Annals of Public Education, part II
I am ready to admit defeat in my pursuit of full-time teaching in Middle School or High School, as I have now had two instances of failure. True, in both cases students knew I was a sub, and behaved accordingly, refusing to do work or take me seriously. It would perhaps be different if they'd known I was a permanent teacher, with real power over their lives, and the ability to start them off on my own conditions.Nevertheless, the problem was, in a nutshell, that I was unable to be mean enough to set them on the right course, and, sensing the ability to take advantage of me, they did. There were 25 of them, and one of me, or in some cases, an assistant who was of no value in this regard. If as many as eight students, one-third, of a class like this chooses to make a racket, get out of their seat, throw a paper airplane, or whatever, the teacher's main choice is discipline. Send them to the office. Yell. Plead with them to shut up and do something they really don't want to do. I found myself spending too much time making everyone miserable, most of all myself.
I have two observations to make in order to keep myself from dwelling on my own failure (I may not be finished yet, but I AM 65 now, with social security, etc., and less and less motivation to start over or go full time). First is that class size is by itself the single most determinant factor I have noticed. In a class of 12, it's much easier to make people care; in a class of 25, I've found it virtually impossible. The school district would do better by and large to spend those assistants, by giving them their own group of about eight, and let them teach whatever they can, than by sticking them in there with some teacher who is doing his/her best to manage 25. Anything they could do to lower that number would help greatly.
Second is that by and large, "gifted" and "honors" do the same thing - separating out the better students - but this leaves the other classes weighed down with those who don't care. In my class I found, as I've said, maybe 8 or 9 out of 25 who truly didn't care. Another 5 or 6 were easily swayed if they thought they could get away with not caring, and that's where having a sub was crucial (with a sub, they were more likely to get away with not caring). But the absence of students who did care, I though, made a huge difference. In 6th grade math, we had no honors, and gifted was only a small percentage, so it wasn't a huge numerical balance issue in this last particular case. Earlier, though, I had a similar experience with a 9th grade algebra class, that also broke down into anarchy. Why? Many reasons. Classes should be orderly, with productive learning going on, and I couldn't sustain that. I thought they would just respond to the basic coolness of math; how wrong I was.
Labels: public education
posted by tom @ 10:41 AM
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