![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So I’m sitting here, marking student assignments. We’re practicing literary analysis with short stories. I’m asking them about things like suspense and characterization and conflict. Standard practice is to have students support their answers with details/quotes from the text. It’s very basic. We’re working in small chunks with various stories. If a student gets a question wrong or doesn’t provide adequate support, I’m asking them to go back and reconsider their work. To re-read the question. For example, we just read a story called “On a Mountain Trail,” about some men in a sled trying to get back to a town, but they are set upon by wolves. One question has the students consider the effect of describing wolves moving like sharks, and the “correct” answer talks about the fear created by the imagery. Several students instead chose an answer that simply talks about the imagery, so I’m leaving feedback about what it means to think about the effect and not just the image and asking them to review the questions. Several other students talk about the story in vague terms, so I’m asking them to go back and give me a direct quote from the story to demonstrate what they mean.
This is absolutely basic practice. It’s meant to be low key, not for a big grade. My school follows a Mastery Learning approach, which means if a student doesn’t adequately demonstrate a skill, they practice some more and try again. I really like it, but it also wars with how I learned to be a student (study, test, pass/fail, move on) and how I first learned to teach. So there’s some anxiety there, the stress of having a pacing calendar for units that must be balanced with the principles of Mastery Learning.
But tonight, it hit me that there is a particular thread to my anxiety that is different from the Time Crunch Anxiety. I feel very apologetic, asking these kiddos to try something again. I feel like I failed to properly communicate the skill and I feel worried that they will be disappointed in my failure and my imposition on their time. I worry that they will yell at me, so I would rather just move on, even though they haven’t yet shown they have mastery over this concept.
Holy coping mechanisms, Batman!
This skill I developed to avoid conflict and punishment from my parents and my teachers has transferred into how I teach. I suppose I could be glad that I didn’t turn into the teachers/parents who yelled at mistakes rather than provided more opportunities to practice and learn, but wow, this reveals a lot about why grading is so stressful for me. I pin the students’ performance to my value/abilities as a teacher AND I don’t want them to be mad at me for failing.
While I’m still stewing in the stress reaction at this moment, it feels really powerful to NAME this particular flavor of anxiety. Back when I was in therapy, my doctor and I worked out that being able to name the types of distorted thoughts was key in being able to change or discard those thoughts, so I’m kind of proud of myself.
Now, if only my body would learn to chill the fuck out. Those stress chemicals are not fun to work through, and unfortunately, I cannot simply will them back to normal levels.
This is absolutely basic practice. It’s meant to be low key, not for a big grade. My school follows a Mastery Learning approach, which means if a student doesn’t adequately demonstrate a skill, they practice some more and try again. I really like it, but it also wars with how I learned to be a student (study, test, pass/fail, move on) and how I first learned to teach. So there’s some anxiety there, the stress of having a pacing calendar for units that must be balanced with the principles of Mastery Learning.
But tonight, it hit me that there is a particular thread to my anxiety that is different from the Time Crunch Anxiety. I feel very apologetic, asking these kiddos to try something again. I feel like I failed to properly communicate the skill and I feel worried that they will be disappointed in my failure and my imposition on their time. I worry that they will yell at me, so I would rather just move on, even though they haven’t yet shown they have mastery over this concept.
Holy coping mechanisms, Batman!
This skill I developed to avoid conflict and punishment from my parents and my teachers has transferred into how I teach. I suppose I could be glad that I didn’t turn into the teachers/parents who yelled at mistakes rather than provided more opportunities to practice and learn, but wow, this reveals a lot about why grading is so stressful for me. I pin the students’ performance to my value/abilities as a teacher AND I don’t want them to be mad at me for failing.
While I’m still stewing in the stress reaction at this moment, it feels really powerful to NAME this particular flavor of anxiety. Back when I was in therapy, my doctor and I worked out that being able to name the types of distorted thoughts was key in being able to change or discard those thoughts, so I’m kind of proud of myself.
Now, if only my body would learn to chill the fuck out. Those stress chemicals are not fun to work through, and unfortunately, I cannot simply will them back to normal levels.
