edit: also i overheard one of my students saying to another about some other students "they're so cringe, imagine wasting time during a lesson"
Edited by tears ()
swampman posted:I'm spending a lot of money to take my dog to the woods. Please pray for my dog's success at interacting with the woods.
人
tears posted:all this handwritten work and without fail i still think ctrl-z almost every time i make a mistake, followed by a whiplash moment counter-disassociation similar to panic, complete with mild vasoconstriction, as i snap back to reality. mistake anxiety is real and im sure computers have added to it
the part of my brain that uses the lasso tool in photoshop occasionally tingles when I am attempting to visually parse something; non-ideal brain design imo.
as i gain more and more experience i am more and more discarding powerpoint. fuck that shit. i hate it so much. yet its how everyone did it in training, and how everyone does it in schools these days. for those of you like me who had your school education a while ago you might be amazed to hear that many lessons these days are literal powerpoint presentations. to give an indication of this, a few weeks ago i wrote up some physics problems on the board for some children. they literally did not understand. they had never done a problem which was not worksheet, textbook or powerpoint slide. a child literally asked me "what's that for".
powerpoint is this curse that hangs over education. all the other teachers teach with powerpoint. i will not. (exceptions: displaying photo-montages and so on)
so what to do if there is no powerpoint? obviously it has to come from your head. many of my lessons include 1-2 slides with the mandatory title +LOs, and maybe some recall questions. but after that i just freehand it. i have found the key is to reinforce expectations by doing my snarky voice "hell, if im writing it down it must be important", "im not writing for my benefit", "if its on the board its in your books" - and working at pace. if you can get to the point where students are essentially doing what you are doing then you're there - if they're writing there is no time for disruption, because if they stop then they will fall behind. live-drawn diagrams which span the board narrated and labelled are worth a thousand shitty powerpoint slides
combine this with a) summary + question booklets so i have a pre-made bank of fuck tons of questions for them, and b) a digital visualiser, so i can shove finished work under it, because you know your gal tears spends her evenings filling her exercise books with model answers to every damn question she ever askes her students
had a year 7 say to me, "Miss, no one else writes on the board like you do."
im dead. chalk and talk until i die.
Edited by tears ()
now, i have been thinking and partially my growing love of the board comes from my love of control and authority, and my desire, out of the knowledge of my own expertise as a teacher and as a subject specialist, for everyone to be paying attention to me. to control the flow. ask yourself, when you are teaching with powerpoint who is the teacher: You? or your slides? What is the student's attention mainly focused on, you? or your slides? how does that effect students perceptions of you?
but its more than that - its my desire to show off, to demonstrate the work with a high level of mastery. and to work alongside the students. i am a firm believer that seeing a teacher working alongside students motivates a student to work
i attended two courses a couple of years ago. One on astrophysics, and one on elementary calculus. In the astrophysics course there was a lot of PowerPoint, a lot of text. I remember some things but I don't remember the teacher much. in the calculus series the teacher had nothing but a sheaf of notes and a white board. Everything was done live. i remember him a lot. i wanted to be like him, able to effortlessly differentiate in real time in front of an audience
by minimising powerpoint you should in theory maximise students attention towards yourself. When direct instruction is occurring, you position yourself as both the leader of, and the the main conduit of, education; rather than the powerpoint being the conduit, with you there to facilitate it. nOw that does powerpointers a bit of disservice because you can deliver great lessons with it. but i want my students to be focused on me, what i am saying, what i am doing, what i am drawing, what i am writing. I don't want challenges to my authority as a teacher, i don't want to be undermined by a machine
if i could only have 1 thing it would be boards, so many, on rollers:
nobody really talks about it directly, they talk about teacher presence, they talk about behaviour management, they talk about discipline, rules, student buy-in. but really its just the exercise of power - the ability to compel another to doing something, the ability to exercise your will over someone else. a teacher puts children to work after all, day in, day out. of course the work they do is rewarding, because its educational, valuable, and interesting, and i am a charismatic, self-confident, and knowledgeable teacher. but you are still wielding power over others. i'm quite willing to use that to ensure my students learn as much science as they can.
you can probably tell that i am trying to develop my understanding as i gain more experience, because after all, practice is higher than theoretical knowledge. the reason this aspect is so interesting to me is two fold 1) because it is talked about so little in schools at a theoretical level, unlike say pedagogical practice, or how students learn. can you imagine if i started talking about the "exercise of power" to my co-workers! and 2) because i have experienced the effects first hand of how the proper and considered use of power in all its forms - from coercive to charismatic - results in overall better lessons, calmer corridors and classrooms, safer environments, less bullying, better outcomes, better student-teacher relationships and better learning by my students.
my thoughts will continue to change with time, and they have up until now. if anyone disagrees or has questions please do ask/speak up :)
do you see this continual flux of your ideas as significant enough to preclude comfort with forming them up into a single front-page essay in the near future?
tears posted:if anyone disagrees or has questions please do ask/speak up
i have a question, from your posts you seem to be very committed to doing right by your students to the extent you can, but in what ways do you find that you are deeply limited by the education system itself? Either the curriculum, the administration, the kids' home lives that affect their abilities in the classroom? How do you deal with that?
Also if you're committed to weilding that power for a good purpose, do you think there would be situations where you might defend that against the interests of your students?
thanks, very much enjoy reading your thoughts
marknat posted:i have a question, from your posts you seem to be very committed to doing right by your students to the extent you can, but in what ways do you find that you are deeply limited by the education system itself? Either the curriculum, the administration, the kids' home lives that affect their abilities in the classroom? How do you deal with that?
oh of course, i am hampered by the system at every turn. at the macro level capitalism itself limits what i can do - similar perhaps to a public defender. this operates both in the students existing within the wage labour system, and in the realm of reification, in what is normalised about the capitalist education system which really really should not be. but what gets me most is that there is no spirit of education, no vision of a better future, no drive, no glorious future to work towards, no collective will to build socialism, no communist future on the horizon to inspire. literally no collectivity. the absolute bleakness of the future under capitalism permeates through education like a thick black oil sticking to the students, sucking out their youthful exuberance. i don't think it is possible to overestimate what damage this does. my charges are utterly lost in a world of shit and there is nothing positive i can point to and say "that's why we do this".
as far as the national curriculum goes, its not actually bad: issues arise in pre-packaged syllabuses with associated schemes of work which are basically the bane of encouraging teacher self-improvement. generally the syllabus is content heavy, but i am currently a "neo-traditionalist" with a rather dim view of poorly thought out "guide on the side" inquiry based learning. but, and its a big but, there is a lack of vision in how to actually teach the syllabus. i am fortunate that i am in a school with a hands off Head of Department so i have a lot of autonomy in how i plan and deliver lessons and even module schemes of work.
and then at the administrative level i am hampered by, in no particular order: crushing workloads of administrative tasks that i try to shirk but it is relentless, idiots who think they know best, lack of support over behaviour issues, lack of vision, low expectations, other teachers lack of confidence in their own power, other teachers lack of faith in their students, too many emails, too many check ups, too many drop ins, too few staff in general and understaffed on top of that, poor retention, too little money, too many hours.
as for the children's home life: barriers are everywhere, awful situations, domestic abuse, poverty, low aspirations, lack of parental faith, harassment by law enforcement, the drug trade and other lumpen activities in the area, homes with no books, language barriers, parents with low levels of education who can provide little academic support, overworked parents, parental illness, and children with caring responsibilities, overcrowding and lack of space to study, large increases in the price of food and heat, high levels of depression and anxiety leading to absenteeism and school refusal, general level of absenteeism due to low parental buy-in to education, truancy, and so on.
in short this system is absolutely fucked
marknat posted:Also if you're committed to weilding that power for a good purpose, do you think there would be situations where you might defend that against the interests of your students?
now thats a good question. well, if the red guards denounce me i will defend my methods, and the need for discipline in education.
Constantignoble posted:*raises hand*
do you see this continual flux of your ideas as significant enough to preclude comfort with forming them up into a single front-page essay in the near future?
perhaps
really appreciate your posts on this btw.
lo posted:what ttrpgs do rhizzoners play.
I'm running a Discord-based Mage the Ascension game and playing in a Discord-based Pathfinder 2 play-by-post. both set in the modern day, the first in 2000s san diego and the second in today's NYC but with a magical underground. Just completed a Thirsty Sword Lesbians game and we're talking about running Coyote & Crow
Edited by JohnBeige ()
here is a good lesson:
1. Start: lesson starts with students entering in (almost) silence - im not there with this class but i will get there. Strong routines don't make a lesson, but poor routines break lessons, even for "good classes". Play no favorites. do not let your students slack off.
2. Recap of previous lesson: under the visualiser is a hand drawn graph on graph paper. i drew it during break. it is a distance time graph. different parts of the graph are labelled with letters. next to the graph, also hand written are a list of questions about acceleration, constant velocity and so on. students students given time limit. question answers and label under visualiser. Ask for quick hands up who got X, Y etc to make sure majority are not completely mia. identify misconceptions and re-explain. Rational: students must recall prior knowledge in order to move to long term memory.
3. Resources: students to turn to page X of booklet: velocity time graphs. rationale: booklets are the damn best.
4. Lesson body: open my exercise book under the visualiser, with the title and date already written and underlined. "Student X, read# page Y of your booklet aloud." Student reads a few lines "Good. What are we learning today?" *pause* "Student Z?" We're going to write some notes now. I will write in my book and you will write in yours. rationale: A) I do, you do. B). seeing a teacher work their ass off motivates students C). me writing sets a reasonable pace with absolute control over that D). if students are writing they are not misbehaving. E) "Just fucking tell 'em" - seriously, fuck your progressive learning about making small children try and guess whats in my head, guess what the answer is. i will not! i will tell them what they need to know!. I will tell them explicitly - "this is what you need to know, this will be tested."
5. Questioning: Pepper with questions to gauge understanding rationale: check if they are following on with you.
6. Practice: Independent practice of what we went through using booklet questions. rationale: practice practice practice
7. Mark: students mark their own work rationale: pace, speed, workload, direct feedback. Either ask students for answers, or just read them out from your book where you have done the work. This depends on difficulty. Ask for hands up who got question X correct, Question Y. re-teach/model difficult questions during marking. rationale: instant feedback, experience success, check for understanding, re-teach
8. Next topic: calculating acceleration from velocity time graphs - repeat as above introduction - direct instruction - annotate graphs in booklet under visualiser.
9. Modelling: Model model model, who cares if you over-teach something, do worked examples and do more. write them exactly as you want them to lay them out in their books, make them write down each one, explain your reasoning, how you got each bit, write out your variables, write out your equation, show them enough times +1. rationale: A) Modelling works: do as I do. B) over-teaching a new concept is a lesser sin to underteaching a new concept. sure your brightest student might pick it up with one example but what are the rest of the class going to do once you set them working. fuck your differentiated worksheets.
10. Repeat steps 6 and 7.
* deal with behaviour issues instantly, issue swift corrections, explain actions quickly and link to impact on whole class. stick rigidly to a 1 warning 2 detention 3 on call system. keep track of these on a seating plan in front of you.
if they don't leave your lesson exhausted its not a good lesson. if students aren't putting their hands up to ask questions which build on what you have taught them its not a good lesson. This is when i truely realised it was a good lesson, i had multiple people put their hands up to ask advanced questions based on taking the content to the next level. thats when i know id done it. id taught a good lesson.
no worksheets, no powerpoint, no written lesson planning or wasting time making powerpoints, no pointless engagers, no videos, no scavenger hunts, no dumbing down, no guess whats in my head. everyone in rows working hard. tell 'em what they need to know. nothing is fun until it is easy, and nothing is easy without practice
Edited by tears ()
gay_swimmer posted:I gotta go back to school to become a teacher or something
and my axe
cars posted:Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition. Majority of next game’s players have posted on tHE r H i z z o n E.
Ufufu, we can talk about this later in discord but i will reveal to you now... ALL of next game's players of have posted on tHE rHizzonE. >:)
tears posted:i had multiple people put their hands up to ask advanced questions based on taking the content to the next level. thats when i know id done it. id taught a good lesson.
no worksheets, no powerpoint, no written lesson planning or wasting time making powerpoints, no pointless engagers, no videos, no scavenger hunts, no dumbing down, no guess whats in my head. everyone in rows working hard. tell 'em what they need to know. nothing is fun until it is easy, and nothing is easy without practice
You are doing really inspiring stuff out there. Keep up the great work. There's nothing like having a teacher who cares and tries their best, lotta kids never forget that.
This is literally you now. This passionate anime schoolteacher. It's you.
realsubtle posted:Ufufu, we can talk about this later in discord but i will reveal to you now... ALL of next game's players of have posted on tHE rHizzonE. >:)
0_0 omg…….
cars posted:just ate the last reese's peanut butter cup in the shape of a pumpkin. Nature is healing
two left & two days to go……
Source: She actually said that
lo posted:he would probably be a trotskyist if he was a marxist
i've got good news for him about the prerequisites
littlegreenpills posted:I've been undergoing various types of chemotherapy for just under a year now and I only just found out they don't have any fruit juice in the wards anymore. they got rid of it the juice at some point as a cost saving measure. what the fuck
I've been taking my dad to chemo sessions and the shit sounds boring as hell. Hope they at least reinstate juice soon friend.
littlegreenpills posted:they got rid of it the juice at some point as a cost saving measure
this is what is particularly wrong with the usa medical system
gay_swimmer posted:My mother-in-law was staying with us so out of respect and the desire to not have a tedious discussion about it, I removed the bust of Mao from the mantle above the fireplace and put it in my office.
could have just hidden it in the fridge