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What I free wrote while they were
Sep. 22nd, 2005 03:34 pmSometimes I think I can't win. If I write it down and tell them, then I get whined at "Do you think we're stupid--you don't have to tell us twice." If I give it to them in writing, it's "I didn't read the assignment list/sheet/whatever." If I only tell them, then "I don't remember you saying that. If you'd written it down...."
So, what do I do? I guess it's just a losing battle, one I'm too sick today to figure out how to win. They're great people, most of them, but sometimes I just want to hit them with a clue bus--
Part of me wonders if things have just really changed, and there's no sense of student responsibility in the classroom. They understand (mostly) that they're responsibile for homework, but they don't seem to understand that when the teacher is talking that they need to do something besides sit there passively. Learning has to be an active process--questioning, writing down ideas that are important (or anything the teacher says for that matter--you don't know how important things are until later.) Hell, I've even done things like say, "Now pay attention, because if you don't get this you won't be able to do well on this papper, and they still just sit there. Sure, there's the exception in every class, but it's the ones who aren't active learners who should be the exception, not the ones who are. There's only so much I, or any teacher, can do. I've got seven classes, and the really engaged students could probably be numbered at less than 20--that means 1 in seven. That's appalling. And their inclination is to blame the school, the teachers, etc. instead of doing any sort of self-examinantion to see whether they might be the biggest part of the equation. They want to be entertained, I'm told--but then when there is an "entertaining" teacher, 3/4 of the time they dismiss the instructor as "fun, but you don't learn much".Sigh. Maybe just too tired to think about this right now. Seems fair if I'm making them send me theirs that I send them mine, but probably the ones who should take this to heart will dismiss it, and the good, motivated kids, who I'm not ranting about, will feel unappreciated and unrecognized. Can't win.
Hungry. Didn't get lunch. Timer.
So, what do I do? I guess it's just a losing battle, one I'm too sick today to figure out how to win. They're great people, most of them, but sometimes I just want to hit them with a clue bus--
Part of me wonders if things have just really changed, and there's no sense of student responsibility in the classroom. They understand (mostly) that they're responsibile for homework, but they don't seem to understand that when the teacher is talking that they need to do something besides sit there passively. Learning has to be an active process--questioning, writing down ideas that are important (or anything the teacher says for that matter--you don't know how important things are until later.) Hell, I've even done things like say, "Now pay attention, because if you don't get this you won't be able to do well on this papper, and they still just sit there. Sure, there's the exception in every class, but it's the ones who aren't active learners who should be the exception, not the ones who are. There's only so much I, or any teacher, can do. I've got seven classes, and the really engaged students could probably be numbered at less than 20--that means 1 in seven. That's appalling. And their inclination is to blame the school, the teachers, etc. instead of doing any sort of self-examinantion to see whether they might be the biggest part of the equation. They want to be entertained, I'm told--but then when there is an "entertaining" teacher, 3/4 of the time they dismiss the instructor as "fun, but you don't learn much".Sigh. Maybe just too tired to think about this right now. Seems fair if I'm making them send me theirs that I send them mine, but probably the ones who should take this to heart will dismiss it, and the good, motivated kids, who I'm not ranting about, will feel unappreciated and unrecognized. Can't win.
Hungry. Didn't get lunch. Timer.
