Dolly’s doing that “love me” thing again:
Archive for July 3rd, 2007
why Pence isn’t running for President? Pence can’t see continued U.S. support for ‘emerging terrorist Palestinian state’ (sneer quotes are not mine).
If you’re contemplating a teacher training position, don’t go into it blind. Let me tell you some of my experiences, so you can make a more informed decision.
My teacher training experience has been in two different programs, an intensive English program, where I trained writing teachers, and the business school, where I trained MBA students as teachers. The intensive English program employed both graduate students and hourly faculty, so the writing teachers were either working on professional credentials to become teachers, or already had them. The MBA students were MBA students, and were teaching for financial aid. Most had no interest in teaching, had no teaching experience, and had no interest in ever becoming teachers. And that leads us to rule number one.
Rule 1: Your audience makes no difference. At least half are going to be idiots.
The idiocy quotient was the same whether dealing with MBA students with no interest in teaching, professional teachers to be, or professional teachers. You will get deer in the headlights from half your audience when suggesting anything that makes sense.
For example, suggest that they focus on the content, and you’ll throw half of your audience into a daze of confusion. I had to deal with writing teachers who didn’t understand why they would write in writing class, and MBAs who didn’t understand why they should focus on whatever they were supposed to be doing on any given day (”But don’t they know how to do linear programming? That’s boring. Can’t we do something else?”)
According to scientists, 93% of those who teach were born without the common sense gene. Keep that in mind.
Rule 2: All but one or two will resent being there, and worse, resist everything you say.
You’re going to get lots of nasty attitude, be it passive-aggressive nonsense to outright hostility (unless, of course, you are doing this in the context of a class, and then, you’ll get lots of disgustingly obsequious behavior). Expect it, deal with it graciously, and go on. If you have an audience of professional teachers, they’ll resent being there because they think they know everything. If you have an audience of future teachers, they’ll resent being there because they think they know everything, even more so than the professionals. And if you have an audience of grad students, they’ll resent being there because they’d rather be doing something else and they don’t care.
Grad students presented another problem that is, shall we say, applicable to most schools: They were teaching as financial aid and assigned by the MBA program, so we had no control over which grad students did or did not receive that aid. They knew we couldn’t fire them, so they didn’t much care. However, many decided to start caring after they figured out their students knew they were idiots, though not all. While sitting in my office working with a couple of colleagues one day, an MBA instructor walked into the office without knocking and interrupted us by asking if anyone could teach her class because she didn’t know “how to do it.” Amazingly, she had told her students she didn’t know “how to do it” and would bring back somebody who did to teach her class for her. So there are those who couldn’t care less that their students know that they’re morons. This idiot proclaimed it to her own students in the classroom.
Rule 3: Your audience will ignore most of what you say.
Don’t go in with inflated expectations. They don’t want to be there, they don’t think they need to be there, they’re sure they know more than you, and they won’t listen to most of what you say. Many will figure out that they should have listened after they go into the classroom and make asses of themselves, but some won’t (see above).
However, when they do figure it out, drive the point home so they don’t do it again. They didn’t listen because they were arrogant or stupid. The same arrogance or stupidity will ensure that they won’t listen again–unless you make the point crystal clear. I know, I know, it’s like saying, “I told you so,” but if they had the intelligence of a turnip they wouldn’t have made asses of themselves in front of their students in the first place.
Those are the rules–well, all but one. The last one may seem to contradict the others, or at least not make sense in light of the others, but I’ll address that. Here it is:
Rule 4: Put everything you have into your teacher training.
Teacher training is very much like teaching. It’s frustrating, it’s irritating, it’s annoying, but you do it for the students–or the teachers–who listen and learn. Just like you have students who shine, you have teachers who become better teachers, and that’s rewarding. If that doesn’t work for you, then do it for the teachers’ students.
This won’t happen if your attitude is why bother because they won’t listen. True, most won’t, but some will. And some won’t, but will figure out that they should have, and listen in the future. Some will even turn out to be good teachers. But the only way this will happen is if you take your job seriously, and put everything you have into it.
And speaking of teacher training, there was a discussion on Kitchen Table Math a month or so back about how much of the homework assigned teachers graded.
My reaction was, “Huh?” so I didn’t jump in and reply. But I think I’ll address it here.
Let’s review. We have a subject, a curriculum, and a topic, that is, Joan is a history teacher (subject), she has to cover 12 chapters in her textbook (curriculum), and today, she is to introduce the War of 1812 (topic). Turning from Joan to the educational system, the purpose is for little Johnny to learn about the events leading up to the War of 1812. Forget tests. That’s not relevant here. Focus on subject, curriculum, topic, and learning.
What we do as teachers is supposed to have some purpose, yes? If you nodded affirmatively, you’ll understand my first response to the “how much of the homework you assign do you grade?” discussion.
What, pray tell, is the point of giving little Johnny homework if he’s not going to get any feedback on it? What is the teacher’s purpose in doing this? What, exactly, is Joan thinking when she decided to have her students take a quiz on the events leading up to the War of 1812, and not even look at those quizzes? How is taking this quiz supposed to help little Johnny learn about the events leading up to the War of 1812, since he could answer, “Homer Simpson” with the same result as if he had answered, “General Isaac Brock”?
Yes, yes, I know all about grading and workload, and I’m more than sympathetic. But there are ways to lessen the workload while still giving little Johnny feedback. And the workload problem doesn’t address the real issue, which is the ostensible purpose of assignments without feedback. After all, if Joan were primarily concerned about her grading workload, she could just not assign anything.
Well, not assigning anything is preferable to assigning something, then giving students no feedback.
Look, if Johnny doesn’t get feedback, he doesn’t know whether he’s on the right track or not. The quiz was a waste of time, and an annoyance for little Johnny. He was even more annoyed when he found out Joan wasn’t even going to look at his quiz.
And that’s the next problem with ungraded assignments. You send a very clear, very loud message to your students that their work — and your class — doesn’t matter to you. Will you then halfway through the semester turn around and complain that your students don’t seem to care? Well, why would they, since you obviously do not?
If there was one thing my students hated, it was busy work. As long as there was a perceptible purpose behind an assignment, they would work their butts off. But give them work just to keep them busy, and send the message that their work and your class was unimportant, and they’d kill you on the student evaluations at the end of the year.
If you’re not going to grade it, don’t assign it. If you don’t grade it, the assignment has no pedagogical value, you see. It adds nothing to your class, and does not aid your students’ learning. It’s a waste of time — both yours and theirs. No assignment is better than an ungraded one.
Everything you do should have a purpose, and an ungraded assignment has none. You want students to trade quizzes and mark incorrect answers? Fine. Little Johnny gets some feedback that way. But giving an assignment then not grading it is no different from collecting the assignments and throwing them in the trash can in front of your students.
Yes, Wegman’s is annoying (I have a love-hate relationship with that store, actually), but it’s the closest, just down the road, and I was in a hurry. I’m making this cake, and I needed to pick up a few ingredients.
Wegman’s is a very pinkie-up, yuppie store. They carry a lot of nice stuff, but they cater to idiots yuppies. For example, in the mac-n-cheese-in-a-box aisle, they have the classic blue-box Kraft for $0.39 a box (or something like that). Just beneath it, they carry Annie’s free range organic mac-n-cheese-in-a-box, for $4. Same size box. Fake cheese in a pouch. But it’s free-range, organic fake cheese product, so they charge seven-and-a-half times the price. And the clincher is the idiots people who shop there buy it. The lady in front of me in the line had 10 boxes of it — and was digging for coupons for something else.
Or in the British food aisle in the International section, they sell Coleman’s mustard, a 4.4 oz (100 g) jar with a Union Jack on it for $5.99. But you can go to the condiments aisle, where the mustard is, and buy the same Coleman’s mustard in an 8 oz jar for $3.99. Of course, it doesn’t have a Union Jack on it. And idiots people buy it–the Union Jack jar. You gotta wonder what their retirement is going to be like, after buying all that free-range organic fake food and paying through the nose for a Union Jack on the label.
Anyway, I was at Wegman’s looking for a couple of things, and not very successfully. I was about ready to give up, but I thought, “There’s a probability of about 0.0003% that it’s with the jams and jellies,” so I headed for the jam and jelly aisle. As I was looking, I saw (and I’m not making this up) organic apple butter from Sonoma. Seriously. We’re just north of Lancaster County, and Wegman’s is selling chi-chi apple butter from freaking California. You just can’t make this stuff up.
When I was a kid, every Saturday the Amish would set up stands around the courthouse at the county seat and we’d go buy things. One of those things is one of my most precious memories from childhood, this intense apple-y almost hot with cinnamon and cloves and allspice made-on-the-Amish-farm apple butter. I just can’t tell you how good it was. Course, there was no label on it, and it had been home canned — and that’s probably illegal these days, isn’t it?
After I left for college, I tried for the first time in my life Musselman’s and Smucker’s and all the other big jelly name apple butters, and found them bland and boring. Still, the sight of “apple butter” on a label will bring back those memories.
As I was searching in vain for what I needed, I happened upon a jar of Wos-Wit Apple Butter, made at Grouse Hunt Farms (don’t tell PETA), Tamaqua, Pennsylvania. I stopped and remembered. Being the cynic I am, as I looked at “Pennsylvania Dutch” on the label, I thought, “Yeah, right,” as I put it in the cart.
It doesn’t say anything about organic, sustainable, free trade, or free range on the label. The ingredients listed are fresh apples, sugar, apple cider, and spices. That’s it. So they probably could mark it up and sell it in some chi-chi section. Let’s hope they don’t.
I got back home, tossed an English muffin in the toaster, and slathered it with apple butter. I don’t often shill for products, but if you can get your hands on this, buy it. Incredibly good stuff. It takes everything I have not to get a spoon and just eat it out of the jar.
And I think I’ll have some more. On another English muffin, of course.
