Often (i.e. most days) I have conversations like this:
“What question are you on, Natalie?”
“I’m stuck.”
“What question are you stuck on?”
“All of them!”
“You can’t be stuck on all of them.”
“Yes I am. I don’t get any of it.”
“Well what question is it that you are having trouble with?”
“All of them”
“I’m not asking you to do all of them at once. Try doing them in order and tell me which one you are stuck on.”
“Question one.”
“There isn’t a question one.”
“Well, question A”
“What’s the problem with question A?”
“I don’t get it”
“What don’t you get about it?”
“All of it.”
“Well which bit?”
“All of it.”
“Even the first bit?”
“Yes.”
“Well what does it say/”
”Copy and complete the table”
”Do you know what that means?”
“Obviously.”
“Have you done that?”
“No.”
“Well can you do that, please. Then ask me for help if you’re stuck.”
(5 minutes later)
“Have you copied the table?”
“Yes.”
“Are you stuck”
“No, this is easy.”
However, this entry isn’t really about the kids who don’t get it, it’s for teachers who don’t get it. There are teachers who are unaware of what’s happening in most schools. Some of them comment on my blog, some of them I see discussing issues on teacher forums, and occasionally I talk to such teachers in real life. Usually they have spent their careers exclusively in better than average schools (or alternatively in that peculiar state of denial which only members of SMT are capable of). They have a little difficulty understanding what teachers with tough classes are actually experiencing.
Here’s a few answers to the points they usually make:
Better classroom management would solve all the problems you mention. I’m a great believer in the importance of classroom management as a skill that can be developed. However, the “Fuck-Off-Factor” (the tendency for students to ignore all instructions and verbally abuse anyone who gives them), and “Terroring” (the intimidation of any teacher who attempts to bring about order in the classroom) provides a natural limit to what can be achieved through classroom management. Some of the schools I‘ve worked at have showed staff videos about behaviour management. The best of these showed Bill Rogers establishing routines in a class and enforcing rules in an non-confrontational way. It’s impossible to watch these without thinking: “How come none of the kids tell him to fuck off?”
My school has challenging students too: This point is usually followed by claims about the racial mix of their school, or descriptions of the poorest part of thei catchment area. However, non-white pupils, pupils from a deprived area, or even pupils from a deprived background do not make a school challenging. A school or a class is challenging if poor behaviour and no learning is normal. Background is only part of the equation and stereotypes about race or class can be quite misleading. Only the worst estates have no middle class people living on them, and most of the worst students are white, anyway. Inclusion has let some really extreme cases into good schools, but the question is always “what’s normal?” A school where all the worst behaved kids are recognised as nutters by the other students is not a challenging school. A school where some of the worst behaved kids are seen as an authority by the other students is.
You are bothered by little issues (like students not having pens). Teachers with no experience of the sharp end don’t understand the scale of a “little issue”. A child without a pen is not a major problem if there is only one such child and you don’t mind him working in pencil instead. What they don’t realise is that in a challenging class more than half the students will be without anything to write with (or too lazy to take their pens out of their bags if they do have them). Not only that but most of the ill-equipped students will arrive late, and aim to interrupt the teaching by shouting “I need a pen”. Often they will walk to the front of the class to demand something to write with or start going through the teacher’s desk drawers. They will start arguing if you give them pencils (“I can’t write in pencil”). If you are foolish enough to give them a pen they will take it to pieces and throw the pieces at others in the class. If you give them a pencil it cannot have a rubber on the end (that’s an eraser to any American readers) as they will bite it off and throw it at other students. If they return it at the end of the lesson it will be with the point broken off. Until you manage to come up with routines which minimise the amount of lending you will be handing out up to a hundred pencils in a week of which less than half will be returned in working order.
If kids are rude to you you must have done something wrong. This is my pet hate. Here are some of the things I’ve done to prompt verbal abuse by students:
Walked past them having never met them before.
Told them to stop fighting.
Asked them politely to do some work.
Taught their cousin.
Taken the register in a cover lesson.
Asked them to go to their lesson.
Politely asked them to leave my classroom as they are not in my class.
Suggest they stop climbing the wall.
Of course the usual prompt for verbal abuse is to enforce a school rule.
If you don’t like it you could just leave. Of course I can. Every teacher who wants children to learn can quit. Once the teaching profession is populated only by human sponges able to absorb any punishment and members of SMT unable to take responsibility for anything they do the problems in education will just go away. Alternatively we can and should fight to get the state of our schools recognised and order restored. Why should I give up my calling to teach just because there’s sod all teaching going on in so many schools?
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December 1st, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Amen. I am at a school where disrespect and abuse of the teachers is normal. When I read other teachers blogs I see that is different for them, which is one of the reasons I am either going to find a job at another school or I will be leaving the profession. Before I completely give up on teaching I want to try a different school. It makes me sad that others do not see the problem, and I am not sure how and if it will ever be fixed.
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:30 pm
IN Primary Schools, the problem appears as soon as children see a question that involves reading, i.e. inference in comprehension, (why did X act in this way? Give reasons for your answer …), and in Numeracy, (any word problem).
Given the exhausting act of brainpower it takes to read a question in a test, some pupils like to miss them out entirely.
With, “I don’t get it”. If you sit beside them while they read it, and lead them step by step, they often do.
Its anything requiring independence of thought / skills.
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:41 pm
It can be very similar in secondary. “I don’t get it” often means “I can’t be bothered to read the question” even in students who have perfectly good literacy skills. Sometimes it even means “I can’t be bothered to find out which question it is”.
In Key Stage 3 I have started refusing to give the page number for textbook work in order to force them to at least engage their brains enough to find the exercise before they get started:
“Where’s Exercise 6B”
“It’s in chapter 6. After Exercise 6A.”
“Is this it?”
December 2nd, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Yes …
and in response to “If you don’t like it you could just leave.”
One of the best answers I’ve seen.
Human sponges? Thought robots would be more appropriate.
It is all my fault
I must be useless
I have to leave
Beep (error /redo)
Be retrained
Beep (error /redo)
Beep
Laugh, it confuses people.
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:58 pm
I think “I don’t get it” more often means “If I whinge I’ll get told the answer” ; we are currently teaching children to expect to be told the answers, not to do anything for themselves.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Why should they do anything for themselves when grade-anxious teachers will desperately do it for them? We can’t MAKE them do anything and there are no sanctions for refusing.
December 7th, 2007 at 10:43 am
I think we all struggle with the attitudes of students and SMT alike. The trick is NOT to let it affect you. Life becomes a lot easier in schools if you can go around with a smile on your face and attempt to focus on the positives…after all, most kids are great.
It seems rather self defeating to allow the misery of a few morons to determine your own mood.
Who are the adults here?
December 7th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
“The trick is NOT to let it affect you. Life becomes a lot easier in schools if you can go around with a smile on your face and attempt to focus on the positives…after all, most kids are great.”
Thanks, I forgot to mention that one.
That’s definitely one of the most unhelpful things you could ever say to somebody working in a stressful environment and only somebody who really didn’t get it could ever say it.
December 7th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
While I suspect you do teach in a much more challenging environment that I do I’ve had my fair share of students tell me to f off and they are nine and ten. You make several great points, and I share your frustration with the “it’s not them it your teaching” mentality.
December 8th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Hey, I linked to you over at So You Want To Teach? in the 148th Carnival of Education but it didn’t trackback correctly. Sorry about that.
December 8th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Seemed to be okay on this end, thanks.
There should be a link to your carnival on my blog roll (at least until the next carnival of education).
December 8th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
In my 3rd grade class, I often can’t even count to ONE after saying, “begin your assignment” before there’s at least one hand up in the air asking about how to do number 1. It’s incredibly frustrating, because as the other poster said, if you walk them through it and ask key logical questions, they can sort it out. They’re just not willing to do that. And this is why I feel like I hardly get anything accomplished in a day, because I am unwilling to just GIVE them the answers, but talking them through the problems takes forever…
December 10th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
In response to oldandrew. I do work in anextremely stressful comp. It appears the ones that do all of the moaning seem to be the people with negative, self-defeating behaviours as perfectly exhibited by your response.
Hopefully you will be able to retire to france where everything is love and light in the near future. But please remember….you can’t run away from yourself!!!
God bless.
December 10th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
“I do work in anextremely stressful comp.”
I’ve already done that one, it was second on my list.
“It appears the ones that do all of the moaning seem to be the people with negative, self-defeating behaviours as perfectly exhibited by your response.”
You’ve already done that one in your last post.
“Hopefully you will be able to retire to france where everything is love and light in the near future.”
I’ve done that one too. It was the last one on my list.
December 10th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
sigh
Please don’t feed the troll.
December 11th, 2007 at 11:48 am
But it’s fun.
March 9th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
This all sound sooooo familiar.
July 22nd, 2008 at 10:43 pm
You mean you get your pencils back? I used to charge a dollar for a pencil, because I am quote not Wal-Mart, and still rarely got any back.
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:48 am
Some kids would be too embarrassed to steal a pencil, in case they accidentally turned up to their next lesson with something to write with.