I was notified that a second blog post from this thing is going up on Edwize and into the New York Teacher. It's the stuff I wrote on Flunking Students. After rereading the post I realized it's actually pretty tame, and I could have gone on a much larger rant regarding how I oftentimes feel about the students I have who flunk my class and why they flunk my class. I said at the end of the article "the students who tried really hard did well in my class while those who did not failed," but there were also a lot of students in the middle with grades swimming around arbitrarily and a lot on the cusp who I've passed that I wouldn't have in a thousand years before I came to the city.
I might have to amend the last bit of that statement as well, as it seems imply that if a student did not try very hard in my class they did not pass. That's not true. There were plenty that put forth very little and somehow still passed my class. I believe it's that way in a lot of places, however.
Anyway, while it's not the New York Times, I'm certainly going to take the publication. On Edwize.org they renamed the piece "Making the Grade". I guess "Flunk Them All?" didn't sound as much like a positive teacher trying to help students. There are certainly days when I want to hand out F's like Halloween candy, though.
Today's Wine: A house Cabernet we got with some really good Chinese food at a place called Ging on the Upper East Side.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
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I always found that those kids who really, really tried passed my classes. This is not always true once they start college. Sometimes, students work as hard as they can but still fail. Lessons in life are not always easy.
ReplyDeleteIt's seems as though it keeps coming back to the issue of motivation. If we can get our students to really dedicate themselves to their studies they can certainly be successful. The question is how we can do that with our student population.
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