking or answering questions:

Teenagers and young adults have two main problems - they don't want to look stupid and they don't want to be wrong (Sometimes being stupid and/or wrong and dealing well with it is the best cure for self-confidence issues). This is partially why they don't ask or answer questions in class about material they don't understand well. Like Lepton, I eventually gave up answering questions. In some classes my professors finally got frustrated trying to get a response of ANY kind from everyone else and asked me or the other keener students directly.

[Burglyrm]

heh he's lucky... they split our classes up, so its just Tony, Squee, and I... On the other hand, had it been Squee, Tony, Tim, Fu, me, Audrey, etc...

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The killer in me is the killer in you.

[Antrax]

[Lucresia]

*breaks through conversation to say she wishes Mith were her sub!*

[pikachamp]

Originally posted by Lepton:

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The subs that I *did* couldn't comprehend Monty Hall. Bah!

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my regular math teacher in 6th grade didn't believe it until i gave him proof

[Beartalon]

Antrax, I failed to point out that my professors in college were breaking the problems down into small sub-steps. We were doing programming, so those sub-steps were the building blocks of programming statements.

Here's an example of a question I answered one day, after one professor had stopped asking other students:
"We have to store a person's age in whole numbers and do mathematical calcuations to decide when they will retire. What data type should we use?

The answer was integer - the only whole number mathmatical data type in the language we were studying. That question came up in third semester, and we'd already been exposed to datatypes in several programming languages and developed many applications. I admit that was simply a bad, bad day for everyone for whatever reasons. It didn't matter if the question was complex or simple, few would answer. "Guided discovery" won't work if no-one will even talk!

Also, I admit that my skills were much higher than other people's and I tried my best to help people along outside class and in group work, but I didn't pay the gross amounts of tuition to sit in class and WAIT. I finally started skipping classes and studying at my own pace.

[mith]

Burglym, you three were *really* quiet. I was tempted to tell you to talk more, it was worrying me.

[EEEM]

Mith, try not to get them started, you may regret it.

[BraveHat]

[Squee]

*G*

[Antrax]

BraveHat, you're not strong with the self-convincing, now are you? I know logically that it's possible that students exist that won't give a damn about me, and will be resistant to all my teacher tricks and will dedicate their lives to nothing but failing to understand what I try to teach. As a rational person, I can't claim with 100% certainty there's no such thing. But as a romatic idealist, I wholeheartedly believe I can teach anyone. Unless I believed that, I'd excuse my own failures by attributing them to unteachable students. If I take every failure as my own, the most harm it can do me is if I blame myself unfairly from time to time; if I don't, I'll be a bad teacher.
Beartalon, it's possible the professor failed because he just wasn't charimatic enough, or he failed to create the appropriate learning atmosphere, or failed to realise the mood in the class doesn't allow for guided discovery (I wonder how you deal with it in the university; I don't suppose you could take the students out for a little physical exercise, could you? ). In any case, it was his failure, unless it was a class-wide prank meant to ruin his life or something
Antrax

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"If it comes down to a choice between being unloved and being vulnerable and sensitive and emotional, then you can just keep your love." -Victor Mancini, "Choke"

[BraveHat]

[BraveHat]

As an epilogue, I've never taught a class before, though I have been a student-mentor for incoming NYU freshman. And for what it's worth, I heard that one of those freshman became a mentor the next year because "she had a bad experience with hers". But that was a rumor.

[This message has been edited by BraveHat (edited 10-27-2002 07:20 AM).]

[phileris]

I have only tried to teach music to a ten year old in my neighbourhood.She still can't tell the difference between E and F. .But at least I kept her interested.

[Beartalon]

Originally posted by Antrax:

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it's possible the professor failed because he just wasn't charimatic enough, or he failed to create the appropriate learning atmosphere, or failed to realise the mood in the class doesn't allow for guided discovery

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Antrax, sure it's possible but I'd be more apt to believe that the teacher played a more significant role in the "failure" if the same students hadn't acted the same way in all classes with different teachers using different styles in different subjects on different days all term.

*goes away to look up synonyms for different*

[This message has been edited by Beartalon (edited 10-27-2002 08:44 PM).]

[jeep]

Heh, I composed a huge response, but upon re-reading it I think it's just too much rambling. Here's the short version.

Teaching a group of widely varied skill/knowlede is DIFFICULT. To minimize boredom by the faster students and to avoid completely losing the slower students, you need to teach to the middle of the class and give extra time after class to the motivated but slower students. Public schools have too many students and not enough teachers.

As a sub, you inherit all the mistakes of the person you are taking over for, so you may have students that are already too far behind.

Here are some tips for dealing with unruly students:
Here are some of the rules I found or was told for dealing with unruly students, it's all really common sense stuff:

1. Command their respect.
   
   • Make them understand that you know the material so much better than any of them, that they will have to study years to learn it. (If this isn't true, don't try to fake it. I had one teacher who knew less than I did about math and he tried to tell me he understood math better than I did. He had none of my respect.)
     
   • Don't put up with any shit. Allow good natured, safe, and non-disruptive 'play,' with non-disruptive being key. This applies less to public schools than other forums.
     
   • Always be fair. Don't fall into the trap of having a teacher's pet. I'm not saying that punishment can't increase with frequency or be milder for first offence, but know the reason.
   
   
2. Give extra attention to the people who are lost but interested and don't let the people who are way ahead speed you up.
   
3. Recognize when people are bored because you are going to slow and let them know that you are getting to new material. Don't let the students who are behind slow you down too much. Give them extra-curricular attention, instead.
   
4. Work at figuring out why you cannot reach certain students and try to grow yourself in that area. Recognize that every student can be reached/motivated.
   
5. Don't get obsessed with the students you can't motivate. Recognize that YOU cannot reach every student.
   

Now aren't you glad I didn't put the long version here? And that is just info about the original question, I cut out all the responses to tangential comments/questions.

-JEEP

[Bicho the Inhaler]

Now, it seems that many of you think teachers must assume extraordinary levels of responsibility and take great care in dealing with students--that they must really care about their work. Teachers do have to care. I've been in classes both with really terrific teachers and terrible teachers. Especially in the lower grades, many (most?) students will associate the class with the actual subject matter, meaning if the class is hell for them, they will learn to hate the subject as well.

But, as firemeboy put it,

[Bicho the Inhaler]

Originally posted by Internet Stranger:

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I used to be annoyed in school when assholes like Mith felt I needed to participate more. Dude, just let them fail. Focus on the ones that actually want to be there. The rest will eventually figure out what learning is about after all.

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Originally posted by Antrax:

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Hm, from what I was taught, a good teacher doesn't let anyone not participate.

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Well, both are clearly correct. Elementary school and middle school students are immature and usually not very sensitive to the value of their educations. They don't think realistically or responsibly (I mean generally; I know there are exceptions). They need good teachers to care about them. I would intuitively expect that students who become sour on education early on are much more likely not to take education seriously later on, when it will permanently affect the range of directions they will be able to take their lives. The impressions they form here are likely to last. It would be nice if teachers teaching these students were able to retain the students' interests in their own educations. If young students are allowed to make reckless bad decisions, they won't regret them until later, and then they will regret them.

But when these students reach eleventh grade, they are different. They aren't impressionable and immature. They are conscious of their own strengths and weaknesses and have much better senses about what they can do with their lives. They may not legally be adults, but they have the capacity and desire to start taking responsibility for themselves. The fact is that they aren't children and would rather not be treated as such. By this age, many students have already made decisions about what priority they place on school. Teachers should still care, but forcing every student to participate is probably counterproductive. True, there are shy students who would benefit from extra attention, but students who are genuinely indifferent should be allowed to be. If a student is expected to pursue his or her own education, he or she really should be caring about it by the time he/she is sixteen or seventeen.

[Bicho the Inhaler]

And yeah, why isn't this in EI?

[mikegoo]

I think this has some releveance

http://www.theonion.com/onion3839/science_teacher.html

or not.

[RSA]

wow! mith just started teaching and they already wrote an article about him!

[mith]

[Internet Stranger]

Oh and Mith isnt an asshole, I meant that.. well, he knows.

I guess I could expand on my comment too. Well, its what Bicho said. So there. Except in my personal case, I didnt start caring until I was done with school alltogether. I found I learn better on my own anyways.

But I think thats the case with most GLers.

[This message has been edited by Internet Stranger (edited 10-28-2002 11:00 PM).]