Category Archives: classroom management

Getting It Wrong

When Kalia walked into my office on Thursday, I was having a bad day.

I hadn’t slept in 30 hours.  My husband and I are buying a house, and we’d discovered an error in our mortgage agreement at the notary two days before.  We should have seen it much earlier, but in our housebuyers’ exhaustion and overwhelm, we hadn’t paid close enough attention.  The next day, we’d learned that the error was irreversible because we hadn’t caught it in time.  I’d been up all night with the mortgage documents, trying to determine if there were other mistakes we’d missed.

I’d just heard from the bank, and it seemed that everything else was in order.  The impact of the error was not world-ending, but it was significant.  The greater problem was my feeling of helplessness in the face of the grinding real estate/banking/legal machine that we understand so little about, and the failure of those who do understand it (notaries, mortgage specialists) to protect us from its vagaries.

I was feeling put-upon by the universe.  I was also feeling like an idiot.  I could have prevented this, if I’d paid closer  attention.

Then Kalia walked in.  I’d written her a few days before to advise her that she’d failed her most recent essay and that, although she’s entitled to rewrite it, it’s unlikely that she’ll pass her English course.  So her appearance in my office was expected but not welcome.

Kalia was in my class last autumn as well.  She failed, because she didn’t come to class.  This term, she didn’t show up for the first two weeks, and then one day she appeared during my office hours.  ”If I come to class now, can I still pass this course?”

I furrowed my brow.  ”I don’t know.”

She stared at me blankly.

“Mathematically speaking?  Yes, it’s still possible for you to pass.  Our first essay test is next class; you haven’t done any of the preparation, but you’re welcome to try it.  You’ve missed one quiz but no other major assignments.  If you come to all the remaining classes, and hand in all the assignments, and do all the quizzes, and pass them all, then yes, you will pass.”

Her face broke into a beam, but I frowned and shook my head, and the beam froze.

“I don’t think you’re asking the right question,” I said. “Last semester you said, more than once, that you were going to make an effort and come to class and do the work, but you didn’t do it.  This semester has started the same way.  The important question is: what makes you think you’re going to do things differently now?  What’s changed?”

Her smile transformed from pleased to sheepish.  ”Yes.  I guess that’s the question.”

“You can pass this course, Kalia, if you really do change your behaviour.  If you don’t, you will fail again.”

Again, her face beamed.  ”I will.  I’ll come to class and I’ll do the work.”

But of course, nothing changed.  She did show up for the next class, but she hadn’t bought her books and hadn’t done her homework.  I stopped her on her way out and pointed out that just showing up and sitting in the room was not going to lead to success.  She eventually did buy at least one of her textbooks, but her attendance was spotty at best.  When she finally showed up in my office this Thursday, I hadn’t seen her in almost three weeks, except for a chance meeting in the hallway when she told me that she hadn’t come to class that morning because she “had to study for her psychology test.”  Her overall average was 10 points below a pass.

“I want you to help me with my essay…” she began, but I raised my hand and stopped her.

“Did you get my message?”  She nodded.  ”So you understand that, as things stand, you’re not going to pass this course.”

“But we still have the grammar test and the rewrite of this essay,” she said.  ”If I pass those, can’t I pass the course?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  ”I haven’t done the arithmetic.  I can tell you from past experience, though, that a student who has a 50% at this stage is unlikely to achieve a 60% by the end.”

She paused.  ”Can you calculate it for me?”

I stared at her.  I sighed.  Then I opened my online gradebook and typed in some numbers.  ”If you get a 60 on each remaining assignment,” I said, “you will get a 53% in the course.”

She deflated for a beat.  Then she perked up.  ”What if I get…”

“Kalia,” I snapped.  ”I am not going to sit here and plug in numbers for you.  I am also not going to help you with this essay right now.  As I instructed you and everyone, you should bring the essay to class with you on Monday and we’ll work on it some more and you can ask questions.  We have spent THREE WEEKS working on this latest essay in class, and you haven’t been in class for that work.  So you failed.  I’m not going to give you private tutoring on everything we’ve done because you couldn’t be bothered to come learn what you needed to learn during class time.  We talked at the beginning of the semester about what you needed to do to pass this course.  You haven’t done it.  You’re welcome to do this rewrite and do your grammar test and see what happens.  But I’m not going to re-teach everything I’ve taught for an audience of one.”

Here’s the interesting thing about Kalia.  When I tell her off, she doesn’t become angry or defensive or upset.  Instead, she nods, her eyes downcast, and smiles a little.  ”Ok,” she said.  ”Perfect.  Thank you.”  No sarcasm.  Just resignation.  She packed her essay up and left the office.

There are all sorts of arguments for why Kalia needs tough love, for why, no matter how harsh my response may seem, it’s really for her own good.  She needs to take responsibility for her learning and fulfill requirements and deal with whatever’s preventing her from doing the most basic things she needs to  do, or she needs to get out of school and come back when she can handle it.  Coddling her is not going to help her.  And so forth.

But none of these reasons are my reasons.  I didn’t snap at her because it was in her best interest.  I snapped at her because I was exhausted and she was pissing me off.  I wasn’t doing it for her; I was doing it because if I had to deal with Kalia right then, I was going to walk right down to Human Resources and quit my job.  And then where would my mortgage payments be?

Much like motherhood, teacherhood is held up to a terrifying amount of scrutiny in our society.  There is an expectation that teachers will be a strange cross between automatons and saints, that we will unfailingly do what our students need us to do.  (Here’s a post that’s been going around lately, detailing what that entails.)  And it’s true that if we’re good teachers, we WILL strive to do that.  We won’t always succeed, but we’ll do our level best.  It’s our job.

There will come a day, though, when we just can’t.  For me, Thursday was that day.  I couldn’t do what was best for Kalia; I couldn’t even decide what that was, and didn’t care.  I wasn’t capable of being a good teacher.  I just wanted her THE HELL OUT OF MY OFFICE.  If someone else had turned up that day, someone less infuriating than Kalia, I hope my responses would have been different.  But one way or another, they would have been limited, because I was THIS FAR from setting fire to my desk, cancelling my last two weeks of classes and booking a plane ticket to somewhere far away, never to return.

I hope you’ll forgive me for this lapse; I’ve forgiven myself, and I forgive you for any day when this has happened to you.  I don’t dispute that it’s essential for us to always, always do our best, whether it’s for our students, our children, our spouses, our friends.  It’s just that some days, our best isn’t very good.  That’s ok.  A good cry and 13 hours of sleep meant that the next day, my best was a little better.

That won’t help Kalia, but honestly?  I don’t know what will help her.  Maybe my outburst was just the trick.  If not, maybe someone else will know what to do.  I could spend some time here scrutinizing my behaviour, as if it were a mortgage document, scanning every line for errors.  I’m fully capable of such scrutiny, as you regular readers will know.  But: no thanks.  I dropped the ball where my mortgage was concerned, and there will be consequences, but the world will not end.  Kalia will survive too, even if I failed her.

Sometimes we get it wrong.  Sometimes we have no idea if we got it right or not.  We have to just keep doing what we do, and fixing what we can, and taking the consequences.  And trying to get a good night’s sleep.

Image by Adrian van Leen

Methinks the Lady Doth Explain Too Much

At the end of last semester, I posted about an extremely frustrating email exchange I was having with a student, but I didn’t post the exchange itself, as I was concerned about the niceties of using student correspondence in blog posts.  However, I kept the conversation in my drafts folder, suspecting that I would make use of it someday.  I came across it again this weekend.  I have enough distance that I can doctor the student’s messages a little while retaining their essence.  The student’s name has of course been changed, and other identifiers have been eliminated.  My replies are reproduced verbatim.

I wanted to post this now because we have come around to that same time of the semester – the final couple of weeks – and my dread of infuriating student emails is welling up.  However, my perspective on this conversation has changed in so many ways.  In particular, I see my own role and replies entirely differently.  In the moment, I was so furious with and bewildered by the student that I was unable to step back from my own behaviour and evaluate it.  Please read and give me your thoughts: what am I doing wrong here?

Student: Hi,its concerning my topic for the oral I choose to do it on war to stop war in the world are poverty.

Siobhan: Dear Shayla: Your guidelines state that in your oral, you must teach the class a skill that you have.  Is stopping war or poverty a skill that you possess?  Please reread the assignment guidelines.

Student: Goodmorning ,it is concerning toodays class.Since last yesterday,I catch a flue which was catch by my relatives in my household.I woul like to know if i can met with you next week to review what I will be missing in todays class.

Siobhan: Shayla: I’m sorry to hear you are sick.  You are welcome to meet with me during my office hours next week to discuss what you’ve missed.  In the meantime, you still need to give me your topic for your oral presentation, as you will be presenting next Friday; please send me your topic as soon as possible.

Student: Hi,I wanted to know concerning the orall date can i present the wednesday  after?As i missed a class and didnt get to choose my oral date

Siobhan: Shayla: Your oral date and topic were due last week – you were free to email me with your date and topic at any time!  However, as Friday is quite full, I can move you to the next date.  In general, though, not attending class is not an excuse for not taking care of your class responsibilities.  Please send me your oral topic AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, as it is now very late.

Student: My topic is to change poverty  int the world because it sais if there was one thing you had to change what would it be .And thank you for being patient and giving me a chance to do the oral another dtae.

Siobhan:  I believe I already wrote you about that topic: I think you are confusing your argumentative essay with your oral presentation.  Your topic for your oral presentation needs to be to teach the class how to do something that you know how to do well.  It has nothing to do with the topic for your argumentative essay, which is to identify something you would change in the world and explain why.  These are two different assignments.

Student: Hi,its concerning two zero I have.I have a zero on quiz 3 and 4?And concerning the essay and oral,I will see you tomorrow and talk about it ,because I am quite confuse.I will talk to you 5 min before class if that’s okay with you,because after you’re class I have gym and the time of break is just enough for me to get ready.

Siobhan: Shayla: It is not clear to me what your question about the quizzes is.  You have zeros on two quizzes because you were not in class on the days they were given.  If you have a medical note excusing you from the latest quiz, you can bring it to me tomorrow.
As for the oral, I expect you are confused because you have not been in class when we have discussed the guidelines, nor as the other orals have been presented.  I will be happy to talk to you, but the time before class is not the best time; it would have made more sense for you to come see me in my office well before now.  You have missed a great deal of class time, and this is putting your chances for success in this course in jeopardy.

Student: Hi,I wanted to know tomorw can i see u before class in ur office for like 10 mins? or at 330 pm?

[Interval: I yank student out of class to explain again that no, she cannot come to see me in my office ten minutes before class time for any reason. The next class, the student is unprepared to do her oral presentation because she believes that her date is the class AFTER the extended date I agreed to above.]

Student: Hi,its regarding the argumentative essay we have to write my topic is going to be pauverty …Ihave told you that before,but you said it wasnt good but i saw on the paper in class someone chose it

Siobhan: Shayla: I told you (twice) that poverty was not a good topic for your ORAL PRESENTATION.  Poverty is a fine general topic for your paper.  They are two different assignments; I was hoping that by now your confusion about these two assignments would have cleared up!
There is no need for you to tell me the topic for this paper now.  We have done a great deal of work on it in class, most of which you have missed, and I will not be tutoring you about it over email.  I would suggest that you do the best you can with your first draft (which is due on Sunday night) and that you take advantage of the opportunity to come see me in person about making improvements for your final version (due the following week).  I don’t want to get any messages from you about this between now and Sunday – you are on your own!  The guidelines are available in our online classroom.

[Interval: several face-to-face meetings in which I carefully explain to the student that she needs to read the assignment instructions and my email messages, and COME TO CLASS, if she wants to have a clue what is going on.]

Siobhan: Dear students:  As you know, your final English paper is due by midnight this Friday.  Classes finish on Thursday.  As I explained during our last class, I will be in meetings and other engagements all day on Friday, and so will not be available in my office or by email.  It is therefore essential that you contact me with any questions BEFORE 6 PM ON THURSDAY.  If you contact me by email, it is essential that your question be brief and specific – I cannot review your whole essay for you.  If you have more general questions, please come see me in person during our final class period, when I will hold office hours specifically for your class.  (Note: even if your question is brief, it’s always better to come see me in person if you can.)  I will also be available for regular office hours.

Student: [sent at 11 a.m. Friday]: Hi,I did not get to see you thursday as I was still working on my paper ,I actually even redid another one.I was wondering can you just take a quick look and tell me what version would be best? [attached: two full-length essays]

Siobhan: [sent after the essay deadline has passed]: As I explained in a previous message, and in class, I was not available to answer any questions on Friday.  I hope you submitted your essay on time.  Have a good holiday.

[Interval: final papers are graded.]

Siobhan: Shayla: PLEASE READ THE MESSAGE BELOW SLOWLY, CAREFULLY, AND AT LEAST THREE TIMES.  Please do not contact me asking me to answer questions that have already been answered below.
It is essential that you do your English course again.  You have failed it this time for two main reasons:
1. You missed a lot of class time, and so did not learn the material you needed to learn, and
2. You seem to have a lot of difficulty reading and understanding instructions in English.  This includes both assignment guidelines and email messages.
I have looked over your final paper.  I know you worked hard on it, but it is not a passing paper. It is not properly formatted, your thesis is still not adequately supported, and your organization, especially your conclusion, still needs a lot of work.  However, the main problem is this:
In at least one spot, you have used words directly from a text without presenting them as a quotation.  You have cited the source but you have not paraphrased properly.  (If you look at the “Originality Report” for your paper on Turnitin, you will see this section marked in purple with a number “2″ beside it.)
As we discussed in class, using quotations properly was a major part of your task on this paper.  Using them improperly is a serious problem, and the usual result is that you get a zero on the paper and a letter goes into your permanent file saying that you have plagiarized.  However, I do not think that you deliberately plagiarized here – I believe that because you missed so much in-class time, you did not know how to do this properly.  I am therefore not going to put a letter in file; instead, I will consider this optional paper “not submitted” and will give you the same grade for your final version as you received on your original version.
I hope that next semester you will make an effort to attend all classes and to give more careful attention to the instructions you are given.
PLEASE READ THIS MESSAGE OVER AS MANY TIMES AS YOU NEED TO IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING I HAVE WRITTEN.

Student: [message 1]: Hi,I wanted to know what version of the assignemt u read because I have send about 4 assignment making a mistake only 1 is the gudd version the latest one.

Student: [message 2]: Hi,I just reviewed my essay and I do not see where I did plagirasim I went on turnitin and recheck with my text in front of me .Is there a possibbility of me scanning the text I have and show you.

[Interval: Siobhan writes several long, detailed, patient, tooth-gritting messages and deletes them all, settling on this:]

Siobhan: Shayla: I am truly surprised that you continue to send me messages.  Obviously, a plagiarized sentence is not the only reason that you failed this course, and the fact that you will not accept responsibility for this is extremely frustrating for me, as it is taking time away from all the other papers I need to grade – this is not fair to the students who invested a lot of time and effort throughout the whole  semester.  I will be at the college this afternoon at 4:30 for a meeting; I can meet with you briefly before that.  I am not happy about this.  There is not need for you to scan or bring anything.  Please let me know if you can come to my office at 4:00.

[Student is never heard from again.]

Image by Ambroz

What’s In a Name?

What do your students call you?  Would you rather they called you something else?

A couple of years ago, a reader named “Viceroy” left this baffling comment on a post that had nothing to do with his observation.

I notice that your students, who appear to be 17 & 18 years old, are required to addess [sic] you as “Miss”. Is this a symptom of the Anglo-Saxon education system where the student is required to humiliate himself/herself every time the teacher is spoken to? I’ve been teaching now for 25 years, and no student has ever called me by anything other than my first name. Makes I think for a much more relaxed and mutually respectful atmosphere.

After trying to puzzle out what he was talking about, I replied thusly:

What an odd comment. My students are in no way required to call me “miss” – in fact, I and many of my colleagues have struggled for years to get our students to call us by our names, even going so far as refusing to answer when we’re addressed as simply “sir” or “miss.” Most of us have given up the fight, as they persist in calling us by these titles, with no name attached, no matter what we do. I now tell my students that I prefer that they call me by my first name or by “Ms. Curious,” whichever they’re comfortable with, but most instinctively call me by the catch-all “miss,” and I suspect some would be hard-pressed to tell you my name if you asked them.

(The commenter’s choice of username – “Viceroy” – probably deserves some parsing, but let’s not bother.)

This exchange came to mind this afternoon, as my friend Susan and I were playing hooky from our grading and having afternoon tea (scones! cucumber sandwiches!) at the lovely Montreal salon Le Maitre Chocolatier.  Susan, also a CEGEP teacher, mentioned that she refuses to answer her students if they call her just “Miss,” and that after a few weeks of being ignored, they cave and learn her name.  She especially loves it when they call her “Miss Susan.”

I’ve never been able to stick to my guns that long.  And the truth is, although I did try for years to get them to call me “Siobhan” – out of some sort of anti-authoritarian principle, I suppose – I have always felt a twinge of discomfort when they do.  I still hate “Miss” as a generic teacher name, but I’m resigned to it.  ”Ma’am,” on the other hand, charms me – I know some colleagues detest it, as it makes them feel old, but as far as I’m concerned, being old is an asset to a teacher.  And I do love “Miss Siobhan,” but when a student calls me “Ms. Curious,” that sits just right with me.  I sometimes wonder if I should instruct them to do so, and refuse to answer to anything else.

(At least one of my colleagues insists on being addressed as “Dr. _________.”  This has always struck me as insufferable, but if we were teaching university, I doubt I’d think twice about it.  Maybe I’m just a self-hating lowly CEGEP instructor.)

I believe we should all get to decide what others call us, but when it comes to choosing battles, this one seems less than pressing.  On the other hand, Susan says that when her students concede to call her by her name, it changes the tone in the classroom – the relationship becomes more reciprocal, and they seem to feel more of a responsibility to treat that relationship properly.

Do you have rules about how your students address you?  Do they follow them?

Image by Jakub Krechowicz

How I Saved My Teaching Career: Step 6: Meditate

This is the seventh post in a series on how to overcome burnout and love teaching again.   See the end of this post for previous entries.

I have a confession to make.  I’m a bad meditator.

Meditation is incredibly boring.  Everything in me resists doing it, and I can avoid it for months.  If I don’t meditate first thing in the morning, I won’t do it at all.  When I wake up, however, meditation is at the absolute bottom of the list of things I want to do.  (Second from the bottom is going for a run; if I have to choose, the run wins.)

Nevertheless, if I hadn’t started practicing meditation, I doubt I’d still be a teacher.

I’m probably not the only person in the world who spends a lot of time in mental conversation with people who aren’t there.  (I might be unusual in that I also have these conversations out loud, with nobody, but let’s leave that aside for the moment.)  When, for example, a student is driving me crazy, I spend a lot of time talking to him even though he’s not around.  I lie awake at night having furious arguments with him.  I practice, over and over, how I’m going to react the next time he does whatever he did this morning.

This can have positive results; I sometimes come to solutions by wrestling with problems this way.  My methods, however, usually outweigh their usefulness.

My anxiety about things that aren’t happening right now used to be even more intense than it is now.  I often found myself knotted up about something a student had done three years before, a student whose whereabouts were unknown to me now.  I projected all sorts of catastrophes onto the coming semester, and the projection could be self-fulfilling: I walked into the classroom tense and defensive, and this caused problems.

Then I began to meditate.

The central principle in Buddhist meditation is “dwelling in the present moment.”  The practice goes like this: you sit in a (relatively) comfortable, erect position on a cushion or chair.  You half-close your eyes, drawing your gaze close to you.  You place your attention on your breath: you breathe in with the awareness that you are breathing in, and breathe out knowing you are breathing out.  You do this for ten minutes, forty minutes, an hour, or as many hours as you are told to.

Inevitably, your mind wanders.  You start making a grocery list, arguing with someone who irritated you earlier that day, or fantasizing about the good-looking person sitting on the cushion in front of you.  When you notice that your mind has wandered off this way, you gently label your mental activity by saying “thinking” to yourself (silently), and then you draw your attention back to your breath.  Until it wanders off again.

There are many other, more advanced, meditation practices, but this is the basic one.  It’s incredibly simple, and yet incredibly difficult.

I read a few books on meditation, and took some courses at my local Shambhala centre.  At first, I had trouble fitting my sitting practice into my daily routine.  Then, during one of my meditation courses, a teacher said that meditating for ten minutes every day is better that not meditating at all.

When I heard that, I committed to sitting for ten minutes every morning before I left the house.  For ten minutes, I practiced paying close attention to the only thing that was happening: my breath going in, and my breath going out.

And then, something remarkable happened.  Just as I focused attention on my breath when I was sitting, I found myself focusing attention on the actions of students and my emotional responses when they were happening.  Instead of brooding and scheming, I cultivated my curiosity.  “Look what just happened!  I wonder what will happen next?”

If a student was making me crazy by talking in class, my natural tendency was to freeze, to second-guess myself, to hesitate.  What if I told her to stop, and she got angry?  What if she still talked and I had to do something further, and then she hated me, and said something rude in response?  Would it prove once and for all that I was a bad teacher?

As I practiced meditating, though, I found myself able to say, “Jennie, your continual talking is making me furious.  If you can’t stop talking, you’ll need to leave the class.”  I simply responded in the moment, and waited to see what the consequences were, and responded to them when they arrived.  “Look at that!” I would think.  “Farid just said something rude.  What does one do when a student says something rude?  Let’s try saying, ‘Farid, that was a rude thing to say.  Did you intend to be rude, or were you just not thinking?’  And then let’s see what happens.”

Through practicing meditation, I’m learning to experience the world and my students much more directly, with a fresh, inquisitive perspective.  A lot of exciting stuff has started to happen as a result, including a lot of learning.  Mine and theirs.

In the past couple of years, my meditation practice has become spotty: I tend to turn to it when my anxiety is spinning out of control, instead of maintaining a steady practice.  I’d like to ease myself back into it.  Meditating makes me a better teacher, and a better person.  And the world and the classroom are very interesting places when you experience them moment by moment, exactly as they are.

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Leave a comment!  In what ways have your spiritual/contemplative/religious practices helped you in your job?  I’d love to hear from you.

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Previous posts in this series:

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The series “How I Saved My Teaching Career” was originally published on the TimesOnline’s education blog, School Gate, in 2009.  Thanks to School Gate’s editor, Sarah Ebner, for her permission to repost.

Image by Penny Matthews

How I Saved My Teaching Career: Step 4: Face Your Fears

This is the fifth post in a series on how to overcome burnout and love teaching again.   See the end of this post for previous entries.

When I first started teaching, I was scared.  Terrified, in fact.

I’d taken a job as a Second Language Monitor – a sort of assistant language teacher – in a small elementary school in Ottawa, where I was finishing my bachelor’s degree.  I’d never had any intention of becoming a teacher, but this was a well-paid part-time government position that would look excellent on a CV and that was designed for university students, leaving time for our studies.

I had terrible stage fright.  However, I told myself: It’s just a job.  If it’s terrible, I can quit.

As it turned out, it was not terrible.  Within a few weeks, my fear had turned to delight.  Not only did I not quit, but when my contract ran out in April, I stayed on until June as a volunteer, coming in to the school five days a week when I could.

Since then, the stages of my teaching career have all been touched by fear.

  1. I moved to a small town in Quebec to work full-time as a Language Monitor.  I was afraid I’d be lonely, but my job consumed me and I had no time for loneliness.
  2. While doing my education degree, I took an internship in a school for disadvantaged students.  I went to work every day terrified of the chaos that was bound to happen.  It did happen, but I survived, and at the end of my stage the students gave me a list of pointers on being a better teacher (“Be more strict!”  “Don’t take any crap!”)
  3. I took a job giving private English lessons in offices all over Montreal.  I was nervous about navigating public transit to distant areas of the city.  In the process, I got to see places I might never have traveled to otherwise.
  4. I moved to Japan to teach junior high school; I spent every day worried about some unfamiliar task I would need to accomplish.  I learned more there than at any other time in my life.
  5. Before I began teaching CEGEP, I worked as a substitute public school teacher.  Many days I woke up petrified of what was in store: a school I’d never been to, in a part of the city I’d never visited, with students who believed that giving me hell was their responsibility.  I told myself, “It’s good to do things that scare me.”  And some days were awful, but I always learned something.

When I began teaching CEGEP, I wasn’t scared.  I had a lot of teaching experience.  I was excited about teaching literature after so many years of focusing on ESL.  I found my young adult students interesting, and enjoyed being around them.

However, as the years passed and I became more and more tired and unhappy, I realized that I was becoming afraid of walking into the classroom.

My fear was the result of trauma.  Regardless of how many terrific students I had, I was confused by the students who cheated, spoke to me rudely, or refused to engage.  I’d had difficult students before, but I’d had more time and energy to break through their defenses.  Now, I was taking negative attitudes personally, and I was hurt.  I shut down, put up walls, and held all my students at arm’s length, to avoid feeling victimized.

My fears were threefold:

  1. Fear of being disliked.  In the past, most students had liked me.  I was young; I was good-looking “for a teacher;” I really cared about them and their success.  In most of my teaching jobs, I wasn’t responsible for grading or disciplining students; I’d rarely been obliged to say “no.”  All this had changed.
  2. Fear of confrontation.  In life, as in the classroom, I detest fights.  Aggression and displays of anger upset me deeply.  When I’m angry, I become icy cold.  When faced with inappropriate behavior – whether in a student or a friend – I tend to ignore it, at least outwardly, although I can stew about it for years.  I was afraid of confronting students who behaved inappropriately; I froze them out and ignored them, and this made things worse.
  3. Fear of doing a bad job.  My sense of identity was now tied to being a “good teacher.”  However, my definition of “good teacher” wasn’t accurate.  Until now, I’d rarely considered how much my students were learning – instead, I was concerned about whether they were enjoying themselves, and me.  I was afraid that if my students didn’t all love me, I wasn’t good at my job.  But of course, this isn’t true.  My job is to help them learn, not to win their approval.

Identifying these fears was a major step in recovering from my burnout.  As I unpacked them, I realized that I needed to change my conception of “good teaching,” I needed to confront classroom difficulties head-on, and I needed to let go of the fantasy that I’d one day walk into the classroom with total confidence that everything would go well.

Fear is a part of any important work.  We don’t need to get over it, but we may need to change our approach to it.  In my next post, I’ll discuss one way I tried to deal with my fears: I got more training.

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Have you had to confront particular fears in the course of your job?  How successful have you been in doing so?  I’d love to hear your stories.

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Previous posts in this series:

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The series “How I Saved My Teaching Career” was originally published on the TimesOnline’s education blog, School Gate, in 2009.  Thanks to School Gate’s editor, Sarah Ebner, for her permission to repost.

Image by Scott Liddell

Penny Tries

On Monday, I brought you the story of Penny, who failed my course last term and is repeating it, and has transformed from a diligent and cheery student into a discouraged and sullen one.  There were lots of thoughtful suggestions about how to help Penny, and several people asked to be updated on her story.

That post was automatically uploaded to this blog while I was in Penny’s class, administering a quiz.  Penny arrived almost twenty minutes late, and almost ten minutes into the fifteen-minute quiz.  She spent almost all of the remaining five minutes slowly removing her coat, scarf, etc., slinking to the back of the room to stack them on a table, returning to her seat, delicately plucking her reference materials one by one from her bag and arranging them on her desk, opening her electronic dictionary and powering it up, and then shutting it down when I reminded her that she was not, nor had she ever been, allowed to use any electronic devices during quizzes.  She had time to circle a handful of random words in the error correction exercise (she did not correct them), and then the quiz was over.

The rest of the lesson was dedicated to working in assigned groups.  Although she was quiet at first, Penny seemed to warm up as she and her partners discussed and completed their exercise.  At the end of the period, she was the last one in the room.  When she finished writing down the homework and began to wrap herself up again in her coat and scarf, I said,

“Penny, you seem very discouraged.”

She laughed a bit, and nodded.  When she laughs, I recognize her again – she’s still the same Penny she was a few months ago.  ”Yeah,” she said.  ”I feel so bad.”

“I know you feel bad,” I said.  ”I’m worried that you feel so bad that you’re going to fail the course again.  What are you going to do to try to get past your bad feeling?”

Her eyes filled with tears.  ”I don’t know,” she said.  ”I don’t know what can I do.”

I let that sit for a minute, and thought.  ”I have a suggestion.  Maybe it will work, and maybe it won’t.  But maybe you can try.”

She hesitated for a second, but then she nodded.

“Often, in school, students think only about their grades: pass, fail, good grade, bad grade.  Of course, grades are important.  But sometimes we forget that the purpose of school is not the grade.”

She was listening.  She waited.

“The purpose of a course is to learn things.  I know you learned things in our course last time.  You made a lot of improvements.  You need to learn more things before you can pass the course, but you’ve already learned a lot.  Is it possible for you to think about the learning, and to think less about your grade?  To take the things you’ve already learned, and use them to keep learning everything you need to learn?”

There was a long pause.  She was nodding slowly.

“Do you understand what I mean by the difference between the grade and the learning?” I asked.

“Yeah.  I can learn even if I don’t get good grade.”

“Exactly.  Do you think, if you thought more about the learning, you could be more motivated?”

She smiled.  ”I’m not sure.  But yes.  I can try.”

When I returned to my office, there were already a number of responses to my post about Penny, and they continued to stream in over the next day or so.  One suggestion that came up again and again was tutoring.  Now, Penny, like all of my Prep students, was directed last semester to get help from the Learning Centre; we visited the Centre as a class, and after every assignment, I suggested that she go; she might have done so once or twice.  I have also received, over the past couple of weeks, reminders from the college about peer tutors, sentence skills workshops, and all the other services offered for our many, many students whose language abilities are so poor that, let’s face it, they really shouldn’t be in college.

I’d been thinking that I should direct Penny to these services again, insisting that this time she MUST go regularly.  But I’d been hesitating.  Deep down, I was convinced that doing extra work of the type we were doing in class was not going to help her.

Something had not occurred to me, however, and it occurred to me now.

There is a tutor who often helps me with students who seem to suffer from undiagnosed learning disabilities.  (I have already mentioned her in a few posts, including this one, about a student whose denial about his difficulties nearly drove me over the edge.)  Penny’s problems are so obviously second-language based, I hadn’t considered that their roots might be cognitive.  However, the knowledge I reported in the previous post – that she’s been in Canada for seven years and went to high school in English – had started a chain reaction of…understanding?  speculation?  I wasn’t sure.

I knew, though, that students who had worked with M had had good experiences.  They hadn’t always produced stellar work, but they had known that someone was there especially to help them, someone they could go to when they were frustrated, someone who could take an hour to walk them slowly, patiently through something until it made more sense, and then another hour, and then another.

I wrote Penny a note saying that I think she needs a tutor, and that I have a specific tutor in mind.  I asked her to come discuss it with me.  I didn’t hold my breath, but yesterday she sent me a response.  ”Thank Siobhan.  That’s would be good idea.  We will discuss about next class.”

In the meantime, she received a single-digit grade on her quiz.

I don’t know if Penny can be rescued.  I don’t know if it’s possible to teach students the kind of grit needed to deal with failures on the scale that she’s facing and will continue to face.  The best I can do is the best I can do.

I’ll let you know how it goes – thank you all so much for your input!

Image by Sigurd  Decroos

Penny Gives Up

Penny was in one of my courses last semester.  She failed.  Her basic skills – reading comprehension, written and oral expression, logical organization – were all very poor.  However, she was motivated and hardworking, and didn’t seem discouraged throughout most of the term, even when she failed quiz after quiz and assignment after assignment.

It was only at the end of the term that she started to show her frustration.  After receiving 40% on her first version of her final essay, she seemed to be at a loss.  It was the first time I saw her show signs of anger.  “But I asked some friends to look at it!” she said.  “They said it was good!  I don’t trust these people any more!”

I tried to speak with her logically with her about the difficulties she was having; she didn’t even seem to grasp that her skill level was so low that it was unlikely she could solve her problems in one term.  We had a couple of conversations in which I told her that she needed to be prepared for a possible course failure.  “But I work so hard!” she said.  Yes, I acknowledged, she was working hard.  She was also a lovely person and a delight to have in the class, but she still couldn’t construct a comprehensible sentence.  And, as predicted, she ended the course with a failing grade.

At the moment, I am the only person who teaches this course, so this semester, Penny is in my class again.  She seems to have entirely changed.  She missed the first two classes, and has come late for the others.  (She missed no classes last semester, and was always punctual.)  When she does show up, she seems sullen and distracted; she doesn’t ask questions, and moves listlessly to join her groups or write on the board.

After the first class she attended, she asked to speak to me.

“You said talk to you about my essay,” she said.  “I don’t understand how I failed.  If I didn’t rewrite the essay, I would had a passing grade!  But I fail the rewrite and you fail me for everything!  In class, when I show you the essay rewrite, you say it’s all good!  But then I fail!”

And so forth.  It was more apparent than ever that explaining the mathematics of her grade, of reminding her that I did NOT say that the rewrite was “all good,” etc., was not going to be productive.  Nor would it help to tell her that when I said “Come see me in January,” I meant “Come if you want to look at this essay in detail together,” not, “Come if you want to negotiate with me about your grade.”  So I simply repeated what I’d already told her several times: her skills are very weak.  If she goes into a 101 course now, she will fail.  If she works as hard this term as she did last term, she may very well pass the course, but she needs the extra practice.

“But I feel so bad!”  She laughed a bit, and I saw a glimpse of the Penny I knew in the fall.  “I feel so bad since then!  I think, ‘Why am I so dumb?  Why I can’t do this?’”

“I know you feel bad,” I said.  “Failing a course feels bad.  But if you can get past your bad feeling, if you can put it aside, then this can be an opportunity for you.  It’s a chance for you to learn more and practice more, so your skills will be strong.  You are not dumb.  How long have you been in Canada?”

“About seven years,” she said.

This pulled me up short.  What?  “Seven years,” I said.  “But you went to high school in French?”

“No, in English.”

She has been going to English school for seven years.  How is this possible?  “Did you do well in your English courses in high school?”

“English, no, but everything else I do fine.”

I took a deep breath.  “I hope you will try to see this as a chance to do better, Penny.  You are a good worker.  Don’t be discouraged.  If you keep working, you will improve.”

Today in class, Penny was finishing her paragraph homework assignment instead of paying attention.  (Last semester, she ALWAYS came with her homework complete and was ALWAYS completely attentive.)  When I called on her during grammar exercises, she had no idea where we were; she hadn’t even opened her book to the correct page and, as it turned out, was using the course pack from last term, which means that she hadn’t made any attempt to do her grammar homework at all.  It seems likely that she will fail her quiz next week.  What concerns me more, though, is that she seems completely deflated.  I have no idea what to do about this.

What can we do when students are so traumatized by failure that they can’t pick themselves up and move on?  In a previous post, I discussed research that suggests that “grit” – or resilience – is the most important ingredient in student success.  What can we do if a student’s “grit” seems to be all used up?

There’s a Rilke quote I love, and that I turn to when I feel like I just can’t catch a break.  Penny won’t be able to hear it – I’m not sure she’d even understand it – but I wish I could find a way to deliver its meaning to her whole, as a gift.

Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Is there anything I can say to convince Penny that the solution to her problems is to just keep going?

Photo by Cherie Wren

Gimme Gimme

On Monday, I posted about M, a student in one of my courses who was blaming her previous teacher for her course failure and asking to be promoted to the next level.  As anticipated, I and the placement coordinator met with her on Thursday to get a clearer understanding of the situation.  Some of you asked to be updated on the outcome.  Here it is, in a nutshell:

  • M arrived in my office and, as we waited for the coordinator to arrive, I asked her to explain her request again, particularly the puzzling implication that her teacher this term (me) and her teacher last term (not me) were the same person.  No, no, she responded – she’d only meant to say that she’d had the previous teacher more than once.
  • She explained that she’d first registered at our college before her arrival in Canada.  She had no information about whether the teacher she’d chosen was a “good teacher” or “bad teacher.”  As it turned out, the teacher was “a bad teacher.”  After she’d failed the course the first time, M tried to sign up with a different teacher, but schedules were changed and she ended up with the same teacher again.  Therefore, her failure was not her fault.
  • When the coordinator arrived, he explained to M that a) regardless of what her teacher had done, it seemed very likely that M had failed because her communications skills are poor (we pointed to her confusing email message as an example), and b) there are formal complaints procedures that can be taken against teachers, but they need to be taken immediately, not at the beginning of the next semester, and c) bad-mouthing a teacher to his or her colleagues, especially in writing, is probably not a good idea.
  • I further added that if we promoted M to the next course, she would once again have no choice about her teacher, and that she would have to take responsibility for her own success or failure.  What was more, she would need to get significant extra help and be prepared for a possible failure in the course.
  • The coordinator and I then agreed that, if M acknowledged these conditions, we would promote her to the next course and let her take her chances.

On the surface, this seems to be the best outcome for all concerned.  M gets what she wants, and I don’t have to deal with her for the rest of the term.  She would probably not get much out of the course anyway, given the attitude she has coming in.  So, if the important question here is “How can we help M learn the course skills and become better at English?”, then this is probably the most effective answer.

And of course, that is the question.  But there’s another question that keeps nagging at me.  Is it a good idea to give people what they want because you don’t want to deal with their crap?

You see it all the time: spoiled children harassing their parents; rude customers bullying sales clerks into bending store policy; nice guys finishing last because they can’t bring themselves to be obnoxious in order to get ahead.  Teachers giving students good grades so they don’t have to argue about them.

I am relieved that this student is out of my hair, and I am confident that this is probably the most efficient way we could have dealt with the situation, but I still feel like justice has not been done.  People should not get what they want because they whine; they should get what they want when they’ve earned it.

We are responsible for helping our students learn our subject matter.  Many would say that trying to influence them in other ways is overstepping, that even late penalties or attendance policies extend our reach beyond its proper perimeter.  But to what extent are we obliged, not just as teachers but as members of a society, to teach people how to behave properly?

Parents are expected to enforce rules like “Say please” and “If you ask me in that tone, you’ll get nothing, young lady.”  But what about the rest of us?  Are there times when we should say, “No, you can’t have what you’re asking for, because you’re being a jerk”?

Image by Sanja Gjenero

“I Do Not ‘Take Off’ Points. You Earn Them.”

A cri de coeur from a university economics professor, Art Carden, has been circulating lately, in which he begs students to understand that a) professors do not live to torture you, b) teachers are not punishing you because you don’t know everything, and c) a bad grade does not mean that a teacher dislikes you or thinks you’re stupid.  The most convincing part of his article is the conclusion.

Dear student, I once thought as you do. I once carried about the same misconceptions, the same litany of cognitive biases, and the same adolescent desire to blame others for my errors. I was (and remain) very poorly served by my immaturity….Economics is hard, but becoming a responsible member of a free society is very, very, very hard.

This plea is hitting home today, as I am about to meet with a student (if she shows up) who has demonstrated these “misconceptions, cognitive biases and adolescent desire to blame others” more blatantly than most.  And this, after a single class meeting, and only four days into the fifteen-week semester.

On Tuesday I got a call from the coordinator responsible for placing students in their intro English classes.  The weakest students go to my class, a pre-intro course meant to help with severe second-language problems.  Apparently, one of my students, M, had written directly to the coordinator, asking that she be transferred to an intro class even though she has failed the Prep class more than once.  ”I assume she failed your class last semester,” the coordinator said.

“No,” I replied, “I haven’t taught this student before, but I have her writing sample right here…Let me pull it out.  I’m meeting with her on Thursday morning for her oral interview; maybe I can talk to her about it then.”

“Huh.”  The coordinator paused.  ”Her email gives the impression that she has the same teacher this term as she had before.”

I was only half listening, as I was scanning the paragraph she’d written for me the previous morning.  ”Nope, that wasn’t me.  I’ve never seen the girl in my life.  Her writing is definitely very weak; I hadn’t flagged her as someone who should be transferred.  However, if she really wants to move…I don’t think she’ll pass a 101 course, but keeping her in the Prep might not be effective either, if she really resents being there.”

“True.  However, this email…let me forward it to you, and you can see what you make of it.  If I’m interpreting it correctly, she’s not being honest about the situation.  Maybe when she comes to your office you can give me a buzz and we can both talk to her.”

He sent the email over.  It is indeed very strange.  In it, M does seem to be claiming that she has the same teacher this term as she did last term, but it’s always possible that her language errors are obscuring her true meaning.  Less ambiguous, however, is the language she uses to describe her experience with this teacher.  The language is troubling, not only because of the attitude it reflects, but also because this attitude is so common.

“My teacher failed me.”

“She failed me unfairly.”

“Her class was really bad.  She was never clear about what we have to do.”

“Her class has not helped me at all and I don’t think it ever will.  With her I will never pass.”

My emotional response to this is so complicated that I’m not sure I can parse it.  First off, she seems to be claiming these things about ME, even though I am not the teacher who “failed her,” and so I feel irrationally defensive.  Second, I am outraged on behalf of her former teacher – it could be one of a few people, but I know they are all excellent teachers and extremely nice people.  But finally – I am just so tired of this attitude.

How many times have I said to students, word-for-word, the admonition from Art Carden’s article: “I do not ‘take off’ points.  You earn them”?  So many times that I’m sick of hearing myself say it.  This belief that teachers “fail” you and that your “failure” is their fault is not unusual, nor is it incomprehensible.  I’m still taking courses, and I still get mad at my teachers sometimes for their grading practices and their refusal to recognize how absolutely infallibly brilliant I am.  That is, I get mad at them for a few minutes.  Then I try to analyze the part I played in the situation.

The fact is, I’ve read this student’s writing, and she’s in the right class for her level.  I don’t know why she hasn’t made more progress, or why, in particular, she failed the last time, but the insistence that she is not responsible for her failure is not just wrong; her failure is likely due in part to this attitude.  So I’d rather not have her in my class.  I’d prefer to push her on, and let her fail her 101 course and blame her teacher for that scenario.  But of course that is not a responsible way for me to do things, at least not if my motivation is just to get her out of my hair.

The conversation will happen later today.  I’m very interested to hear her explanations of the confusing claims she seems to be making, but I’m also interested in learning what I will say to her about her approach, because I’m not sure yet.

Is it possible to make an angry teenager understand that her teacher is not the one that “failed her”?  Or will only time and maturity teach that?  Granted, there are irresponsible teachers who treat students badly, but what does one do with a student who says that it is the school, and not she, who has caused her problems and must solve them for her?

Image by Valeer Vandenbosch

I Like Teaching You

Today is the first day of the new semester.  I’m not exactly pumped.  I’ve been working all weekend to find a motivator, or an inspiration, or a visualization to turn to when I feel it’s all too much.  What’s my objective for the next fifteen weeks?  What mantra will I repeat to myself on the days when I’m wondering what it’s all for?

In mulling it over, I asked myself, “What have I done for my students lately that made me feel good?”

In December, as I was marking students’ final papers and writing feedback, I found myself, in a number of instances, appending the line “It was a pleasure having you in my class” to my comments.  A simple thing.  I wrote it only when it was true.  And each time, a little wash of warmth swept over me.

I need to remember to do this, I thought.  Whenever I’m writing final notes to students, I need to acknowledge the enjoyment those students have given me.

But why restrict it to final notes?  Could I make it a practice to ALWAYS say positive personal things to students when they occur to me?  Not just “What a great pair of boots!” or “You did a bang-up job on that paper,” but also “Your contributions really light up the classroom” and “Your friendly demeanour is going to open a lot of doors for you in your life.”

When I first began teaching, I saw each student/teacher relationship as an intimate connection.  Once I started teaching CEGEP, I burned out quickly; the emotional energy necessary for such a connection with every student was not sustainable.  Since then, I’ve been trying to find a balance, and I’ve erred on the side of being distant and chilly.  Perhaps it’s time to start working toward a middle ground, one where I can say, in myriad ways, “I like teaching you.”

Do you have a goal for the semester?  Did you have one for last semester?  How did it pan out?  I will keep you posted on how I do with this one, and on any consequences I observe.

Image by Richard Dudley