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A parent with a child in an affluent school district emailed asking about the decline at the top. Here's my response. Thought it might be worth a visit....
My observations of high-ability kids in public schools are related to the whole grade level/mastery issue. I have a few really high kids. They fall roughly into two camps. Camp one is Nerd Camp.
These are the kids who; don’t misbehave, catch all the teacher’s mistakes, get concepts quickly, self motivate, learn from texts, and need little guidance. For me, teaching Nerds is sort of like steering a sailboat. You just watch the sails and steer the thing.
Camp two is Joker Camp. Jokers are as bright and ‘with it’ academically as the Nerds with one exception. When Nerds run out of stuff to do, they come and ask you for more things to do. When Jokers run out of stuff to do, they become the leaders who bring the rest of the class (except for the nerds) to the dark side. You never take your eyes off the Jokers. Teaching them is like steering a Ferrari. You can go like hell but watch the curves, ‘cause they’ll take them too fast and crash when you don’t expect it.
I think this is related to the mastery issue by its relationship to what I call the classless school. These kids need to be challenged, all the time, not just for the first ten minutes of each class. There needs to be a system where you take kids who get something really fast and put them in front of the ‘next thing’. Blow away grade levels. Today we lock them up in a grade level like mushrooms and they don’t do well. If mastery was the guide, instead of their shoe size, you could get them out in the sun.
If they’re in a room (grade level) where the teacher is overwhelmed with kids 4 years below them, they’re the first ones tossed under the bus. There’s also, sadly, a measurement issue. Do you get more kudos as a school system from raising ( a low number ) of high achievers by, say, 3%, or from raising (a high number) of low achievers by, say, 10%?
That last, was a rhetorical question :>{
Side note. I was in the Joker Club. I only became a Nerd after 4 years in the Coast Guard taught me the joys of being a grunt.
Another side note. I’m currently tutoring a 10th grade AP student from a neighboring wealthy suburb. He can’t divide. I don’t know how he got into the class. I suspect there was an empty seat. Sometimes I think we’re doomed.
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6 comments:
Very funny, Paul.
Unfortunately, my youngest falls into the Joker's club, too. He never saw an eraser that he didn't want to zing across the room.
SusanS
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.)
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.
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.
oh I think you'll be hearing from mom
heh
Or, the administration...
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