OK, I'm not gonna lie. Around this time, the honeymoon period between students and teacher is completely gone. And we just look at each other angrily. And I get frustrated with them. Here they are... sitting there... trying their best to do absolutely nothing.
Today is the Monday before the Monday before the first Monday of break. There's pretty much nothing good about this day. I came back from a wonderful weekend vacation from Orlando where I spent Sunday playing mini-golf, eating a 2 hour long breakfast al fresco, and taking a nice swim in the pool. Twenty four hours later: a group of tired teens who hate me. First period did not go well. I dreaded third period. They usually give less effort than my first period, but I decided to try something differently this time. Another teacher reminded me, "It's that time of year. Students are tired and don't want to try. Teachers are tired and don't want to try." I realized how much I had been dropping the ball recently... with grading, with lesson planning, with creating a warm classroom environment. It's no surprise that students would feel the same way in early December. I started third period differently- with empathy. "I know how stressed you've been these past couple weeks. The semester has been grinding. I get it. I want us to be learning today but I also don't want it to feel like there's so much pressure. We're going to go over some things today. Some of you may want to work with me to learn the pre-skills. Others of you will want to try some problems with groups you choose. I don't want this to feel overwhelming." I responded to off task behavior more positively, laughed more, joked around more... The class wasn't perfect, but students did a hell of a lot more than the first period class, and there was so much more positive energy. I had several students goofing off, but I also had 3 students who chose to work with me over their friends so they could feel caught up. I had students teaching other students; some working alone; and some in larger groups. At least for that class, my attitude and my response to them made a LOT of difference. Students are people too (duh).
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I had gone to D.C. to visit a friend last weekend, and while I enjoyed my time there, I came home on Sunday afternoon and knew I was behind. No groceries, no meals prepared, no laundry cleaned, no lesson planned, no grading complete. A lot of no's and Monday was coming fast. Of course, I was overwhelmed by all of this and decided the sensible thing to do is shut down and watch hours of Netflix. Am I proud of this? No. Should I be less harsh on my students who do the same thing? Maybe.
Monday morning, I woke up at 4:00 AM after procrastinating my Sunday away. I quickly prepared a lunch for the day and then sat at my computer. I have a 100 minute class to account for and. one. blank. screen. I was introducing trigonometry that day. Most of my lesson that I had created needed me to guide my students through concepts and notes. It was going to be a boring day for my students. I teach four sections of geometry. I started teaching the lesson and one of my classes was continuously disruptive and challenging to work with. I wasn't in a great mood either because I'd been up since 4 AM. In the last five minutes of class, I shrugged and said, "If you don't want to learn, fine. I'm done." Five minutes passed without me doing anything. They left. I felt... like a horrible teacher. The next day I decided to go to some lecture on geometry and space by a renowned math professor who had a math thing named after him. I had tried to get a few students to come with me, but since I found out about it last minute, they were unable to make it. It's all for the best though. I understood... zero percent of what was said. What was worse, the professor literally read a wall of text at us. I say literally, because there was literally a PowerPoint with the exact same thing written on a giant screen behind him. I looked around at the math undergrads, grads, professors, and teachers. 100% of them were bored to tears and trying to look moderately polite. All of us hoping that it would end soon. Slide 48 of 62. 1 hour in. I secretly high-fived myself for bringing my textbook so I could plan the next day. I quickly went home, glad that I took none of my students. I started the next day telling my students that I didn't like the previous day. They were disruptive. It was hard to get started. Transitions were rough. My kids looked at me annoyed. Then I said, "I'd like to apologize as well. I went to a math lecture yesterday where the professor talked nonsense to us for 90 minutes, and the audience members were all in math related fields. It was really hard to stay focused. In fact, I didn't. Now, I don't think the lecture wasn't QUITE as bad. (Some students scoffed). BUT, I also don't think it was fair for me to just talk at you for 100 minutes. Today, we're going to be doing a lot more problems. You'll spend time trying to understand and not just trying to jot notes down." Some students looked surprise as at an apology. Others nodded. Either way, I had them bought in. My mentor came into my classes a few minutes later. He left me this note: Micah reminded me that this was something I did was a support class one year. (I had forgotten). I'm adding it hear in case I want to use it again sometime.
After students did poorly on an exam, I asked students how they felt when they didn't understand something. Responses ranged from defeated to stupid. I put all these responses in one column on the board. Then I asked them how they dealt with failure. What was their response? "Shutting down" "Giving up" "Get angry." I put all these answered in the second column without labeling these columns. Lastly, I asked them, "What have been some things you've done to help you feel less frustrated?" The last column had things like, "Listen to music" "Ask for help" "Take a drink of water." I explained to them that the first column was how we felt about our failures, but we didn't have to shut down. That this was an option. If we feel ourselves shutting down, we can find ways to respond in a different way. Students seemed to really feel affected by this, well for a week anyway. Then the weekend came and all was lost. |
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