the frustrating thing about teaching...
Well, that list wouldn't ever end. One item in particular occupies my thoughts. Thing is, I can bludgeon all these kids into memorizing facts, procedures, and definitions. Enough pop quizzes and phone calls to parents ensure that, at least, they read the text, and briefly retain whatever I put on the review guide. However, my high school students have already been formed, at some nebulous point in the past; they are either Potential Reasoners, or not. Some of them are lazy as all fuck, and do poorly in my class, but I can still see some signs of interest in, say, the concept of relativity. If I give them a problem of a type comparable to, but not exactly the same as, problems I've demonstrated before, they apply some rudimentary problem solving skills in figuring out an approach. They're rarely right (see above, lazy as all fuck), but I can engage them in a conversation, point out how to apply what they know, and lead them in the right direction. Socratic, like.
Other students are industrious, and may even be straight-B students, but learn only what they are told to learn, and exactly what they are told to learn. One hapless girl, in her notes, somehow reversed the word order a definition I had given the class; she then quoted the scrambled version on her chapter test, verbatim. Never did it occur to her that what she had transcribed made absolutely no sense whatever. If I give them a problem similar to, but not exactly the same as, problems previously demonstrated, they're completely lost. As in:
"I don't know how to do this."
"Yes, you do. See, this is a two step problem. In the first step, you're going to find the distance...you know how to do that..."
"We haven't had this before."
"Umm, no, not exactly, but if you apply two of the techniques you have had before..."
"I can't do this."
These students are just glorified computers. I could tell them that a five pound rock weighed more than a five pound bag of feathers, and they wouldn't bat an eye. On the other hand, if I ever asked them a question not specifically on the review sheet, man, I'd never hear the end of it. Where did things go wrong? Did someone amputate their ability to think critically, or did it just atrophy for lack of use? Are they idiots, or do they just play one at school?
There is, I guess, a third category of students...those bright students who can reason their way out of a wet paper bag and learn their material. However, since I'm never tutoring them, or remonstrating with them about their 40% average on the past three tests, or lecturing them on why we shouldn't sit on the back of desks, do other people's homework for them, or program their watches to beep at five minutes till noon...I don't get to talk to my bright students much.
