You may have one of these.
A young man has taken my class twice. He failed the first time, and he's not doing so great this second time. Yet, from his comments in class, he's so much smarter than his grades.
You can tell when something catches his attention because he sits up straight and his whole body turns into a question. When he wakes up, he is wide awake. He particularly seems to want to know more about resistance. He even wanted to know more about Claude MacKay and Langston Hughes because the selections from their poetry that I used in the lecture spoke to something important and purposeful in him. He needs to read Ellison, Baldwin, and Wright.
I see this spark in him, but this is my frustration. How on earth to I feed it? How do I figure out what he needs and then provide it? How do I do it for the others just like him? If this were a sappy teacher movie, I would chase him down to his home, and bring him books, and just go out of my way to get up in his business. I would save his life and his soul through learning because I cared, man, I really cared.
We know that's not how it happens. In fact, in most of those teacher movies, the students probably should get a restraining order.
This is the frustration of teaching. I get them for a few hours a week. I give them my subject. I grade them on their ability to show that they have learned the subject for at least a few weeks. I send them on their way. I never know if, next year or next week or on their deathbeds, these hours and this information helped them in any way other than to get the credit for the degree. I shouldn't worry about it too much either. I actually don't, and consider that healthy.
Then I get someone like this student. I see him right there on the verge of finding something that might be meaningful to him. Not "change his whole life" or any of that hyperbolic teacher movie stuff. Just meaningful, enriching, interesting. I have no idea how to tip him toward it.
If he had a specific question, I might have a specific answer; but that is not how these things work. So, I watch him, and answer his questions, and hope that today I bring something to the class that makes him take notice and helps him find his own way to what ever it is that he needs.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
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4 comments:
Try giving him an extra credit assignment. Give him the option of doing a book report on Baldwin or something you want him to read to bring up one of his low grades. That way, he gets exposed to what you want him to read and you don't have to fail his ass out. It's a win-win.
I'd second Babu's suggestion. I had a student like this in one of my classes and I let him do a different assignment that was targeted to his interests (not an extra credit assignment, but same idea). If you can, talk to the student to see if he has other interests that could provide context for the assignment (e.g., if he's in to music, maybe set some MacKay poems to music or write about how music influenced Hughes, or Hughes influenced jazz).
Who knows what else is going on in his life? Maybe he really is interested in the content (It must have at least minor appeal if he is willing to sit through it twice (I once had a student take a class of mine three times -- Failed all three times)). Maybe he has to work full time -- or he is heavy into sports -- or he is having relationship issues -- or he likes the drugs. Whatever it might be, it seems more important to him at the moment than earning a solid grade.
But I also don't think grades are the measure of a meaningful engagement with the class.
Babu and John: Those are good ideas. I may do that, or I may let him watch a biography of Ellison in the library, which may stimulate him to read the book (our students are very frightened of reading, and some are fresh out of remedial classes).
GayProf: You are probably most certainly right. Our students lives tend to be quite complicated, which very much interferes with their ability to perform well. You are also right about the grades. I want them to make passing grades so they don't have to pay for another class; but, as with this guy, I think the subject could end up meaning more than the C that, with some effort, he might make. If they make good grades, great! But if they are becoming educated, which is probably what I'm seeing happen in this student, then something potentially transformative has begun.
Of course, that is the frustration of teaching for the teacher: lack of payoff. I'll never know with this student or any other if this class affected them in anyway. I give this stuff to them, and they make of it what they will, either now or in a decade when they say "ooooh, so that's what that was about!." Or never.
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