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An honour
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Edublog AwardsNov
21
Some students really appreciate teachers who don’t take their responsibilities as teachers seriously.
Filed Under Behaviour Management, Engaging Assignments and Activities for Students, motivating students, positive climate, Special Education, The way I see it, underachieving students | 9 Comments
It was the end of the period and my grade 9 students were complaining about having to wait for the bell to ring before they could leave. ” Other teachers let their classes out before the bell rings” , they argued. Then they started to talk about teachers they really liked. ( I guess I wasn’t one of them at this point.) One student said “Mr W is really cool, he doesn’t care if we finish our work”. Another student said “I really like Ms. X because I can take the attendance to the office and never come back and she doesn’t notice”. Yet another said that she likes ” Ms. Y because she lets us out of class early all the time.” Finally, one student said he likes Mr. Z because “every Friday is movie day”. (You can appreciate why I haven’t given actual names here.)
Really. These are the kinds of teachers some of my reluctant/struggling students love. I tried to talk to them about why I thought that the teachers like these might not be helping them do their best in school. The kids didn’t care. They just kept talking about how great these teachers were . Come to think of it just now as I’m writing this, I could get into a lot of trouble for the conversation I had with my students about teachers W, X,Y and Z. In the heat of the moment, I might have said something about them not doing their job properly- but please don’t quote me! Usually, I tell my students I don’t want to talk about other teachers. It’s disrespectful. But….
While some students may love teachers like this now, they may not feel the same way in the future. Recently, I had a conversation with an adult I’ll call Chris who is really angry that he had teachers like that when he was in high school. Chris now as an adult feels cheated out of learning opportunities because some of his teachers didn’t insist he do his best. Chris’ argument goes something like this: What does a kid in grade 9 know. He’s too immature to understand that these teachers are cheating him out of learning opportunities. Teachers who choose to not care if a student finishes his work, choose to let kids take attendance to the office and not notice that they don’t come back, choose to lets kids out early all the time, and choose to show movie every Friday instead of finding some way to engage a kid, are abdicating their responsibilities as teachers and it’s not fair to the kids.
Now, I suppose you could say that Chris only has himself to blame for his missed learning opportunities while he was in school. He needed to take school more seriously. Well, maybe. But Chris was a 14 year old kid and the teachers were adults who had certain responsibilities. My question always is: If teachers don’t take school seriously, and they are adult role models in the schools, how can we expect kids to take school seriously? Some students need teachers to care about the their education because these students are too immature to care about it themselves.
Nov
14
The excuses I get when students are caught plagiarizing. LOL.
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Behaviour Management, Evaluation, Graphic Organizers, Learning Strategies, motivating students, Special Education, underachieving students, Writing Better Essays | 3 Comments
“I don’t remember going to the Internet and downloading the essay”
“It wasn’t me. It was my sister. She probably did it.”
” It wasn’t me. It was my brother. He helped me with my essay.”
“I used dictionary.com and found some synonyms so some of the words are different. It’s not exactly the same.”
These are some of the excuses I got recently when I caught some of my grade nine students handing in essays they didn’t write. The irony of all of this is if these students could craft fine essays like the ones they handed in, they wouldn’t be in my class. My class is for students who struggle with writing essays. The minute I see one that is finely crafted like these were, I’m suspicious.
I try to prevent this kind of thing happening by having my students show me their entire writing process from start to finish. I tell them that writing an essay is a process and they have to show me the process. The process involves
- brainstorming
- using a 5 paragraph graphic organizer to organize their thought before putting them to paper
- having a peer edit the first draft of the essay and have the editor sign acknowledging this
- making corrections to first draft
- having another peer edit the second draft of the essay and have the second editor sign acknowledging this
- making corrections to the second draft
- submitting the final draft
None of the students who plagiarized could show me the entire writing process. The fact that the students weren’t able to show me the entire writing process would have tipped me off as well if the plagiarism hadn’t been as obvious as it was.
Here’s an excellent link about plagiarism that students find engaging.
This link teaches students how to evaluate creditable sources
Sometimes they take a bit of time loading.
Hope you find the videos useful.
Nov
8
Am I enabling students to avoid writing tests?
Filed Under Behaviour Management, Evaluation, Learning Strategies, Special Education, underachieving students | 2 Comments
Some students are masters at avoiding writing tests. Today in our workroom, one of my colleagues was saying she was so frustrated with students who miss tests and don’t come in later to write the tests they miss. Boy, I sure know how she feels. I’ve been spending far too much time and energy chasing after students to get them to write the tests they’ve missed because they were absent.
I’ve been thinking about the problem of missed tests for a while. I know that some students skip so they don’t have to write a test, but most students are away legitimately. I have several students who have missed (?) more than 13 classes since September. They are way behind and have missed far too much to do really well. I am really trying to be creative and help them earn their credit.
I’ve come to the conclusion that by giving my students too many chances, I might even be enabling them to avoid tests. School policy is if students are absent the day of a test, they have to write the missed test the day they come back to school. But, I don’t want my students to write the test the next day during class time. Why? They would be missing the new lessons and falling further behind. So, the students and I negotiate a time after school to write any missed tests. Sounds like a good solution doesn’t it? Well, it turns out not to be a solution at all; it turns out to be more of a problem. Often my students don’t come to write the test after school even though they agreed to come, or they have excuse after excuse for why they can’t come. Grrrr…
For my sanity and to stop any enabling that I might be doing, I’m going to remind my students about school policy regarding missed tests and tell them that from now on, if they miss a test they will write it the day they come back to class. No ifs, ands or buts!
I guess I’ve been reminded (again) about two things. Firsts, I’ve got to remember to work smarter so that I don’t have to work harder, and second I’ve got to be vigilant so that I don’t end up enabling kids to avoid writing tests.
What’s that expression that goes something like “if we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it”. I’ve had enough doom.
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