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There's another category -- ones I call "in school dropouts." They are physically present, keep the chairs warm, may engage in occasional Jokery, do well enough to pass, sometimes are B students, but are gifted and bored to death. They give token compliance, largely ignore what is going on, and are likely to do their own thing (write novels, program video games, draw and invent, etc.)from Paul:
These students are ones who also could and should be at the top but are completely disengaged. They don't make trouble, like Jokers, and they don't attract attention for doing what the school wants, like Nerds.
I spot them pretty often because in my early days in DC public schools I was one, too.
These are The Crafters, often found working on some clandestine project in their lap; could be homework, could be spitballs, or maybe they're reading a book.and:
I don' have too many of those because my furniture is such that they have no place to do their nefarious deeds without my eyes catching the contraband.
Funny thing is, my principal complained about my furniture in an observation. Silly me, I thought that was her domain. I mustn't have gotten the memo. :>{
Come to think of it, I do have one especially crafty Crafter. Let's call him Thomas Jefferson. Thomas's craft is rubber bands. He puts every ounce of his energy into shooting kids in the back of the head with little wads of paper shot from his crafty perch inside his extra bulky hoody that we are not allowed to ban.
I've been on to 'Jeff' for some time and he knows it. That's why the extra effort is required. He has to keep one eye on me, one on his victim, another on his copying, and the last on the door, lest the VP (who is also on to him) drops in for a surprise reconnaissance. Since he has but two eyes, he is mightily challenged to keep all these balls in the air, so to speak.
We moved him to another class, away from his best friends in order to least free up one eye for school work, since he'd no longer be with the copying enablers. This was a disaster. He went from a B to an F and mom got on the phone to fix his grades. She didn't call me, surprise! She called a sympathetic administrative ear to get him back to his old classroom to 'improve' his grade. It worked!
Old Tom will be back in his original class after the break. At least I'll be able to catch him at his craft more often as he'll be back to copying again which reduces his ability to watch me. He won't be getting his B back though, as I'm planning something special for his seating arrangement.
Hopefully mom will be back on the phone 'helping' her son in 5 weeks.
This makes me want to drop everything & re-read Tom Sawyer right this minute.
Since I'm not going to do that, here's a question: what do these kids do when placed in a hands-on 21st century collaborative group?
18 comments:
They copy like demons in order to get back to the 'club'.
You can easily track club memberships by anthropological observations. The Nerds will be found erecting little cubies from their notebooks so their work won't be purloined by a Crafter. The Jokers will be helping the Crafters by tormenting the little cubies into collapse. The Crafters are the ones who finish first (to get back to their craft). The teacher is the one teaching addition to the oldest kids in the back of the room.
Later when it's time to report out. The Nerds have all the answers but are too shy to present. The Jokers attempt it but they don't want to get caught being smart so they yuck it up. The Crafters end up doing the presentation since they have the neatest work. Then when it's time to ask questions and you take the Crafters into uncharted territory they can't answer a single one because they don't have a clue about what just happened.
And so it goes...It's called hysterical learning.
My daughter is an in-school dropout/crafter/nerd. She spends her days reading novels under her desk. Her teachers know and have known since second grade. They don't care.
I care, but that makes me a heliocopter parent.
In third grade, I taught her how to write down the wrong answers and change them at the last minute to deal with the copiers.
She is bored out of her mind, but has come to the conclusion that school is a miserable place and that she is undeserving of attention from the teachers.
Jane
In school dropout. I love that. My son "dropped out" around 4th grade for grade school, and he is completely checked out in the 8th grade for middle school. Fortunately, he is bussed over to the high school for math and science, but that's only in the morning.
I care, but that makes me a heliocopter parent.
Well, you're in good company. Catherine is our Black Hawk Down leader.
SusanS
All of this bothers me a great deal. What is (are) the problems here, the student, other students, the teachers, the school, or the curriculum? Is it a school system that bores kids to death (even with discovery learning), do kids expect life to cater to them, or are they just immature?
In the past, we've talked about how if you wait long enough (like high school), all problems look like they belong to the student (or parents, or society). At KTM, I like to think we try to identify and discuss the systemic issues that lead to this conclusion. This doesn't mean that students, parents, and society don't shoulder any of the blame, but it's not an excuse for doing nothing.
Bad math curricula force young kids to deal with failure that is squarely placed on their shoulders. After six years of fuzzy, mastery-less learning, they are hit with a math placement test in sixth grade that determines if they get on the A-list (algebra in 8th grade), or get put on the algebra treadmill (like the Groundhog Day movie) until they graduate. What an awful thing to do to kids. Since enough kids do well, schools don't want to look at the details. They will stick with their relative statistics. Our schools are "High Performing", but they still use Everyday Math, and too many kids don't get on the A-list.
I think a lot of problems can be traced to the all-inclusive policies adopted by many schools. The pacing of the classroom lesson can be painful to the bright kids. If there is no gifted program, or if only a few are chosen to participate, that leaves a lot of bright kids stuck in a classroom that caters to the middle.
If I hadn't advocated for my son or had him tested, I'm quite sure he would have been stuck in a lot of those classes. Schools assume the bright and gifted will advocate for themselves (another "blame the student" ploy.) They are always surprised by his scores. Always.
If I hadn't afterschooled him for foundational skills, they would have used that as an excuse to hold him back, thus making him even more miserable. I did what many KTMers do here. I taught him basic skills explicitly after school because the school wouldn't or couldn't do it.
He just doesn't have the "precocious" gene they want to see. Every year I have to remind them of his abilities and that they are what they are whether he advertises them or not.
And then there are the teachers who like to put bright kids in their place.
I am sure there are a lot of kids languishing in these classrooms due to the school's aversion to ability grouping. This really is why parents have to risk the helicopter label. Too much is at stake.
SusanS
"The pacing of the classroom lesson can be painful to the bright kids."
In second grade, my daughter cried before going to school in the morning. She begged to go to a different school. We were in a rough patch financially. I had to go to work and we couldn't afford private school. It was torture for all of us.
"Schools assume the bright and gifted will advocate for themselves (another "blame the student" ploy.)"
We have heard that too. Although my daughter fits within the age guidelines for her grade, she is on the young side. Exactly how is a six year old supposed to: 1) understand what she doesn't know 2) tell a grown-up teacher that she needs to learn new things; and 3) understand that you are supposed to be able to learn at school?
"And then there are the teachers who like to put bright kids in their place." We have dealt with that too. One teacher liked to send me emails insinuating that smart people/kids tended to be mentally ill.
Jane
P.S. I'm taking my heliocopter pilot lessons here.
Part of the problem can be that the bright students are brighter than the teacher. Unless those students work to hide that fact, some teachers will make their lives miserable and make them pay, grade-wise, for anything that can be forced to have a subjective aspect. ("not neat enough, middle initial not included on name etc etc...) I'm talking about a very highly-ranked school in a very affluent area.
Jane,
If you get a chance, go over to the old site (if it's still standing...) There's a lot of stuff over there. Some of us were dealing with grade school issues then and we learned a lot from each other.
I remember we had long discussions about children "taking responsiblity" for their learning. Many of us decided to just do some of the more developmentally inappropriate projects ourselves.
Catherine, of course, tried to communicate the insanity of the situation.
By the end of fifth grade, my son was bringing home around 3 hours of homework every night, all with different due dates. Since he was accelerated in math, he had at least an hour of that a night. The other teachers just piled on packets and essays. All of them denied that he had that much homework until I kept track and showed them one day. Most of the work was busywork or coloring. Many, many times they wouldn't collect it.
I couldn't change them and we couldn't send him to a private school, either, so I just became his private secretary. There was no way an 11-year old would have the executive functions that they were expecting of him. I remember thinking that it looked like my college schedule.
Catherine's bold. She just sends a note in saying that C. wouldn't be doing a particular project. Period.
This gets much worse as they head to middle school. They really expect them to know what they don't know then. But the truth is, they often think they know it until they get home.
In middle school they are supposed to seek Extra Help, which usually means staying after school or coming in early. Catherine's son tried that and had all kinds of problems. My son would wake up an hour early and go to the school only to find the teachers not there or in a meeting. This happened more than once.
SusanS
In third grade, I taught her how to write down the wrong answers and change them at the last minute to deal with the copiers.
I used to do that, except it was in high school, and I didn't write down wrong answers, I just erased them as if I had discovered huge errors in all the problems on the test. The copiers went berserk trying to see what I was doing, and it almost resulted in one copier being caught by the teacher.
As for being bored in school, when other kids aren't getting the material and you are, and you have to sit there waiting for people to get it, you get bored.
"I think a lot of problems can be traced to the all-inclusive policies adopted by many schools."
That's the governing principle at our K-8 schools. All other educational ideas are built to support that concept; drill and kill, superficial knowledge, discovery learning, developmentally-appropriate, understanding over mastery. They all are used to justify full inclusion. It's not the other way around. Everyday Math is specifically designed for full-inclusion.
Then, at about 7th grade, things change and kids have to deal with sink or swim education. Schools know that kids have to be prepared for high school, so they turn up the heat. Many kids can't handle this, but some parents think this is normal or good. Kids have to learn to take responsibility. If you sink, it's your own fault. The idea of taking control over your own learning is a great ploy by schools. The can deflect responsibility.
I'm lucky because my son is smart and very outgoing. However, there are teachers who try to prove that he is not so smart. They grade him more strictly than other kids. Even he notices that if the teacher continued to take points off at the same rate, he could end up with a negative grade. He also has an amazing memory and that drives some teachers crazy. They are determined to show that it doesn't matter.
She spends her days reading novels under her desk.
I did that!
I wasn't checked out, though.
Just in need of LOTS of stimulation, I guess.
I still remember getting busted by my geometry teacher.
hi, Jane!
Well, you're in good company.
Catherine is our Black Hawk Down leader.
good lord
well, I fear that's not far off
for all the good it did
What is (are) the problems here, the student, other students, the teachers, the school, or the curriculum?
The problem in my district is that teachers are now required to seat children in groups and have them learn collaboratively, construct knowledge, and make meaning.
This is being done with 5-year olds; we saw pictures at the last board meeting.
5-year old boys sitting at little round tables collaborating and making meaning.
Every presentation to the school board is a dog and pony show; board members are expected to coo over the cute children collaborating at their little tables.
Teachers don't appear in the photographs, unless there's a picture of a teacher sitting with one child.
Catherine is our Black Hawk Down leader.
I say that filled with only fondness and admiration, of course.
SusanS
I have an extreme "differentiated" classroom. I teach at a small school and all the grade 4, 5, and 6 children are in my room, a total of 15 of them. In this group I have one student who reads at a mid to late first grade level, two students who spell at a 1st to 2nd grade level, one extremely slow processor, two children who are, or have been, on IEPs, and another student, in addition to the ones above, that's a bit on the low side. Then I have the kid who is incredibly smart and seems to know about as much as I do in subjects he's interested in. He's also a behavioral problem and I think there's a neurological basis for it, not just boredom. I also have a plain-vanilla high achieving 6th grader.
Much as I wish it were otherwise, I just don't think I'm doing any one of my kids justice, not just the ones I've mentioned, but the ones in the middle as well. Do I leave behind the slow ones? Fail to teach the faster ones? Individualize work for each student and be totally swamped (and burned out) by all the work that would cause me? I want to be an effective teacher, I just honestly don't know how to deal with the group of students I've been given in a way that works for all of them. By-the-way, this is a private school and parents expect something for their money - and I don't blame them.
One year in my high school French class I figured out very early on that my teacher only read the first couple of lines I did of the assigned workbook exercises. So I would dutifully do the beginning correctly and then proceeded to amuse myself by completing the rest of the page with translating nursery rhymes into French. He finally caught on to what I was doing in March and fortunately had a sense of humor about it.
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