I'm the teacher that hates to fail students

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Ok before everyone dogpiles me about the OP, let me clarify: I’m a student teacher. And I teach kids how to play the piano. :cool:

Last week, the master teacher told me that I would be entrusted to judge the Level 1 MTAC competition for my own students. The ‘competition’ is really a battery of musical ‘tests’, testing the pupil’s knowlege of music theory, ear training, dexterity, and memory skills. They are required to play a couple of solo pieces by memory, and also play a series of scales and chords. If they pass, they get an award, and if they participate in MTAC for X number of years, it helps them get into music conservatories/functions as a musical credential.

I was told to judge my students’ portion of the scales and chords section. No problem, I thought. After all, I’m in the MTAC program myself (I got the piano teaching gig by knowing the right people, but I know that I won’t always be able to teach piano by reputation alone, so I figured it would be useful if I decided to teach piano elsewhere/on my own. ). Now it is easy enough for me to know when a child has made a mistake- do enough scales and you can practically hear yourself playing them when you are dozing off to sleep. But judging them?

This is where it got difficult. Not in a “This test is difficult” kind of way, but more of a “I have to say something that will make you sad” kind of way I guess :frowning: Some of my students have been with me the entire year I’ve worked as a teacher. Two of the students are also members at the tutoring center I work at; they see me ALL WEEK when you put both jobs together. I was concerned that I might go too easy on the students- maybe overlook a minor mistake, maybe just make sure they got the fingering right and finished before the 4 minute time limit ran out. So I decided that if they messed up to the point of having to repeat part of a scale, they didn’t pass. The longtime student who I see all week at both jobs really struggled, and I was pained to break it to him that he needs to spend more time on it, and to work on it this week so we can try again next week.

The look on his face nearly killed me. :frowning: He looked incredibly disappointed. Mind you, he’s not one of those perfectionist kids that goes into hysterics over one ‘B+’, he’s just a quiet, shy boy who smiles a lot and talks to few people beyond his sister (who is another student of mine) and me. I’ve been really positive and encouraging with him regarding helping him practice his scales, and I kind of built him up. But at the same time, I know I can’t pass him merely because I feel guilty about letting him down.

I am still at a point in teaching piano where I worry a bit about how much of my inexperience holds my students back. Quite honestly the job is a learning experience, and the only way to get better is to keep doing it as long as I can, in addition to taking lessons myself and staying in practice. But I was a little embarassed to tell my teacher that 8 out of my 9 students didn’t pass the scales portion this week. :frowning:

2

I think all teachers hate to fail students. OK, maybe not that asshole who taught World History at my high school, but every other single teacher. (Broad enough paintbrush for ya?)

You did the right thing. It’s going to do him no good to get an easy pass he doesn’t deserve from you, only to go further in training and have some other, not-so-nice teacher, flay into him about his sucky chording. And aren’t chords one of those “foundational” sorts of things? He really can’t become a good pianist without practicing them, right?

What you’re struggling to learn is what all early teachers struggle with, and that’s the balance between encouragement and discipline. Not discipline in the detentions kind of way, but in instilling a work ethic and telling them straight up when they’re not working hard enough. It’s tough, especially with the shy, nice ones, because you want to give them some confidence, but you also shouldn’t lie to them.

This may be a tangential rant, but I think one of the things that started going wrong with education about 20 years ago was the emphasis on self-esteem. Yes, self-esteem is important. You don’t want to be an asshole and leave the kid scarred and hating piano. But self-esteem is only valuable if it’s based in reality. If the kid has an over-inflated sense of self-esteem because you praise shit work, it’s not real. And sooner or later, someone’s going to tell it to him like it is, and he’ll be more hurt. Or, more likely, he knows how it really is, and telling him he’s doing well when he knows he isn’t just undermines your relationship and builds self-doubt.

Excellent teaching means finding that balance between encouragement and cracking the whip. You may not be an excellent teacher yet - but no one starts out that way. You did right and good. Which means you’re a good teacher. If you ever move to Chicago, you have at least one Doper who’d love to become a student. (And not just 'cause of that picture thread, either! :wink: )

3

Thanks, WhyNot. I really enjoy my job. Honestly this is the toughest thing I’ve had to do so far. But it is so rewarding…I only wish I could teach piano full-time for a living :slight_smile:

I think the fun thing about my job is that I get to teach kids how to read and play music. Being the newbie student teacher among the other 3, I always got “The students that nobody wanted” because the other student teachers were so well established they could be picky about their kids, always getting the reliable kids and the prodigies, and leaving me the rest. But now I see it as only helping me get even better at doing this- by working with the ‘problem kids’, the kids that have a hard time sitting still for longer than 5 seconds, the quiet kids that barely say 3 words all day, and the 5 year olds who need to sit on a telephone book (or two) to help reach the keyboard :slight_smile:

4

My Mom was a teacher before she had kids. She said she once had a conference with a parent and he told her, “I don’t understand. You’re failing my son, and he still says you’re his favourite teacher!”

There’s a lesson there somewhere :slight_smile:

5

When I taught, I hated failing a student that was putting in some effort, but there were a few that didn’t bother me so much. This one comes to mind:

I was teaching a beginning course in computer programming (college level). One particular student (I’ll call him “Student”) had been doing marginally acceptable work throughout the course.

For the final project, I decided to have some fun. I did a couple of lectures on basic game theory, and told them to write a Tic-Tac-Toe program. It had to incorporate an algorithm for the game. They were not allowed to create a big table of preprogrammed moves and responses, and the game had to work no matter who started first.

With Tic-Tac-Toe, if both players understand the rules and nobody makes a mistake, every single game is a draw. I told them that the baseline requirement was a program that always made valid moves, didn’t allow the human opponent to make invalid moves, and recognized win/lose/draw situations. If they did that and wrote the program so that I couldn’t beat it, I’d guarantee them an A.

Here was Student’s chance to bring his grade up. Even with mediocre programming skills and poor documentation skills, if he really understood the theory and didn’t screw up, he could pull an A on the final project and pull his grade up to a solid C.

He turned in the assignment. It was incredible. Beautifully coded, with a bright, shiny user interface and options I hadn’t even asked for. The comments were clear and concise, and the algorithm was flawless. There’s no stinking way he wrote that program.

I fired up Alta Vista (my search engine of choice those days) and soon discovered an online programming primer that used Tic-Tac-Toe as an example. He had lifted the code from that primer intact, without changing a single comment line or variable name, except to remove the copyright notice.

I not only failed Student for the project, but failed him for the class and reported him to student services. He came to me, hat in hand, begging for another chance. I showed him the form he signed about plagiarism when he enrolled at the school and told him he blew it. That’s it. He’s the Dean’s problem now.

At the end of our discussion, I asked Student one final question: if he could find that program online to steal it, why on Earth did he think I wouldn’t be able to find it? He had no answer.

6

:smiley:

WhyNot, are you sure you’re not one of my former students?

7

Speaking as someone who works in quality assurance, I ask myself this whenever I see the amount of people who try it on each year. Especially now that we use, and massively advertise the fact, plagiarism detection software. The only conclusion I can come to is that they really don’t think anyone will check.