Here's my teaching story. I taught freshman "pre calculus" math at a Big Ten university for one semester. I had never taught anything before, except training unskilled workers in a factory. My office mate taught the same course. He was a much better mathematician than me.
My colleague thought that his students were universally lazy, dishonest, self-entitled brats, who wanted everything spoon fed to them. He taught them the correct facts. If they didn't understand him, he repeated the same facts for them. He berated them in class and got more and more fed up.
I took a different approach. I left my ego at the door and adapted to the situation. I treated my students with respect, but did not relinquish authority. There's a difference between telling and teaching. I taught. When my students didn't understand something, I found a different way to explain it.
Exam time. All of the 20-odd teachers for this course had the same text, syllabus, exams, and grading standards. My students did considerably better on the exams than those of my colleague. We compared papers, and it was obvious that my students had learned more math.
Right on, Francis (I wish you would get out of control once in awhile so I could tell you to "lighten up", but you never do). As one who has made a living as a teacher for the past 20 years, your words ring true. Most endeavors that go well, IMO, begin with the precept "leave your ego at the door". In my profession, I meet a lot of kids who could easily fall into the group that Branford is talking about. I don't worry about that, because mixed in with them are a bunch of other kids who really want to learn. I treat all the students with respect, and teach to the level of the ones who want to achieve something, on the assumption that they all do, or at least should. In very little time, those starting to feel left behind start asking questions, which I try to answer with enthusiasm and respect, and as you said, in various ways if the first explanation didn't take. I try to speak directly to each student every day, even if they're "slackers". Before too long, the classes tend to reshape themselves as the students start to understand what is expected of them and how to achieve it. They can choose to do this or not, but I let the grading scale handle the job of "vibing" or dissing those students who don't want to work, and continue trying to be positive with the whole class.
Some students fail in the end, but not by any lack of effort on my part, and I don't worry about them - they have learned a very valuable life lesson in spite of themselves. But others succeed, and I think it will always be this way. While Branford has a point, I think it goes too far to apply it as a blanket statement to an entire generation. In my experience, there are still a lot of kids out there working hard to try to get better.
As a sideline, this year I got back into martial arts training after a 15 year hiatus. The experience of going from a "black belt" in my own field to a white belt in two new arts has been very educational for me as a teacher: watching the instructors at the dojo as they teach classes consisting of a mixture of all ranks has given me new perspective on what I do in real life. Some of the instructors there are truly exceptional. All of them know their craft well. But great teachers
inspire as well as teach. They don't just show you what you're supposed to do, they exemplify it in a way that makes you *want* to get it.
Last night the instructor had each student do a kicking drill where he wore a body pad and had his arms behind his back. Every student in the class (one at a time, with everyone watching) had to kick the pad repeatedly while he moved and tried to knock them off balance with the pad. If you threw a kick and missed, you did 5 pushups. At first he made every single person look foolish, but then instructed them on how to do it better and gave them a chance to practice the lesson before moving on to the next student. The positive energy and focus was amazing, and every single person walked out of that class having learned something. I'm actually looking forward to taking some of the teaching lessons I'm getting there back to my day gig at the university. As a relative beginner student, the power of enthusiasm and positive reinforcement together is incredibly powerful. I think good teachers do well to remember that.
