Because teaching isn’t about having the smart kid demonstrate that they know the answer, it’s about getting the kid who doesn’t understand the question to engage and learn.
Any of you who may one day have children would do well to understand the above.
i can’t think of a better way to get shy kids to engage and learn than to figuratively put them on a pedestal in front of the whole class and have them demonstrate that they don’t know the answer.
100% I need to know what that kid is thinking, so I can guide them to the answer.
Sure, how? Engagement is a tricky thing, and kids “cheat” on homework and look up answers. Hearing from a student in class is the best way for me to see their thought process.
Hey, most of us only do it if the kid is speaking.
Otherwise if random calling I’ll pick a table and be like someone from that table. And then give them the option to phone a friend.
It’s about engagement, we don’t really care if the answer is right or wrong, just wanting people paying attention and giving it a think.
I had a French teacher who targeted me like this. She would call on me multiple times per lesson when I didn’t know the answer and she would give me a detention if I didn’t put my hand up at least twice per lesson and correctly answer.
She claimed that she was doing this because she liked me and that I had a French last name but the other dumb kid with a French last name didn’t get the same treatment. I went from getting 50% in exams to 90% by the end of the year and I dropped French straight after that. Which sucked because I liked French but I couldn’t risk getting stuck with her for another year. In total she must have caused me to spend at least 150 hours in detention
Your French teacher was better than mine. She’d roll her cart into the classroom speaking gibberish (My friend spoke fluent French. He couldn’t understand a word she said) and then she’d throw Telefrancais on as if that’s acceptable for teaching 8th grade French. Then give us worksheets in French with no explanation or teaching of the material, and sending us to the office if we tried to use a phone to translate them.
Her nonsense put my French learning behind, and made it all the more difficult in high school. Thanks Ms. Benaquista.
Oh noo a teacher was effective teaching me something, better drop the subject.
Dude. They saw potential in you, in your language intelligence and got you into a place where you were doing great with it.
If a teaching method causes a student to stop learning, it’s a bad method
Not quite. There are 30+ kids in each class. No technique is perfect, and you need to look at the whole situation to make that kind of determination.
If I scare a kid by asking them to speak, for example, and they drop the class, that’s not a teaching issue unless [insert lengthy backstory here].
Nah, because there are countless students that “quit because the teacher didn’t teach how I wanted them to” which usually means “I couldn’t just do fuckall and pass”.
You missed the part about hours spend in detention.
Punishment is not an accepted means of instruction because it causes this type of trauma response.
They may have learned French but they also learned to hate learning French which is counter- productive to continuing with French education.
Yeah you are right. I choose to take French because I had an interest in the subject but after her class I hate French. For example of a good teacher I hated math and was getting 30% in exams then one of the teachers was really good at engaging the class and I got 90% that year. It was form 6 math which is even more impressive because he was able to teach me all the building blocks I’d missed from over the years and the new concepts all in one year. If it weren’t for him I would have never caught up and gone on to take advanced math in uni ( which I failed but that was for other reasons)
This is why I stopped raising my hand. I got tired of being the only person to answer.
“I couldn’t hear you, you’re mumbling again.”
