Lazy Kids
I know some hackles were raised by the comment on "lazy kids" during the student-teacher presentation. So what is your stance on the issue? Our education tends to focus on our role as teachers (naturally), but at some point individual agency (that is, the choices the students make) also needs to be taken into account. Personally, I believe that there are some students where the problem is not that they aren't challenged, or interested, or that they have serious issues - it's just that they honestly don't want to work. They want the route of least resistance, to avoid hard work, to have results now rather than wait for gratification, to have fun and focus on the social life (or computer games, or reading books, or whatever). I've known many students (occasionally myself!) who simply decided that some immediate gratification was of far greater importance to them in the short term than the results of hard work in the long term; a "make merry now, worry later" mentality. So how far do we go in trying to run after or motivate those students?
Personally, I don't think it's a bad thing to let consequences (mainly, a lower grade) befall these students after a few attempts at trying to get them on track. Especially at the later high school level, I think students need to be held accountable for decisions they make as they get ready to deal with living as adults. No first-year university prof or a superior on a job site is going to hold their hand and talk softly if they're late, skipping, or lazing around during the day - is it really fair to the student to let life after graduation be the first time they have consequences to their actions?
Again, there are difficulties, in that not everyone who is not handing in work or attending is simply avoiding work (as Alan pointed out in the seminar the other day), and it is difficult to assess who is who. But if someone refuses time and again to be in class, to hand in homework, to take advice on future choices, to receive assistance - how much energy should a teacher expend to help them?
I should point out, I am differentiating between those who try hard and still achieve lower results in assessment, and those who simply do not try to begin with...
posted by Mark at 10:29 PM
2 Comments:
You know Mark, I agree with you on this point. Sometimes I feel that we, as teachers, need to motivate students to be accountable for their own actions, and to face the consequences if they are not putting forth an effort. As Leanna pointed out, there are many different ways that these kids can put forth that expected effort, and as a teacher, we must determine what expecations we have for each individual student.
In addition, regardless of how friendly and approachable we make ourselves, or how cool we try to be, some students will either not give two hoots about the physics unit in Science 10 etc, etc. They may have no underlying concerns. These kids may just not be interested, and they are in our class because they have to be. Now, whether this is lazy or not, I don't know. What I do know, is that when I was in high school I was pretty darn lazy and I had a 'typical' or 'average' experience in each of my classes.
So then, as a teacher all we can try to do to get the kids to care is attempt to make the subject matter relevent and interesting through personality and unique teaching styles. For those kids that have underyling concerns, that are disrupting their education, all we can do is be sensitive to these things and be a person that they can trust if they need to confide in someone.
1:33 PM
I have to agree with both comments posted here. There is only so much that we can do to help certain students.. We may not be able to reach them. I know that no one was able to reach me when I was in high school. However, I don't believe that we can give up on a student so easily as it seemed that student teacher did. It was my impression (and I could be wrong, it has happened in the past)that he pegged certain students as lazy very early on and decided to focus on the students that were easy to motivate. My approach to teaching is more along the line of "those who are healthy do not need a physician." It is just as when we met with the three students, they were going to be successful no matter who was teaching them and whatever teaching strategies were being used. Its the students who are "ill" that need us the most and we do them a disservice to give up too quickly on them.
5:00 PM
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