When I first heard that we were going to be filming ourselves teaching a lesson, I was immediately horrified. Me, in front of a camera, knowing that everything I say and do will be evaluated...not the most comforting feeling. However, I taught my lesson last week and I'm happy to say that it went relatively well. After having a mini-disaster in the beginning of my lesson, everything seemed to go smoothly.
The only issue I experienced was one particular student who did not hesitate to express his level of disdain for the essay which I was telling the class that they were going to write. The class had just finished reading "Their Eyes Were Watching God" (which I LOVE by the way), and their teacher wanted them to write an essay over the book. After I introduced the essay and explained exactly what they needed to do to begin the writing process, I walked around with my camera to capture some of the group discussion. One of the students felt it was appropriate to tell me "This it stupid. I don't want to do this. I don't like this. Complaint complaint complaint" etc. That is ALL he would say to me every time I walked by him with the camera. I thought to myself, "Oh great, Dr. Mason is going to see this".
My question is, as teachers, how should we interact with students who seem to hate every lesson that you create and everything that you do? The particular student who I mentioned earlier is incredibly intelligent, and it's becoming obvious that his pessimistic attitude is negatively affecting his performance in the class. At what point should teachers intervene with issues such as this, and how should they do so? Sure, it's just a case of a teenager with a bad attitude (go figure), but can what can we do to make learning more enjoyable for students?
I have gotten the same thing in my placement. I taught a unit over This I Believe essays and one particular girl made it very clear that she does not pay attention to directions and has no intention of beginning to now. Every day, she would come up with some question about what they were doing and every day I repeated what I had already said the day before and the day before that and the day before that. Eventually, my CT started telling students if they have questions, they should ask their neighbor. I noticed she hasn't asked her classmates any other questions, in class anyway, but I still wonder if maybe she still has those questions and just refuses to ask another student or if she never had a legitimate question to begin with and was just trying to get under my skin. It is really too bad when you see intelligent students failing their classes, but what can you do? Encouragement is my only answer but it comes with no guarantees.
ReplyDeleteI think we all can agree that there is always going to be one student who does not want to learn or participate in the class activities. This just seems to be a common fact and is always going to prove a difficult problem to solve. Recently, I was forced to speak to someone I knew the students DOES respect in order to get them to participate in class, and it's had quite good results. However, I think you will have to approach each individual case in a unique way and there is no universal answer that I could give as a strategy that might work. What works for one student could end up being completely rejected by another.
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