Category Archives: psychology

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

Demoralization vs. Burnout

Being a pug: a demoralizing state of affairs.

Are you burnt out?  Or are you demoralized?

A recent article (passed on to me by a colleague) fits nicely with my series on teacher burnout that wrapped up last week:  sometimes what we call burnout is actually demoralization. The difference is in the cause.

I have been lucky enough to work mostly in contexts that value and support good teaching and effective learning.  Recently, though, there have been some administrative developments  at our college that prioritize bean-counting over student achievement and teacher sanity.  So far, resistance has been strong, and no sweeping changes have been made, but it is possible that, within a year or so,  we will be inundated with a lot of time-consuming paperwork in a perhaps futile attempt to keep our remedial English classes to a manageable size.  If this happens, I can foresee serious consequences for our morale.  And even now, before any concrete changes have manifested, there is tension and hostility between administrators and teachers the likes of which I haven’t seen at the college before.  This is definitely demoralizing, and threatens to be much more so.

I hear a lot of stories from teachers who are, not burnt out by the real demands of teaching, but demoralized by the conditions they have to battle against.  Doris Santoro (in the article linked above) describes demoralization as follows:

Demoralization occurs when the job changes to such a degree that what teachers previously found “good” about their work is no longer available.  Moral rewards are what bring many of us to teaching: finding ways to connect meaningfully with students, designing lessons that address students’ needs, using our talents to improve the lives of others. [Demoralization] is a sense that the moral dimension of the work is taken away by policy mandates that affect [our] teaching directly.

I would be interested to know about your experiences of demoralization in your job, whether it be teaching or something else.  In particular, I’d love to know how you’ve successfully battled demoralization.  Have you triumphed over policies or infrastructures that were compromising your ability to do your job?  Or have you learned to adapt, or adapt to, such policies to meet your needs?  Have you ever left a job because it demoralized you so that there was no turning back?

Image by BlueGum

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

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

Plagiarism: What Do Students Think?

It is only a week and a half into the semester, and already my office mate and I are talking about plagiarism.  There are hangovers from last semester – cases that never quite got resolved - and our college has a new plagiarism policy that requires, among other things, that we submit any plagiarism accusations to the dean within 15 business days.  (This is good to know; sending off those letters often falls to the bottom of my to-do list.)  So we’ve been wondering what instances will rear their heads this semester, and what we can do to head them off, beyond the myriad precautions we already take.

In discussing it, an old question from a friend and reader, Gen X, emerged for me: if you asked students, what would they say about plagiarism?  Why do they do it?  Why do they continue to do it even though they know it a) may get them into trouble, b) does not help them learn, and c) is both cheating and stealing?  Do they see it some other way?  Are they desperate?  Do they (as I suspect) really feel it’s no big deal as long as they don’t get caught (and sometimes even if they do)?

I would be very interested in anyone’s take on this; I’d be especially interested to hear from students, but we’ve all been students at one time or another.  Have you ever plagiarized?  Why?  Did it seem justifiable, or did you not understand the problem, or did you know you wouldn’t get caught, or did you feel it was your last best resort?  If you did get caught, what were the consequences?

(I did it on minor assignments in high school all the time.  If my biology teacher asked me to answer five short questions about the beluga, I knew he wasn’t asking me to copy information out of the encyclopedia, but I was never, ever reprimanded for doing so.  I never plagiarized anything in university, from what I remember, but I had friends who did, shamelessly.)

Why do students plagiarize?  What can be done to prevent them from doing so? Is it really such a big problem?  Gen X wants to know, and so do I.

Image by  Michal Zacharzewski

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 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

Top 10 Posts of 2011

It’s that time of year again.

(Actually, it’s a little past that time of year – it was that time of year, oh, two weeks ago, when it was still last year.)

Nevertheless: a roundup!

Here are the posts from Classroom as Microcosm that received the most hits this year.  The reasons for their popularity are varied and, in some cases, mysterious.  No matter.  If you’re new to the blog, or haven’t been able to keep up, they give some indication of what’s been going on around here.  If you like what you discover, please subscribe!  (Look to your right.  See the button that says “Sign Me Up!”?  Click it, and away you go.)

1. Fail Better

This post was chosen as a “Freshly Pressed” cover story by WordPress, which guaranteed that it would get tonnes of hits (over 11 000) and comments (245 at last count – about 15 of them are my replies, but I soon ran out of steam.)  In this little anecdote, I explore a problem – my students are so afraid to fail that they won’t even try – through the lens of some recent research – Paul Tough’s NYT Magazine article on “What if the Secret to Success is Failure?”  The results are inconclusive but gratifying.  All in all, it was a good week.

2. Should We Bid Farewell to the Academic Paper?

Another “Freshly Pressed” pick.  This one received almost 9 000 hits and 177 extremely interesting and thoughtful comments.  It’s a response to an article by Virginia Heffernan on Cathy N. Davidson’s book Now You See It.  Davidson’s book proposes, among other things, that the academic paper has had its day and needs to make way for more current tech-friendly forms.  I, and the commenters, are not so sure.

3. When in Doubt, Make a Plan

This post is a response to a reader’s plea for advice.  Nick’s not sure college is the place for him, but he can’t see his parents agreeing to any other path.  I can’t solve his problem for him, but I have some suggestions, as do readers.  His original query, and a lot of interesting reader responses, appear here.

4. The Five Best Podcasts in the World

In May, these were my top five, and I still love them all, although “The Age of Persuasion” is now defunct (but was replaced on Saturday by Terry O’Reilly’s highly anticipated followup, “Under the Influence.”)  If I wrote this post now, I might rearrange these and introduce a couple of new favourites, including “On the Media” and “Planet Money.”  If you have a favourite podcast, please visit the post and leave a link in the comments.

5. What Do Students Think Should Change About School?

I got so many responses to this open call that I followed it with a full week of guest spots: five posts from students explaining how school could be better.  You will find most of those responses in the comments section of this post, along with lots of other interesting ideas on how to improve the education system.

6. “Either You Can Be a Teacher or You Can Be the Plagiarism Police”

Ah, plagiarism: the inexhaustible inspiration for teacher rants everywhere.  Here, I discuss an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, in which Rob Jenkins explains that we need to just chill out.

7. Character = Behaviour: A Lesson Plan

This extremely successful lesson, in which students write reference letters for fictional characters and, at the same time, learn a bit about how their own behaviours reflect on their characters, is just now coming home to roost.  This winter, I am receiving an unprecedented (i.e. crushing) number of reference letter requests from students who clearly took this lesson to heart.

8. Life and Death and Anthologies

The stats for this post took a couple of random spikes, and I’m not sure why.  I like it a lot, but it’s just a quiet little meditation on the joys of anthologies and of travel, and on the links between the two.  In particular, it describes my experience of reading an anthology of Irish short fiction while travelling through Ireland.  It seems to have resonated with some people.  Perhaps it will for you.

9. Why Do I Have to Learn This?

We don’t always take this question seriously.  Louis Menand says we should.  I agree.

10. What Young Adults Should Read

After a Wall Street Journal essay made some indignant pronouncements about the trash that young people are reading these days, and after everyone got all upset about it, I threw in my two cents.  This post makes special reference to the thoughts and writings of Linda Holmes, blogger at NPR’s “Monkey See” pop culture blog, host of NPR’s “Pop Culture Happy Hour,” and person I most want to be when I grow up (granted, she’s probably younger than me, but I still have a long way to go.)

And, just because I loved it:

Bonus Post: Rolling In the Girls’ Room

I walked into the women’s washroom outside my office.  I discovered three students, two of  them male, sitting on the counter, rolling joints.   This post transcribes a Facebook conversation with my friends and colleagues, in which my response to this event is analyzed, critiqued, and mostly (but not entirely) supported.

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Resolutions for 2012:

  • Continue to post on Mondays and Thursdays.  Posts will, if all goes well, appear around 9 a.m., although dissemination to Facebook, OpenSalon etc. may be slightly delayed, as I am teaching early classes.  If you want to be sure to know about posts the moment they go up, please make use of the “Sign Me Up!” button at the top of the right-hand margin to receive email notifications for every post.
  • Tweet more!  I am lazy Twitterer.  However, I find all sorts of cool stuff that I don’t have time to blog about but should really share with you all.  So now I will.  Again, there is a button to the right that will allow you to follow me at @siobhancurious.  Follow me!
  • Be present, be present, be present.

Do you have a favourite post that you read here this year, and that I haven’t mentioned above?  Do you have blogging or teaching resolutions that you’d like to share?  Please leave a comment.  I always love hearing from you.

Thursday’s post: my favourite reading experiences of 2011.

And finally: Happy New Year, everyone!

Image by Maxime Perron Caissy

Education From the Ground Up

I have once again received a very interesting query from a reader.  The blog will be on hiatus until January 9, so you’ll have lots of time to think about it and respond!  Jan Simpson would like to know: if you had to design an education system from scratch, how would you do it?

Here, in more detail, is his question.

It’s the present day, the year 2011. Everything is the way it is. However, there is no existing educational system whatsoever anywhere in the world. It is up to you to create a form of education for at least 500 teenagers between the ages of 15 and 20.

Here is my request: How would you go about creating a new educational system for those “students?” In other words, if you are the first person to create and establish the first educational system in the world, what would that look like?

Keep in mind, there isn’t any sort of education that had been created beforehand; you are the first person to wrap your mind around the basic principles of education and create a system or model where those principles can be taught and learned.

Feel free to post a brief response or a lengthy treatise in the comments section below.  If you’d prefer to contact Jan directly with a long reply, you can click on his name at the beginning of this post to go to his Gravatar profile and find his contact details.  However, I’m sure we’d all be interested to read your thoughts here, no matter how long or short they may be!

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Have a great winter holiday.  Eat lots of food!  Go for long walks!  Spend at least two days not thinking about teaching!  And when you ARE thinking about teaching … well, if you’ve gotten behind on your Classroom as Microcosm reading and commenting, now would be a great time to get caught up.

See you in January, when I will will start the year with a recap of the top posts of 2011 and with a list of my favourite books of the year.