Reflections
on life, teaching, and whatever else comes to mind.
Do Kids Know How to Play Their Parents?
You bet they do.
It happened just the other day. For perhaps the hundredth time in the last ten years. I know, I know...one hundred times in ten years means only ten times a year. Not so bad, right?
Well, wait a minute. It depends on what you're talking about when you say "not so bad". If we're talking people sneezing in the classroom, you're right. It's not bad at all. Not much of a distraction. If you're talking about a kid getting punched in the restroom, however, I'd say that even once is pretty bad. Especially if you're that kid.
So here's what I'm talking about: a parent being presented with the facts about what his kid did...
Motivation: The Elusive Ingredient
I taught my students how to conjugate verbs the other day. Or rather, I tried to.
It was tough getting the lesson started, because several students were late from their math class. When I went out into the hall to hurry them up, I got 'lip' from a few who were more interested in socializing at their lockers than learning language usage. And that's what motivation is about: what interests us enough to get us to act on it.
We could also bring the idea of 'incentive' into the picture. After all, the kids were motivated to remain in the hall, but if there had been an incentive to move faster, they might have foregone their personal motivations at that moment.
​ But there is no incentive. They know there's no way I can get them to do what they don't want to do. School discipline today means trying to talk kids into doing what is in their best interests. But there's no 'big stick' backing anything up. (I just love quoting Teddy Roosevelt!)
​
On Test-taking:
Eenie-Meenie-Mynie-Moe
as a multiple choice technique ?
This week, I gave my sixth graders a district math test, the kind they do completely on the computer.
My job was to walk around and "make sure" they take the test seriously and don't try to look on anyone else's computer monitor. How do you "make" someone take a test seriously? I do my best to teach the concepts and make the subject matter engaging, but let's be honest: how engaging can you make memorizing multiplication facts? And yet, that's what these kids need to do if they're to be successful at solving any kind of algebraic algorithm. In our current educational world, no one seems to get the concept of motivation.
As I walked around the testing lab, I saw students choosing answers randomly, students counting off Eenie, Meenie, Mynie, Moe to select an answer, and students staring at the monitor as if comatose. It was frustrating, because the results of this test are supposed to give me a good idea of who needs more help in certain areas. But how can I trust those results when I witnessed how little effort was put forth by many of my students?
