Todd, I am happy to hear of the successes Tom is having. I have also found it extremely difficult to engage all of my students and I think that this is a difficulty for all teachers; especially new teachers like us, but also for seasoned teachers. Unfortunately some students have no desire to learn and their attitude is so bad that you keep trying, but see little success. The interesting thing about it is that when the year is over some of these kids like me the best so maybe it was frustrating at the time, but it really did mean something in the end.
During my first hour on B day I have a couple of students who I am constantly just trying to keep awake, I am convinced that one is into drugs and the other I’m not sure, but he says that he is working late at night. I have some others that no matter what I do I can’t get them to do anything, even the activities that are very stimulating for the majority of students. I struggle a lot with some classes because I have a few students who could get through college classes right now and a lot who are resource students. My department head told me yesterday that 1/3 of all of the students that I get are at a 6th or 7th grade reading level – and from experience I can also say that many are math deficient. In my A3 class I have so many resource and study skills students – and others who don’t know how or want to work – that it is difficult to keep the class engaged when some students can finish in 20 minutes and many others it takes an hour. My best solution is to pair up the resource kids as much as I can with the really sharp ones and vigilantly try to have them tutor those that struggle when I can’t tutor them. Sometimes it works really well if you can find the right combinations of kids, other times the tutoring doesn’t help much.
Later, James
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James,
This reminds me somewhat of my experiences I have had consulting at URHS, not that I am concerned that they may be on drugs . . . I don't think this is the case, but can't say this definitively. In working with some of these students I have also found the wide variance of students. those that are interested and those that aren't, those that are more capable and those that aren't, those that are at grade level in their reading and those that are well below. I made this analogy in methods class, but sometimes I have felt like I was pulling a cart up a huge hill with all of the students in the cart and my coworker (colleague) in the back pushing. Occasionally we will get to a plateau where the pulling isn't so hard and at times we even get to a small down hill where it seems I had better get out of my students way or they are going to roll over me. I like your idea about pairing students with differing abilities in that I think that it can help the lower ability student in seeing a model of what to shoot for while also helping the upper ability student through putting them in the position to articulate their ideas in differing ways in working with their peers. While I am sure it isn't this simple, and if it is it isn't all the time, but my idea for getting students interested is trying to capture their interests or things that they are passionate about that are in their lives. At URHS last year this was tribal membership (it took me forever to find this and to train myself to listen so that I would find it). Dr. Ken Bain spoke at USU and suggested we can do this by engaging students in the BIG questions about our topics. I want all of my students engaged as I know you do also and can tell that you strive for this. I don't think it will always be easy to make this happen and in my own teaching I realize that the uphills are going to come, but my hope is that I can find a really big hill that has me jumping into the wagon to learn with students as we accelerate downhill. Sorry for the heavy relliance on the wagon metaphor, but it helps me keep the perspective I want with my students.
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