Thrown to the Lions

The Situation:

Last Friday, I taught a class... by myself. Two classes, actually. But first things first...

Last Friday, George had a writing workshop to attend during 3rd and 4th hour. He has missed a lot of classes lately for various planning initiatives, meetings, etc., so losing yet another day of curriculum time while a substitute babysat was less than ideal. My impression of substitutes is that if a sub can keep the students from committing any prosecutable offenses, you chalk it up as a success. Get them to do a worksheet to boot? Bonus. Like I said, not ideal.

So, I said, "I have an idea! The kids know me, I've been in for several weeks now, why don't I come in, observe during 1st and 2nd hour, and try to teach the lesson myself 3rd and 4th hour?" George looked at me, must have realized I was serious, and decided to give me just enough rope to hang myself with. Mission accomplished. Oh, the naivete of youth.

The Plan:

The lesson for stats did, in fact, revolve around a worksheet. The algebra lesson was to create equations out of word problems and also to start introducing "units", like miles per gallon, miles per hour, feet per second, etc.

I prepared a powerpoint talk for algebra explaining how an internal combustion engine works (in simple terms with lots of pictures and movies), and contrasting these with electric cars, which can be hybrids (parallel or series, although I didn't use those terms), or fully electric plug-ins. The tie-in was at the end to talk about finding a break-even point in buying an expensive high-mpg hybrid versus a cheaper low-mpg regular car.

Stats Grade: B

Stats was a little rocky, but okay. It was really challenging being both the good cop and the bad cop though! Normally, I let George worry about maintaining overall classroom discipline from the front while I float, basically putting out fires as individual students fall behind, get stuck, or need a swift (verbal) kick in the butt to get to work and stop daydreaming. I can be everyone's buddy, and I only have to deal with a couple people at a time. Cupcake city.

Without George in front, the well-oiled machine's wheels start to wobble. His absence, even after I told them I'd be teaching today, was a change of routine, and as the new authority figure, they decided to test my limits. Worse, since I'm usually the good cop, I think they expected to get away with it. Not without a fight! We did the worksheet in stages: assign a few problems, walk around and answer questions, go over the problems on the projector, assign the next few, repeat.

The volume in the classroom was substantially louder than during a Lancaster class. Rather than shout for quiet repeatedly, which I feel like is a great way to erode your own authority and turn a class against you, I concentrated on trying to get the few main noise radiation sources silenced. This meant breaking up a few of the larger "working groups" and sending kids back to their seats to work in pairs. One kid in particular, M, didn't want to move back after I asked him. Here's the exchange, roughly:

Me: M, why don't you and R head back to your seats. I'll be right over to help you.
M: No, we're fine, I'm working over here.
Me: No, sorry, it wasn't optional. Go back to your seat. I don't want groups larger than three (they were five).
M: (some further response along the lines of "No I'm doing okay I'm staying here", as he's copying the answers from the kid next to him)
Me: M! Did I stutter? Go back to your seat!
M: :::suddenly hurt look::: Okay, I'm going (as he continues to copy without moving)
Me: No, you're not. Move.
M: I'm going, I'm going (hasn't scooted his seat back yet, or picked up his pencil or paper)

At this point I made a grab to take his paper and walk it over, assuming he'd follow, back to his seat. I was slow, didn't get it, and a) made myself look foolish and b) failed to accomplish forcing him to move, so I settled for standing and waiting there for the next several seconds while he gathered up his stuff and started moving. After this, thing seemed to settle down a bit, although one girl kept asking me if she could call her coach (sport unknown) to tell them she wouldn't be at practice, and another if she could take a nap during class because she had, like, the most important swim meet ever in a couple of hours and needed to rest. I rather doubt Lancaster would have had these questions asked. Alas, I'm a softie, and I let them. Doing it again, I wouldn't have ("Would Mr. Lancaster let you? No, I don't think he would.")

Stats Areas for Improvement

1) Phrase requests as requests, and demands as demands. "Why don't you" do x suggests that you can be dissuaded. If it's not an option, don't phrase it like it is. Even if a student knows what you really meant, they can use this as a "loophole" to stall. Choose your words so the options are a) obedience or b) flagrant disobedience. Getting students in the habit of obeying, especially when you make reasonable demands, makes it more likely they will continue to do so. If a student really chooses option (b), you've got bigger problems.

2) Less arguing! Arguing enhances the illusion that what you've asked is up for discussion. Your authority in front of the class is as much force of personality as your ability to impose some sort of disciplinary retribution. Arguing also builds ill will between you and the student (M wouldn't talk to me the rest of the hour).

3) Directions with choices are more palatable than directions without. In retrospect, I think I would have said, "M, I want you and R to work separately from S and B" and let them choose to take the nearest desks, rather than go back across the classroom to their own desks. Leaving a little choice allows the student to feel like they've got some say and "save face" (important to prevent resentment) while still doing what you want.

4) Tone is important. You can take a confrontational , angry tone, or you can speak calmly, quietly even, and go for the "I don't need to raise my voice because it's inconceivable you would not do what I ask" effect. I suspect this last takes years of practice (and some knowledge of what to do if the inconceivable, uh, conceives), but I think the voice-raising is something that, like a good spice, is used sparingly. George rarely raises his voice, but you notice when he does.

Algebra Grade: C-

If I had a few bumps with stats, full of college-bound seniors and juniors, I knew there was turbulence ahead with the freshman algebra class. Several of the class inexplicably didn't recognize me and thought I was just a sub, which I found odd, since I've been there almost a dozen times now. Nevertheless, I got off to a pretty good start here. The car theme caught the class' attention as I had hoped, and I got some pretty good class involvement as I showed the pictures and videos explaining how pistons work and then transitioned to the electric cars. This part went OK too, until I got to the end with the two cars and started to try to work in the lesson.

I swear, when I got to the slide with the picture of the Prius and Focus with their price and mileage, and started talking about setting up an equation, it was like a switch went off. Talking, no attention at all, and difficult to get class involvement in either forming or solving the equations for finding a break-even. First I had the class calculate a $/yr for the car from its mileage, taking an average 12000 mi/yr and a class-decided $3/gallon. Even then, calculating the break-even was like pulling teeth, and I had other distractions too.

T asked to go to the bathroom. I let him, and 20 minutes later I had to send the sub out to search for him in the halls. (There was still a sub present, since George was out; I just took care of trying to teach -- though the sub actually helped maintain the discipline somewhat) He found T hanging out in the cafeteria, chatting with friends. Then, T and two girls in the back, Ty and ?, were talking incessantly and loudly, at some points standing up to gesture and argue with each other while I was speaking. They'd been behaving this way all hour, despite my attempts at silencing them, and finally I got fed up with it and sent the three of them to sit out in the hall. Not ideal, but I was a bit frustrated, could you tell?

Meanwhile, the lesson was going poorly, partly because the idea of getting dollars per year out of three distinct pieces of information was a little too advanced, partly because the numbers were big ($15000, $1000/yr, etc. -- frightening due to sheer number of zeros at the end for the algebra Paduans), partly because I was going slow to try to keep the struggling portion of the class and thus losing the interest of the brightest ones who were most likely to respond to questions, thus causing me to wait longer for answers, go slower, vicious cycle, etc.

Algebra Areas for Improvement

1) Start from the simplest example and move to the most complex. Not the other way around. This should be intuitively obvious, but sometimes you can delude yourself into thinking, "Wait, no, this other slightly harder example is so much cooler, we can go over that in a lot of detail, and then those other simple boring examples will be much easier and can be done quickly." This is so wrong it's frightening. If I, a grad student with degrees in physics and engineering, think a problem is "slightly harder but cooler", a ninth grader is going to think it's unintelligible and hey, it's math, it's not cool either way. Perspective is important.

2) Excessive wait time is just as annoying for kids now as it was when I was in school. Wait time is when the teacher asks a question and then waits ... and waits ... and waits for a painfully long time while crickets chirp in the silence and no one either knows the answer or wants to answer. This is annoying for the bright kids who know the answer but don't want to raise their hand for the twelfth time because it's not cool, and it's also irritating for the kids who don't get it and just want you to say the answer and see if they can figure it out while trailing behind. Involving students is important, but all good things in moderation. George often zips through his lessons, and I think this has to be one of the reasons he does it -- the bright students don't get bored, and you can help the struggling students with questions individually in the time you've saved.

3) Know what the classroom rules are and what the discipline ladder is. Are hats allowed? Phones? Food / drinks? Is step one after a verbal warning to take away participation points? Or is it having to sit by yourself at the front of the room? At what point do you send the student to the principal's office? I feel like the great disadvantage of a substitute is their feeling of powerlessness to enforce any discipline on the students. Sending the students out in the hall was not ideal, nor was it what Mr. Lancaster would have done, but lacking that exact knowledge I just improvised to try to minimize distractions to the rest of the class. In retrospect, I would have first told the students they were losing some (and then all) of their participation grade for the day, then moved them to separate seats, then considered further steps if necessary (unlikely).

4) Beware of getting your students too worked up about any particular part of your lesson. You run the risk of them ignoring you when you switch tracks and try to connect different segments of your lesson, as they continue to debate "Mustang vs. Corvette vs. Lamborghini" without hearing you talk about how the Lambo gets 6 mpg. And doesn't do well with potholes. This is an awfully fine line to straddle, though -- get 'em sufficiently hooked to listen, but not so worked up that they can't let it go. See my Michigan - Michigan state post once it finally makes it into print for more on this phenomenon.

Conclusion:

After two hours of being a real teacher, rather than a mere TF, I was exhausted, just completely and totally drained. I went home and took a nap! Plus, while now (five days later) I can at least see some successes and failures mixed together, at the time I felt dispirited, like an abject failure who crashed and burned and exploded into millions of tiny pieces. Perspective, man. It's key.

And real teachers go for twice or three times as long every day, 9 months of the year. Wow.

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