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Teaching Diary: A Win and an Observation
Feb. 18th, 2023 09:30 pmSchool barrels on to the inevitable conclusion of the 2022-2023 school year. We have about five weeks to go until Spring Break, and then a break-neck six-ish weeks from there until the end of the year. I have said it before — while I wish we had a fall break in October and three weeks off instead of two at Christmas like I had at my last job, I love the pay-off of getting done with the school year by June 1st.
This week I had something of a win as I learned something about how I react to students. Here’s some back story. I have a generalized anxiety disorder, but the more I read about ADHD, I wonder if I don’t also have that as well. At this point, I definitely should go back to the doctor and see about medication for the anxiety because doing something like going to get a new SIM card will render me useless for the day leading up to the trip to the store and leave me shaking when it’s over. Not great, but also eh, who has the time? But I also have an extremely hard time focusing in chaotic environments, and I have just chalked that up to anxiety. And you know what is an extremely chaotic environment? Yup, a classroom. Students constantly interrupt me, either to ask for help or ask to go to the bathroom or just talk to me about random shit. Sometimes I distract myself with an oooh, shiny! thought. Sometimes I am overwhelmed with the amount of work I need to do, so my patience is already a bit thin. As a result, I have a tendency to get a bit snappish at external disruptions — like my students.
My dad and my grandpa were both basically deaf, and their responses to disruptions, like, say, me trying to talk to them, was often to shout at me that they couldn’t understand me and why couldn’t I just speak up/speak more clearly/slow down/etc? I learnt to just not talk to them. I also learnt to be a bit snappish because I modeled their behavior, especially my dad’s. Now, I never want my students to feel like they can’t talk to me or ask me for help. Helping them is literally my job. So I have worked hard to temper my snappish reactions. I’m not always successful. After all, I’m only human.
But this week, a student came up to ask me a question. He did the thing where he talked fast, mumbled, started speaking before he was even at my desk, and had a mask on — all things that made it really difficult for me to understand him, even if I had been paying attention just to him. But instead of snapping, I said this: I wasn’t prepared for you to speak, so I didn’t catch anything you just said. Can you speak again? The student repeated his question, and all was well.
Looking back, this is a great way to respond to a kiddo in a situation like this. It doesn’t put any burden of my frustration on him, especially because the situation was one in which he could reasonably expect to be able to ask questions (free working time). I didn’t get grumpy with his actions, and he got the answer he needed. I’m writing about it because I want to remember this reaction for future interruptions. I won’t always get it right, but I have another tool in my teaching arsenal.
The observation I had this week comes from reading a composition written by one of my middle school students. This kiddo. THIS KIDDO! I love this kiddo, and he breaks my heart. He is fifteen and in my sixth grade English class. In addition to having the barrier of learning English as a second language, this kiddo also has some clear learning disabilities which are not being properly addressed because there is a huge taboo about any sort of special ed needs. Regardless, Kiddo is such a hard worker. He works diligently on his assignments and very much as a “I’ll do it myself” attitude. Not that he never asks questions — he does! — but he also really wants to solve problems himself. One of the ways he does this is that he really works hard to use his English vocabulary and not rely on Google translate to look up words.
It is this trait that brings me to my observation. Kiddo was writing a creative descriptive composition about an exotic pet. In his composition, he wrote about a crocodile that he found. He kept writing about a capcher, and it took me a few minutes to realize that he was trying to write capture, because he wanted to say the crocodile was caught in a trap. But he couldn’t come up with the noun trap so he kind of circled in with the verb, which he also couldn’t spell. But I can so clearly see his thinking through this word capcher. I don’t often get to see the mechanics of thought in this way because as kids get older, the background processing runs more smoothly and they mostly get to the words they want (or they’ve used translate or a dictionary). I see it a lot with my niece and nephew, who are three and five years old now, because they are still very new humans. I am grateful for the gift of this observation that my Kiddo’s composition has given me.
This week I had something of a win as I learned something about how I react to students. Here’s some back story. I have a generalized anxiety disorder, but the more I read about ADHD, I wonder if I don’t also have that as well. At this point, I definitely should go back to the doctor and see about medication for the anxiety because doing something like going to get a new SIM card will render me useless for the day leading up to the trip to the store and leave me shaking when it’s over. Not great, but also eh, who has the time? But I also have an extremely hard time focusing in chaotic environments, and I have just chalked that up to anxiety. And you know what is an extremely chaotic environment? Yup, a classroom. Students constantly interrupt me, either to ask for help or ask to go to the bathroom or just talk to me about random shit. Sometimes I distract myself with an oooh, shiny! thought. Sometimes I am overwhelmed with the amount of work I need to do, so my patience is already a bit thin. As a result, I have a tendency to get a bit snappish at external disruptions — like my students.
My dad and my grandpa were both basically deaf, and their responses to disruptions, like, say, me trying to talk to them, was often to shout at me that they couldn’t understand me and why couldn’t I just speak up/speak more clearly/slow down/etc? I learnt to just not talk to them. I also learnt to be a bit snappish because I modeled their behavior, especially my dad’s. Now, I never want my students to feel like they can’t talk to me or ask me for help. Helping them is literally my job. So I have worked hard to temper my snappish reactions. I’m not always successful. After all, I’m only human.
But this week, a student came up to ask me a question. He did the thing where he talked fast, mumbled, started speaking before he was even at my desk, and had a mask on — all things that made it really difficult for me to understand him, even if I had been paying attention just to him. But instead of snapping, I said this: I wasn’t prepared for you to speak, so I didn’t catch anything you just said. Can you speak again? The student repeated his question, and all was well.
Looking back, this is a great way to respond to a kiddo in a situation like this. It doesn’t put any burden of my frustration on him, especially because the situation was one in which he could reasonably expect to be able to ask questions (free working time). I didn’t get grumpy with his actions, and he got the answer he needed. I’m writing about it because I want to remember this reaction for future interruptions. I won’t always get it right, but I have another tool in my teaching arsenal.
The observation I had this week comes from reading a composition written by one of my middle school students. This kiddo. THIS KIDDO! I love this kiddo, and he breaks my heart. He is fifteen and in my sixth grade English class. In addition to having the barrier of learning English as a second language, this kiddo also has some clear learning disabilities which are not being properly addressed because there is a huge taboo about any sort of special ed needs. Regardless, Kiddo is such a hard worker. He works diligently on his assignments and very much as a “I’ll do it myself” attitude. Not that he never asks questions — he does! — but he also really wants to solve problems himself. One of the ways he does this is that he really works hard to use his English vocabulary and not rely on Google translate to look up words.
It is this trait that brings me to my observation. Kiddo was writing a creative descriptive composition about an exotic pet. In his composition, he wrote about a crocodile that he found. He kept writing about a capcher, and it took me a few minutes to realize that he was trying to write capture, because he wanted to say the crocodile was caught in a trap. But he couldn’t come up with the noun trap so he kind of circled in with the verb, which he also couldn’t spell. But I can so clearly see his thinking through this word capcher. I don’t often get to see the mechanics of thought in this way because as kids get older, the background processing runs more smoothly and they mostly get to the words they want (or they’ve used translate or a dictionary). I see it a lot with my niece and nephew, who are three and five years old now, because they are still very new humans. I am grateful for the gift of this observation that my Kiddo’s composition has given me.
