“So what’s the deal with you and flying anyway?”
“I don’t know what you mean?”
“Why don’t you like flying? Did you have a traumatic experience when you were a child or something?”
“No” I said taking a sip of my bloody mary “I just don’t like it.”
“When I was a child” he began and finished by sharing a story of his own traumatic experience on a plane when he was seven years old. “That is why, to this day, just before landing I get that little rush of something that leaves me momentarily uneasy. Then when the plane sets down, I feel a rush of relief that leaves me feeling exhilarated.”
“Yeah, see, no, I don’t get that. I just don’t like it.”
From The Explosive Child:
The first is that somewhere along the line, noncompliant children have learned that their tantrums, explosions, swearing, screaming, and destructiveness bring them attention or help them get their way by coercing (or convincing) their parents to “give in.” This belief often gives rise to the notion that explosions are planned, intentional, purposeful, and under the child’s conscious control… a corollary to the belief that such behavior is learned is that the child has been poorly taught or disciplined… Finally if you believe [that] then it follows that it can be unlearned with better and more convincing teaching and discipline.
Finally…
“You’re too easy on them” said the student.
“What?”
“Letting them turn it in a day late, you’re too easy on them.”
I thought about this for a minute. Someone, a fellow classmate of mine once taught me “better a little information on time than all the information too late” something I think he learned in the army. It made sense then, and I have followed that rule through most of my life, but starring out at these students I suddenly wasn’t sure. “I want them to do the assignment. I want them to learn. Failing them now doesn’t accomplish that goal. No one benefits if I am completely inflexible.” He shrugged his shoulders. I knew what he was thinking. Where is that line? What lesson am I here to teach? Do I whip and beat them to type a paper only to have them graduate hating art but able to turn in assignments on time for the rest of their lives?
I am lecturing now, but my mind is on automatic pilot. “The Paleolithic features numerous examples of several art mediums including…” What lessons did I have to learn to be successful? What lessons am I still learning? Would I have learned them faster if some professor had been harder on me one Tuesday afternoon in 1992?
I like to think I learn the lessons that I need in the order that I need them. This kind of thought is a safety net that allows me to accept the seeming randomness of the universe and to make order of all of life’s crazy experiences. My mind it seems keeps better track of these experiences than I do, allowing memories, bits and pieces of the past to float by on occasion and remind me that while yes I have many lessons to learn, they aren’t learned all at once, rather it takes time, it takes patience, and it takes an incredible amount of gentleness with myself if I am to get them at all.
3 comments:
What is your role as a teacher? To teach them to jump through hoops or to teach them when they want/need to learn?
Let them turn the paper in a day late.
No to sound too relativistic, but there is no right or wrong way to do it, right? Each student will get the lesson they need at the time that they need it/are ready for it regardless of your policy.
But since it's all just the same I say fail their lazy asses.
“I want them to do the assignment. I want them to learn. Failing them now doesn’t accomplish that goal. No one benefits if I am completely inflexible.”
*I* think, since no one asked me, ;o) that this is solid pedagogical wonderfulness. I mean, if one or two students don't do the assignment, well, they lost the kairotic moment. But if a classfull or half or a LOT didn't do the assignment, I usually question them and find it it's because the instructions weren't clear or they somehow didn't have the information they needed to complete it.
Faculty (especially the long-time adjunct/underpaid kind) often develop this weird us-them mentality, as if "they're" trying to "GET AWAY WITH" stuff. What they're trying to get away with is their education. If you're clear about your expectations in the first day of the class ("If you guys don't do the reading assignments, class will be boring and it will suck. How can I support you in making sure you get them done? What kinds of things will motivate you to get assignments done? Who is responsible for your education?" <—a sentence they all get heartily sick of hearing, by the end of the semester) then you've been clear and your work in being clear is done.
I don't know—really, I think I never commented on this one because I was afraid I'd get all Ira Shor and start shouting and lecturing. Which I have. I guess I'm just saying, yeah—students are presumably in school, spending time staring up at us and writing down what we say in notebooks they will discard eventually, some sooner rather than later, PRESUMABLY because that is how they want to spend their time. And thus they can be given some agency/assumption that they are in fact trying to learn something.
Maybe.
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