Student population

When you get started teaching, it's really easy to get totally overwhelmed and it's hard to see things sometimes. You know so little about what's ordinary that some things just slip right by. I don't really remember details from high school through the lens of a teacher. I knew jack shit about teaching then. All I remember is being a student, and a fairly studious one at that. Sometimes I look at my students now and I try to compare myself as a student to them. I have one student who finishes every assignment religiously and tries to get it right every time (not just write down crap). And I think, "was I like that?" I'm actually finding it hard to remember accurately. I think I remember getting all of my assignments done, though sometimes I didn't manage to read every assignment for history. That class was an extended lesson in skimming and I wasn't all that good at skimming and retaining, though I suppose most people aren't. I did get all of my math assignments done I remember, but that was mostly because I understood it and when you understand the problems, they go pretty fast. So maybe I was more like my student who finishes his assignments before I'm even done lecturing and always gets a perfect score on the tests. Except I don't remember getting perfect scores all that often. I was kind of sloppy on tests and would make careless errors. I have another student who is always helping the other students out, and I did that pretty often too. Nothing turns a good student into a stellar student like being willing to help others. Haroon is this super nice student who is constantly helping others, even when they're really far behind (he's kind of like the perfect student). I wouldn't call him the top student in the class, but most of the other students see him that way because he always knows how to help them out. I was a little like that because I was always tutoring other students. Haroon never finishes his work early, even though he's probably bright enough that he could, because he is always helping others around him. So that means he spends the entire hour of math class very actively engaged in and focused on math. He never gets much of a chance to zone out. He probably also spends time during lunch helping people out, and he takes the time to do his homework as well. So he gets a lot more math time than the average person. I'm relatively confident that helping my peers when I was a student made me spend a lot more time thinking about math, and spending more time makes you better at anything.

I don't thik I was too clear about where this train of thought was taking me at the beginning of this post. I began by talking about not knowing what was ordinary or not and then I kind of just shifted into comparisons between my high school self and my students. The order there is actually kind of backwards. I started this train of thought with my idle comparisons. The train of thought continued when I tried to compare other students who weren't all that much like me with my peers from high school. Were there students who zoned out in class? Were there student who didn't turn in any assignments? I realized thinking back that I was really very tunnel-visioned in high school. I think the big secret of high school is that everyone is tunnel-visioned. Everyone is so busy taking care of themselves and getting their own shit together that no one really pays attention to anyone else. I realize now that I was so focused on paying attention during lecture that I could not say one way or another if anyone else was. I have some vague memories of raising my hand and not being called on (despite being the only one raising my hand) because the teacher wanted other students to get a chance, which tells me in retrospect that no one else was really participating. As an adult and a teacher, that tells me that a lot of people weren't following along at all. As a kid I didn't really pay attention to whether or not other people knew the answer. Usually when I wasn't allowed to answer, someone would step up to the plate, so I think I just figured that other people knew and just didn't feel like participating. That was me sometimes too. Sometimes I would zone out and sometimes I just didn't feel like raising my hand. I never really considered that other people might not be following along at all. Considering that I retaught so many of my peers, especially in high school, I have to assume that most of them weren't really following along during lecture. My students at Mt Eden don't either, and it's interesting to realize that the students at a fancy private school aren't all that different.

But of course there are differences. Despite the fact that a lot of people weren't following along, I don't remember people talking during lecture. I couldn't say for sure if the other students took notes, but I think they did. Even if they didn't, I can say with relative certainty that they weren't talking. No one had phones out during class, though that was years ago when phones weren't quite so snazzy. Perhaps it has changed, but somehow I doubt it. I could believe that St Francis students also text on the sly like mine do, I would be shocked if they were constantly listening to music like mine. They think listening is having one headphone in. I mean seriously.

So anyway, when I was trying to make comparisons, this is where I started to think about what was ordinary and what wasn't. For a lot of first semester (and this semester too), I figured I wasn't really able to control the classroom because I was a new teacher and didn't know what the hell I was doing. All the things I thought would work definitely didn't. The amount of homework I assigned was wrong. The level of difficulty of the problems was wrong. The amount of lecture was wrong. My classroom management was WRONG wrong. And I just figured it was me and that I didn't know anything about anything. But now I'm thinking about it and I wonder... how much of my demeanor would have worked at St Francis? At St Francis, if a teacher told everyone to be quiet, everyone usually was. At least I think so. I'm kind of surprised by how hard it is to remember clearly, but I guess I am a very different person than I was in high school. It's almost like remembering someone else's life. But anyway, how difficult could I have made the problems at St Francis? How difficult could I have made the problems at Berkeley High? I remember putting in some really tricky problems in my tests when I was student teaching. And none of them were multiple choice. My students average a stone cold F on non multiple choice tests. As it is now, they actually do average a low C (in algebra 2- certainly not in algebra 1), as long as a take out the zeros. Now that's something that definitely didn't happen at St Francis. No zeros. If you didn't get the grade, you were asked to leave. Well, leave or donate 100k or something. There are a lot of really disruptive students who just wouldn't be there at St Francis- the students who can't even stay in their seats. Or keep from breaking your rulers in half. I hate that little shit Alfredo. Seriously- my class set of rulers is like 1/3 gone. All he'd have to do is cut class once and he'd be suspended, as opposed to now when it just goes down as a cut and maybe ends up giving his parents a truancy letter if he does it enough. He doesn't even have the decency to cut for the whole period. He stays for most of the period- long enough to raise hell, sexually harass the girls, throw paper balls, distract the kids that have trouble working, graffiti the desks, act disrespectful to me in front of the class, and generally make everything around him turn to shit. And then he leaves. You know, I could really just rip off his testicles. Wouldn't bat an eye.

Anyway, there are a lot of things at Mt Eden that just aren't ordinary. If you tell the kids to be quiet. That should be enough. They should be quiet. That is enough at other schools, and not just private schools. And Alfredo's behavior should never be tolerated. I write referrals, but nothing changes. Sometimes I pretend to write a referral so that he cuts earlier because he usually just walks out as soon as he thinks he's getting sent to the office. Well he's in for a surprise. I gave him detention- detention he'll never attend. So when he doesn't show up for a week, then that means they'll probably give him in house detention for two days (fingers crossed), which he'll probably also ditch and just get for real suspended, which may get him out of my hair for longer. Well... we'll see.

Anyway, the whole point of this blog is that I kind of realized it wasn't just me. I remember there was a first year teacher at St Francis that I had once. He had taught at community college before, but it was his first time teaching high school. And he didn't seem to struggle the way I did. It wasn't chaos in his classroom. So despite my total lack of experience of what's normal, I can kind of deduce from what little I know that even a bad teacher shouldn't have the discipline problems that I had. A large part of it is a difficult student population. It's kind of nice to know it's not just me.