Today’s lesson is problem solving.
After 10 years of learned helplessness, these students need to figure out that hey cannot just count on a teacher to do their work for them but that they need to do the work with minimal yet strategic prompts. She gets a group together and immediately works out all of the problems for them while explaining how she’s doing it. :smack: No real way to tell her during the lesson to stop doing the classwork. Now I’ve got to tell her that that does not fit with what I’m trying to accomplish and have to discuss pedagogy. Fortunately I had planned to explain the method to the madness to the class at the end of the period so maybe she’ll get it.
I also gotta prepare for all of the excuses she’ll make for her sped students. I worked in special ed and have a credential AND a master’s in sped (she does not have a grad degree) but she is just like so many other teachers that do the student’s work and assumes that since the student doesn’t fall asleep that the student accomplished something. I swear she has been talking for a hour straight and I think I’ve heard a student talk only once.
Oh, boy. Does this remind me of my inclusion classes. It got to the point where the coteacher would take them out of the room so they could work in a “small group.” I knew exactly what was going on, but the parents were happy with the grades the kids were getting (the administration allowed the sped teacher to give the grades), and the administration didn’t want to get involved with the problem.
The sad thing was this person wanted my keys (I didn’t use the text all that much for homework) because this person couldn’t work out the problems (junior high math).
It was only that coteacher I had this kind of problem with; the others were great.
Lord, she sounds like the teacher I had for Year Two of French at the Official School of Languages.
First day, she drops on us a test which was testing us for the things we were supposed to be learning that year, despite knowing that none of us had previous learning of French other than, well, Year One at the School. Think being quizzed on integrals before anybody has even taught you how to draw that long S.
And for the few days I stayed before merrily signing off (which I could do thanks to a change in my work hours: a sign-off freed my spot for another student, unlike a drop-out), she would drone on and on for fifteen minutes, then chirp at one of us to read Exercise One of the homework, another one to read Exercise Two, and that was the whole extent of student participation. I was soooooo glad to get that change in work hours…
Teacher-talk was drilled out of me during my training, one of the things I found hardest to get right. I remember “teaching” one of my first lessons where I talked for almost 45 minutes. I look back and cringe at that, but then I realise that that was only one month into training and don’t feel so bad. If I did it now, as an NQT (albeit currently looking for a post) I would be ashamed.
I had an accounting teacher like that. He assigned homework and tested us on concepts, and THEN he taught the concept after returning our test scores. I dropped that class, and said that I could read the book on my own, thankyouverymuch, and learn about as much from it, without paying the course fee to drop my GPA. I was careful to pick another accounting teacher.