Random Notes

Ben posted a great response to my last entry, and I have to admit, I was somewhat taken aback: usually I'm the guy who steps outside a debate to advocate some sort of combination of the black and white as the ultimate rational solution to the problem.

I am still convinced that there is no 'science' to teaching, or at least, I'm undecided and tend towards that view. While there's no need to debate the semantics at this point, I still prefer a more 'free-form' environment. My classroom probably would be a lot smoother with more established order and authority, but I really don't feel like bothering with what I consider to be minor procedures. For example, it's the established norm (which is new to me this year) that students go outside a classroom door to blow their noses if they have the sniffles; I don't want to make them raise a hand and get my permissions before doing so. That defeats the whole purpose of this right to privacy thing that Jackson, MS has going on concerning a stuffy nose. Likewise, if I have a homework assignment I'm collecting that demanded more than one page of work which frequently happens, I don't want to give permission to get up and use the stapler a million times. My students are perfectly capable of getting up, using the stapler, passing it to someone else or returning it, and placing their assignment in my hands on their own without specific directions.

Now these are nit-picky details, I admit, and I'm not entirely sure what this little dialogue is essentially about anymore, but I suppose what I'm saying is that I reject an authoritarian teaching style. I've run an inadvertent experiment in my classroom recently that may shed some light on this. (And I'll try to be as concise as possible, though I know I always end up being long-winded...)

The Latin textbook I'm using, like all Latin textbooks, have several pros and cons, and the particular downside to my Jenney's edition is that it becomes intensely difficult abnormally quickly. I have very few middle-of-the-road students in most of my classes - half my students should be twice as far as we are with the content whereas half might as well be back on Day One, if the reader will forgive the hyperbole. So rather than having a lot of 'A's and 'D's I have a lot of 'A-'s and abysmally low 'F's. I've gone back to the basics: do this, do this, do this, here's how you do this, do this for homework, repeat. Structure, structure, structure! JPS calls it working on the work, which is about as meaningful a turn of phrase as Dr. Bounds's keeping the main thing the main thing. And what are the results? Everybody's grades are back up, I have mountains of papers I can point to and make bold claims of progress, but my bright students are bored out of their minds and rarely finish what is for all intents and purposes busy work and my mediocre students know I'm doing them a favor and are as resigned and clueless as ever though they have passing grades.

Now maybe I'm not a proactive and creative enough teacher despite my renewed efforts to concentrate on my classroom virtually all the time, which thought crosses my mind entirely too often, and maybe I should be giving different assignments to students of different ability levels or something, but I feel much worse now employing what I feel is the model all the state bureaucrats wish me to follow than I did with students talking out of turn, at best out of curiousity and at worst out of diversionary fun.

Maybe I'm missing the mark entirely and not mixing up what are separate and distinct issues with management and delivery and individual practice and everything else, but I miss the bright-eyed fun and enthusiasm I used to have in my classroom even if only a fraction of my students were genuinely interested and the rest just 'misbehaving'. I hate the dull-eyed work, work, rule-following eyes I see now and I hate making small talk with my students because we both know that this isn't learning, though nobody talks out of turn anymore.

So, who knows? Like I said, I don't even know what issues I'm even debating anymore, suffice to say that I'd rather inspire just one student than lord over 150 and I'm no closer to finding a happy medium than before Dr. Bounds came to talk to us, though I do believe that whatever arbitrary (and probably fictitious) debate I'm having is worth having by the inherent goodness of dialogue.

Rock onward.