Dec 16, 2023·edited Dec 16, 2023Liked by Duncan Sabien
> I even had students attempt to buy additional questions off me by volunteering to sit out at recess—I’ll let you draw your own conclusions as to my likely response.
My model of you rejects, possibly explaining that there's nothing in it for you for the kid to be sitting out at recess. And if the offer was phrased as a question - "can I buy?" rather than "I'd like to buy" - then it counts as their question.
> If, in the process of responding to a challenge, a student finds a cheap way to win, the antagonistic teacher doesn’t cheat her out of her victory.
In the first image, I take it that you're pointing here at the answer as being totally legit, and [what I take to be] the teacher's "really?" is something you'd consider harmful?
> Openly manipulative
Vague memory from scounts (I would have been 13ish): we were in two teams at one end of the hall, tables at the other end, with stacks of doormats. We had to get a tennis ball under our table without touching the floor. Straightforward enough. (My guess is it was somehow more complicated than this.)
Then the mats were taken away. "Okay, now get the balls under the table." I thought to lasso the table and pull it towards us, while the other team tried to make a long stick to push it. It came pretty close to a draw, because lassoing turned out to be harder than I expected; and also because after our first success, one of the scoutmasters took it off saying that was cheating or something, and then another scoutmaster said "nah it's fine" but no one put it back for us. I don't remember if we asked, and I think I'm not a fan of this detail in hindsight.
And at the end, they pointed out that they hadn't said "no touching the floor" for this one, and we could have just walked across the room.
Another occasion where we had to pass a small beanbag between us. Easy. "Now do it without touching it with your hands." Fine. "No elbows." "No chins." "No mouths." Eventually they pointed out a solution we'd missed: drop it into a bucket and pass that around.
I let them buy the question once, assuming they would later decide that the rate of exchange wasn't favorable (and this was borne out).
Yes, I consider the "really?" to be harmful; the teacher is sneering at a totally valid answer just because the student didn't pick up on, or chose to ignore, an implication which is the teacher's job to make sufficiently strong.
Do you have examples of "children left behind"? If so, did you notice patterns? If so, do you have ideas for a different environment which a different person could implement well which would help them thrive (while leaving behind others, presumably)? Do you know anyone personally who you predict would not have thrived, as a child, in your environment?
The main thing that caused a kid to be incompatible with my teaching style was something like an inability to buckle down.
This doesn't mean, like, ADHD kids, exactly. I actually had a reasonably ADHD friendly classroom given that we were up a lot, doing a wide variety of things, not a lot of long-term busywork.
But something like, a kid who would not in fact settle into the system that we were all stuck in? I made my bid of "since you've decided to be here rather than skipping school, you might as well participate" and some kids were like "nah, I'm just going to be some combination of resentful or disaffected or frenetic." Sarcastic, bitter, disruptive, angry. A sort of fails-the-marshmallow-test kind of thing (and yes, I know that sometimes failing the marshmallow test is actually a correct and rational response to your environment).
There weren't any obvious-to-me demographic patterns, e.g. it wasn't clearly poor kids or brown kids or kids with low IQ/G. Or at least, for any given category like that, I can think of more examples of people who did just fine than people who didn't.
I think the key thing which would have helped most of those kids is a non-coercive environment in which they weren't trapped. Like, unfortunately, that was the game we were all playing, but some people had less of an ability to overcome their allergic reaction to it?
But an environment where you don't have to go where you're told and do what you're told would've obviously been happier and healthier for them. They were kids who did not belong in formalized school, and I don't mean that as an insult; they could've been genuinely happy and productive doing sports or carpentry or independent intellectual studies on the stuff they were ACTUALLY interested in.
I don't know, as an adult, any people that I predict would not have thrived in my classroom. I know some people who would've had some bumps and bruises along the way, and I know some people where I anticipate trust and mutual respect would've taken months to form rather than days or weeks. But the type of student that I didn't vibe well with is the type of PERSON I don't vibe well with, and so there just aren't many that I've self-assorted into being around a lot.
> I even had students attempt to buy additional questions off me by volunteering to sit out at recess—I’ll let you draw your own conclusions as to my likely response.
My model of you rejects, possibly explaining that there's nothing in it for you for the kid to be sitting out at recess. And if the offer was phrased as a question - "can I buy?" rather than "I'd like to buy" - then it counts as their question.
> If, in the process of responding to a challenge, a student finds a cheap way to win, the antagonistic teacher doesn’t cheat her out of her victory.
In the first image, I take it that you're pointing here at the answer as being totally legit, and [what I take to be] the teacher's "really?" is something you'd consider harmful?
> Openly manipulative
Vague memory from scounts (I would have been 13ish): we were in two teams at one end of the hall, tables at the other end, with stacks of doormats. We had to get a tennis ball under our table without touching the floor. Straightforward enough. (My guess is it was somehow more complicated than this.)
Then the mats were taken away. "Okay, now get the balls under the table." I thought to lasso the table and pull it towards us, while the other team tried to make a long stick to push it. It came pretty close to a draw, because lassoing turned out to be harder than I expected; and also because after our first success, one of the scoutmasters took it off saying that was cheating or something, and then another scoutmaster said "nah it's fine" but no one put it back for us. I don't remember if we asked, and I think I'm not a fan of this detail in hindsight.
And at the end, they pointed out that they hadn't said "no touching the floor" for this one, and we could have just walked across the room.
Another occasion where we had to pass a small beanbag between us. Easy. "Now do it without touching it with your hands." Fine. "No elbows." "No chins." "No mouths." Eventually they pointed out a solution we'd missed: drop it into a bucket and pass that around.
I let them buy the question once, assuming they would later decide that the rate of exchange wasn't favorable (and this was borne out).
Yes, I consider the "really?" to be harmful; the teacher is sneering at a totally valid answer just because the student didn't pick up on, or chose to ignore, an implication which is the teacher's job to make sufficiently strong.
Do you have examples of "children left behind"? If so, did you notice patterns? If so, do you have ideas for a different environment which a different person could implement well which would help them thrive (while leaving behind others, presumably)? Do you know anyone personally who you predict would not have thrived, as a child, in your environment?
The main thing that caused a kid to be incompatible with my teaching style was something like an inability to buckle down.
This doesn't mean, like, ADHD kids, exactly. I actually had a reasonably ADHD friendly classroom given that we were up a lot, doing a wide variety of things, not a lot of long-term busywork.
But something like, a kid who would not in fact settle into the system that we were all stuck in? I made my bid of "since you've decided to be here rather than skipping school, you might as well participate" and some kids were like "nah, I'm just going to be some combination of resentful or disaffected or frenetic." Sarcastic, bitter, disruptive, angry. A sort of fails-the-marshmallow-test kind of thing (and yes, I know that sometimes failing the marshmallow test is actually a correct and rational response to your environment).
There weren't any obvious-to-me demographic patterns, e.g. it wasn't clearly poor kids or brown kids or kids with low IQ/G. Or at least, for any given category like that, I can think of more examples of people who did just fine than people who didn't.
I think the key thing which would have helped most of those kids is a non-coercive environment in which they weren't trapped. Like, unfortunately, that was the game we were all playing, but some people had less of an ability to overcome their allergic reaction to it?
But an environment where you don't have to go where you're told and do what you're told would've obviously been happier and healthier for them. They were kids who did not belong in formalized school, and I don't mean that as an insult; they could've been genuinely happy and productive doing sports or carpentry or independent intellectual studies on the stuff they were ACTUALLY interested in.
I don't know, as an adult, any people that I predict would not have thrived in my classroom. I know some people who would've had some bumps and bruises along the way, and I know some people where I anticipate trust and mutual respect would've taken months to form rather than days or weeks. But the type of student that I didn't vibe well with is the type of PERSON I don't vibe well with, and so there just aren't many that I've self-assorted into being around a lot.