Human . . . All Too Human
by danielagins
I made a mistake today. Not just any mistake, mind you. Today I made a character mistake. Those are the worst kind. I can handle a teaching mistake. I never pretend to be infallible and actually relish in the moments when a student corrects me on something. But character mistakes are unforgivable. I take my teacher-as-role-model status very seriously. I always try to model acceptable behavior both in and out of the classroom. Case in point, a few years ago my wife and I went on a vacation to St. Maarten . . . and so did a student and her family. We saw them several times, usually at dinner. I made sure that I was drinking soda every time. My wife laughed at me and called me paranoid. Maybe so, but I would not have it any other way. So when I mess up, it kills me. Today I messed up – but the funny thing is that I am torn with conflicting emotions about it.
It was last period of the day and I had my highly talkative, yet high achieving section. It is March and they are in 8th grade. We begin a week of state testing on Monday, and they begin their transition to the high school the week after. If the stars were ever aligned for off-task difficult to focus behavior, this is it. Yesterday I launched a lesson on propaganda, specifically focusing on WWI propaganda posters. It is a topic I love to explore with kids. It is actually one of my favorites as it combines abstract thinking with visual literacy and introduces a healthy dose of skepticism that can be applied throughout all media. Today I had hoped to get them started by explaining a few things that didn’t get uncovered yesterday, and then having groups explore a series of WWI posters to determine the propaganda techniques being used. Three cheers for some structured social negotiation of meaning!
It didn’t turn out as I intended, but it did turn out as I had hoped. Confused? Me too.
I could not get the kids focused to start the class. Side conversations about typical 8th grade topics were gushing from their mouths at full force. I am not one to yell, never have been. I can’t do it, even if I tried. My management style does not need that tool in my teacher utility belt. However, nothing worked today. Nothing. I could not get through the five minutes I needed to set them up before sending them on their way. I became visibly flustered. And then I stopped teaching. I walked out of the room. I felt as if I should not have done this. This was the mistake in character and I should have handled it differently. My classroom fell silent. Kids rushed to the door, peeking into the hallway. Audible murmurs of confusion could be heard. “Is he mad?” “What should we do?” “Is he coming back in?”
When I reentered the room a few moments later, a student had begun teaching the class. He was up at my laptop/projector, scrolling through the example posters I had lined up for them. It was initially meant as a joke, except I still wasn’t laughing. I sat at my desk and did some work. The student continued to teach. The rest of the class was engaging in on-topic conversation dealing with the techniques being used in the posters. I continued to do work. They continued to engage in meaningful and high quality discussion. I listened to them while I worked (by this point I was pretending to do work and listening to their conversation instead, just to see where it went). Here’s the thing that shook me . . . the absolutely killed it. They were on fire. They were coming up with the things I felt that I had needed to explain to them all on their own. They were being respectful to one another by letting the quiet kids speak and engaging in meaningful dialogue. Even the side conversations were on topic. I continued to sit and do busy work until the bell rang. They continued to have the conversation I had hoped for, but I struggled to come to terms with the fact that it was not done as I had intended. I wonder how much of their actions were based on my reaction? Then I wonder if that ultimately matters. In the end, they took away what I had hoped for. How much of what I am feeling is simply crushed ego that they didn’t need me to do it?
A moment to treasure!
Thanks for taking the trouble to write this up for us all. If only we could capture the essence of that ‘lesson’ and bottle it up for further use.
It was obviously due to your previous groundwork that the class was able to continue as they did. Perhaps we should all plan for the unexpected?
Thanks for the post,
I think the impact your actions had were because they were unexpected and different. I would struggle too, as a pupil, to march round a school for 5 successive hour-long lessons each day, knowing exactly what was going to happen in each one. This is what the average day looks like. At school I did struggle with this uniformity, making me a disruptive pest that made my teachers’ lives difficult, just for fun.
I wonder if a teacher might even, with some practice, engineer these moments… pre-plan the points at which you expect they might be able to manage on their own, and then take away the scaffolding in a disruptive and unexpected way. It might be unexpected to them, but it’s written in your plan. This kind of ‘game engineering’ nods towards the ‘rabbit hole’ temptation found in Alternate Reality Games – i.e. something to prod them out of their comfort zone and tease their curiosity.
This sort of risk-taking is what pupils remember. They might even attach some curriculum ‘learning’ to an event in their memory. It might not work every time, but they’d sure be talking about the lesson for a long time afterwards.
OH boy! Those days are the worst and the best all rolled into one. I think walking out is much better than screaming and yelling in anger and frustration. And they did need you to cull the resources and provide the discussion points/topic before they could have the dialogue on their own. What a great opportunity to talk to them about your reaction as well as to praise them for their initiative. Some great teaching moments for everyone here, Dan!
Mr. Agins, I’m sorry that we acted that way. You may see it as a character mistake, but I and most of the class see it as a 100% percent behavioral mistake. We are all very sorry for the way we acted. We were completely out of hand. We pursued with the lesson because we were very sorry for what we had done, and we didn’t want the day to go to waste. Lets put this behind us. Hopefully this will be something that we learn from so something like this never happens again. “History, is who we are, and why we are, the way we are.” Hopefully this even in history will change the way all of us are for the better.
Thanks Seth. I appreciate you reading the post – although you didn’t have to. As far as I am concerned it is in the past and we have moved on. As I said in the post, my feelings of frustration were quickly put aside by the ability of the class to carry on and run the lesson without me. You guys did a great job promoting conversation and listening to one another.
[...] Pretending To Be . . . "We Are What We Pretend To Be . . ." Kurt Vonnegut « Human . . . All Too Human [...]