Opening up my Eyes

I have been a teacher going on ten years now, and I have had many students go through my classroom. I have taught different grade levels and students of varying abilities. I have had some very rough classrooms full of students who have made me want to walk out of the building and never return, and I have had many classrooms full of intelligent and very talkative students.

This year however I currently have a schedule that has truly opened up my eyes to the huge amount of difference between a class of advanced students and a class of regular students. This year I am teaching eighth grade, and for the first time, I have more advanced classes that I do regular classes; three advanced and two regular. Also, last time I taught eighth grade full time which was four years ago, all the classes were labeled advanced but the school had a policy of simply mixing students of all levels together and calling it advanced. This year however, since we have begun actually separating regular students from truly advanced students three years ago, that means that my advanced classes are composed of students who have been put through the strainer at least three times; from fifth to sixth grade, from sixth to seventh, and then again from seventh to eighth grade. That means that any regular students who made it through the cracks the first couple of times have had time to be weeded out by now. It also means that the regular classes have been completely denuded of any talent they may have had.

This year, I am revamping that way I teach to more closely adhere to the pacing guide and to better prepare my students for the upcoming EOC (End of Course exam) that will be administered sometime in my by the district. But even though I teach both regular and advanced classes, I am teaching both in much the same way with only a few exceptions. For example, the advanced classes have a few extra assignments that my regular students will not received.

Even so, many of the classroom activities are identical, and this is where I can really see the difference between advanced students and regular students. First let me say, that I feel so happy and blessed to finally be teaching a population of students that care, that understand, that have desire and willingness to learn, and where I can finally just teach without having to hear constant excuses for not completing work and having to deal with one behavior problem after the other.

One sample lesson I have given so far this year involved learning about early Native American cultures. I had in a previous lesson explained the arrival of the first inhabitants, how they eventually learned how to grow their own food and settle down in communities, and how this led to the development of different cultures in the Americas. Next day, I open up with a review of the previous days lesson with verbal responses from teacher questions. Next, I have a powerpoint presentation which introduces the Olmec, the Aztec, the Maya, and the Inca. Next, I have the students open to the page in the book where it discusses these civilizations, and I pass out a worksheet that I specifically made to go along with their reading. I ask them to read it on their own, and to complete the assignment as they are reading.

In my advanced classes, this runs as smooth as silk. The students answer all my questions by raising their hands. Then they quietly listen to everything as I go over the powerpoint. They immediately open their books, and then begin their work. They finish on average in twenty minutes from when they began, and independently turn their papers into the inbox where all completed work goes. Then those that finish early quietly begin working on the vocabulary words which I have listed on the board for that purpose.

In my regular classes, the exact same lesson always falls flat, no matter what it is. I walk into class, and instead of being prepared to learn, many of the students are out of their assigned seats or in completely different seats. I have to ask them to return  to their proper chairs. The students are loud, and I have to yell over them to let them know that I wish for them to take out their books. When I attempt to review the previous days work, many of the students yell out without raising their hands, and many of them are giggling and turned around. They mess with each other and rat on each other. While presenting the powerpoint, I have to stop myself several times to remind the students of my classroom rule which states that when the teacher is talking, they must be quiet. It takes twice as long to go over the same information. When the students finally receive the worksheet, many of them keep their books closed. Many of them won't start the assignment for several minutes. Many of them will claim they "don't get it" and when you explain to them that they must read to find the answer, you get frantic, incredulous looks, as if you asked them to do something illegal. "But that's too much to read" or "I don't read boring stuff." Their refusal to read any of the textbook, and their desire to find the answer either through a) skimming, b) copying their neighbor or c) you telling them the exact sentence in the book they should write is the most significant difference in their inability to understand or retain any of the information you teach them. And, it's not something that started in my class. The not reading is a habit they picked up in elementary school, they chose to go down that dark road, and now they are pretty much stuck there because by the time they reach eighth grade it's almost impossible to teach them any other way to do it.

I have been dealing with these type of children for a long time. For a long time, I thought I was the problem. I was beginning to question myself and my teaching ability. But this year, I have been lucky enough to finally have the right set of students, and I can see the way a classroom was meant to run. In the past, when my regular students performed poorly, my colleagues, counselors, administrators, and society all wanted to blame me and what I failed to do. But each person and each student is in charge of their own destiny. If a student fails my class, but I did everything I could as a teacher to make it possible for them to succeed, then it was that students choice to fail, and I as a teacher should not be blamed or judged or have my job threatened over it.

Social Experiment

A few weeks ago, I was attending a cub scout meeting with my son. I saw that the pack leader had designed a fun activity for the kids to do. Cub scouts are elementary school kids, so the age range is 6-11. The pack leader had brought in some small brown paper bags and the kids were supposed to make puppets out of them using crayons. The scouts had a good time, and after a few minutes, my son ran up to me and showed me his completed puppet. But then, the leader surprised me by telling the scouts that now that their puppets were done, they were going to use them to create a public service announcement about the cub scouts. He explained what a public service announcement was, then separated them into groups of three, and said they had ten minutes to come up with the commercial. Then, they would take turns acting it out for the parents.

I have to admit, I was really skeptical. I had little faith that even after an explanation, such young children could really grasp what a public service announcement really was. I did not think these kids would be able to come up with anything, especially working completely independently, especially the younger ones, of which there are many in the pack. I observed the groups talking amongst themselves. To an adult, their giggles and awkward sentences barely seems like communication. I was very curious what these groups would present when time was up.

To my astonishment, each group of kids got up there, and in ten minutes, came up with mini commercials advertising the cub scouts. Some of them had their ads sponsored by taco bell. Many of them mentioned all the cool activities that could be done when you join boyscouts. Many ended their commercials with the call to "join today!" I was truly impressed that these young kids were able to create coherent commercials advertising the boy scouts all on their own in ten minutes.

A few weeks later, I was preparing a lesson on technological innovations of eighteenth century America for my eighth grade class. We read about advances in transportation and communication technologies, such as railroads, steamboats, and the telegraph. We also read about new tools in agriculture that allowed for farmers to claim formerly untenable land in the grasslands of central United States, tools such as the steel plow and the mechanical thresher. I then thought it would be neat to recreate the activity that the boy scouts had done, but instead relate it to the lesson we had just learned. I told the students to pick one of the innovations or inventions that they learned about in the lesson, then put them into groups of three, and asked them to create an advertisement for it. I gave them fifteen minutes.

Let me say that I have seen students in the past come up with some very creative things when given the opportunity. But, this particular class of eighth graders that I have is a very low level class. I put them in groups and asked them to tell me which innovation they chose (mostly to force them to pick one right away and thus avoid spending too much time trying to decide). Then, I walked around the room to observe the groups as they worked.

Mostly, I was very disappointed. Many of the students were not even discussing any type of plan as to what they would do when it was their turn. Many students simply created a dry list of facts pulled straight out of the book. When it was finally time for the groups to present, only four out of seven groups had put anything together at all, and most were dry, unexciting, and demonstrated a complete lack of creativity. This was completely disappointing to me, because I felt that the topic had so much potential for amazing skits to be created. If you chose railroads you could simulate customers riding in a train car, and talking about the scenery, or making fun of stagecoaches. If you chose steamboats, you could have addressed the live shows that were held on most of the liners for entertainment. They could have talked about the steel plow and how much easier it made work. The activity was such an abysmal failure, that it only served to sap my morale and enthusiasm as a teacher.

Why can a group of young elementary age boy scouts do such a good job of creating advertisements, while a group of 13-14 year old eighth graders completely fail at it? I really don't know how to answer  that question, but I'd like to think that it's just because my son and his pack are all geniuses!