isourchildrenlearning

[isourchildrenlearning]

For the first time in my life, in my many years of education, I heard a student say something that will haunt me forever: “I thought I was good at maths, but I guess I’m not”.

For the sake of balance, here are some comments from staff. “He’s mentally at age 7.” “You can see this student has behavioural issues, so keep an eye on them.” “We just leave that one alone.”

“We are studying a movie. It is not meant to be fun.” “There’s nothing we can do to help him.” “He gets a lot of funding.”

“The students treat this as a write-off class so I don’t bother with them.”

I am not legally permitted to be in a room with students without a teacher present. We differ only by an expensive piece of paper that takes a year to acquire. I am not expected to have my advice heard by teachers. I am not permitted to say anything that is not directly what the teacher has already said. My job description is to endorse and be subservient to the system in place.

Today I explored Kamar. On it, I can see every students’ grades, photos, medical history, past behavioral issues, mental health issues, and how much funding each student receives. By that last part, I mean how much funding the school receives for each student they, for the most part, neglect. I think I understand what my job description is - what it actually is, and not what was advertised. I repeat instructions to the “easy kids”, I make notes of who is “troubled” and upload it onto the database, and I ignore the rest.

Today’s maths class was on the basics of probability. Over two thirds of the students were completely disengaged from the worksheet. They were playing Among Us. It’s a fun game and I understand its appeal over number crunching. A few students were trying to work on the assigned curriculum approved task - questions like “how likely is it a student plays football given they are a boy?” It was difficult to teach or learn over the loud discussions at the back of the class. “I saw them in the room, they’re probably the imposter,��� “I can’t be the imposter, I was in the control room,” “red, yellow, and purple (player colours) were in the room, it’s one of them!”

They’re already thinking about probability. They don’t realise they are doing mathematics, and they do not realise they could be playing the game better. 

English class focused on cinematography. Students were given worksheets on camera angles. Some students found this boring and were on their phones instead, watching TikToks and sending Snapchats. I saw some girls take high angle selfies as the teacher explained how those angles make the subject appear small, diminished, and vulnerable.

She doesn’t play by your rules, so she is denied an education. You don’t play by her rules, and you are denied an opportunity to change someone’s life.

I saw a student playing a game, building a ramp with a constant slope. He built each block as a sequence - first one, then three, then five, then seven. I heard him say he wants to build a rollercoaster that goes as fast as possible and immediately thought of the brachistochrone 

He did not attempt his maths test on linear equations and is falling behind. He barely focussed in science on the topic of forces. He panned the camera, zoomed out, and adjusted the weather to make the setting more dramatic while paying no notice to the teacher’s film studies lecture. 

I heard that the students with special needs prefer rote learning. The one under my supervision seemed bored and struggled with distribution (expanding brackets). Under his breath I heard him multiply 7 by 3 by first multiplying 7 by 2, and then adding 7. He understands distributivity. He does not yet have the tools to generalise his knowledge and apply it to different, more abstract situations. I have yet to read literature that establishes the effectiveness of rote learning in learning how to abstractify and apply past knowledge. The teacher agreed with my comments but “the kids prefer rote learning”. 

My job is to believe I am mistaken in viewing these students as oppositional and unteachable. My job is to participate in active non-consensual surveillance of underage people. My job is to divert them from their interests and passions.  My job is to force children to believe learning must be boring if it is to be valid. My job is to enforce a distinction between education and play.  My job is to endorse a lesson plan regardless of its effectiveness.

My job is to go against everything I believe in.

I have not felt such rage and hopelessness in a long time.

Absurd observation of the day: a poster promoting LGBT acceptance. Male and female silhouettes coloured yellow. Statistically, 18 students at this school are intersex and 10 are transgender. I remembered how some students advocated for more gender neutral bathrooms but were shut down by the board. 

[isourchildrenlearning]

Teacher (band)Aide

I had a role as a Teaching Assistant in the University of Auckland. One of the classes - Maths 153, was for high school students doing a first stage Mathematics paper. I remember the course instructor mentioning a lot of the students were “on the spectrum”. This was fine with me. I spent my high school and undergraduate life hanging out with autists, ADHD folk, queers, mentally ill and disabled people. These are categories I understand, because I belong to them. Spotting a neurodivergent student is relatively easy - whether they have a formal diagnosis or not, I know how to identify the symptoms and what can be done for assistance. This was greatly advantageous when tutoring. I see someone stimming or distracted, I sit down next to them and ask how they’re doing. After a quick chat, I assess what they understand, how they understand, and how I can elucidate whatever material is meant to be covered. I have worked with young children with dyslexia or ADHD. I know they typically like concrete examples, visual aids, and interactive learning. I know they love to explore their own interests and I often exploit this to trick them into learning the mandated curriculum. I know students are naturally curious and love learning and it only takes a little creativity and guidance for them to teach themselves and their peers. In my undergraduate degree I took a course on Philosophy for Children. The course was based on Learning by Inquiry and I was so happy to see a wealth of research was well underway on highly effective and engaging pedagogical techniques, specifically for children. I loved that this concept reflected the way that I both learned and taught. I loved finding out one of the leaders of Mathematics by Inquiry was a New Zealander, Bobby Hunter. I found her research and resources and integrated them into my practice. I ran an after-school Scholarship Calculus tutorial under little-to-no supervision using the skills I had developed and resources I collated and crafted myself. The students loved it. Any teacher should know how beautiful it is to hear a student say “I get it now!” or “it’s so easy, I can’t believe I struggled with this before”. Today I had four periods of shadowing and spent most of my time observing. To my dismay I saw a lot of extremely disengaged students. Most were obviously extremely bored, fidgety, restless. The ones identified with a learning disability were acting out in the stereotypical ways, the others just knew how to mask their disengagement. I felt foolish reinforcing the lesson plan, which itself was disabling student’s learning. I was witnessing a systemic creation of learning disabilities. I cannot in good faith endorse this when I know, from theory, practice, and collaboration, that there are much better ways to actually support the education of students. I heard a student make a nihilistic comment about his climate despair, and frustration with the problems of old being forced upon his generation. This was disheartening, but not nearly as much as his teacher’s dismissal. He continued to fidget and see how far his pen’s spring could be launched across the classroom. I know he would love the mechanics part of the syllabus, but I was not optimistic. In a physics class, one of the students was eager to not work on the simple force diagram; he wanted to explore boat motors and their systems of propulsion. It would be so easy for him to explore this in depth and learn about buoyancy, turbulence, pressure, and forces. I was instructed to make sure he had his laptop shut while he drew the simplified model, so I complied with stifling both him and myself. He would do well with independent guided research and would probably be more confident in presenting to the class if it was on something that interested him. I am once again reminded that school is about learning how to achieve qualifications, rather than learning how to learn. It is a depressing thought. I want to work on developing individual lesson plans for students with hyperfixations. I want to work on raising class engagement. Learning disabilities tend to arise much the same way a locomotive disability arises in a space without wheelchair ramps or elevators. I do not want to be a bandaid on a systemic disability. I cannot in good faith endorse the status quo.