Teachable Decade

Remember the man teaching the horse to eat less and less? Just before he has convinced the poor brute to eat only a few strands of hay each day, the emaciated animal dies. Similarly, I congratulated myself on eliminating questions. My classroom was quiet. Silence is golden.

Of course what I hadn’t eliminated was any imperfections in my students’ understanding of trigonometry. My anger had forced them to be quiet, not to comprehend. My impatience had forced them to favor cheating over love of subject matter. My sarcastic putdowns had engendered an atmosphere of fear not a classroom with mutual support.

As a more mature teacher I came to appreciate that if kids aren’t asking questions, it’s not because they know the material. If kids aren’t making mistakes, it’s because they’re disconnected and lost. If students aren’t asking dumb questions, it’s because they’ve given up. Just as pain in the body’s way of communicating that you might want to move your hand away from the fire, questions are a way of taking the intellectual temperature of a group of learners. Sin² x = 1 – cos² x just as surely as no questions equals no understanding.

If students already know how to graph y = 2 tan x then I’m unemployed. Seriously. What good am I blathering on in front of all those high school kids if they already know how to graph all the trig functions? I can be replaced by a curriculum on a computer. And maybe I deserve to be.

Students who don’t know trig means jobs for trig teachers.Children who don’t know that starting a science project at nine o’clock the night before it’s due when the stores are closed and no, we don’t just happen to have a two-foot by three-foot piece of poster board lying around, why do you ask? equals jobs for parents.

The typical response, “How many times do I have to tell you to write down your assignments in your calendar? Now I’m going to have to stay up half the night helping you with this stupid project. Don’t you ever listen to me?” is unlikely to engender honest communication subsequently. Nor is your child going to learn anything positive from the experience of being berated. Chances are she already feels overwhelmed with bad feelings about not having started on the project three weeks ago when it was assigned. She may need support; she may need help with her electronic calendar. She does not need to be berated and humiliated.

You might THINK your fantasy is living with a movie star in a mansion being waited on by smiling servants telling you that your polo pony is saddled. In reality you are much happier with the life you have. You THINK you want the child who has already done her homework and doesn’t need any guidance, advice, correction or occasional emotional interchange. In actuality, every mistake your child makes is an opportunity for you to gently instruct and share your values. In short, a chance to teach.

If your kids aren’t making mistakes, you’re unemployed. As a parent, you’re useless. And believe me, if your kids aren’t getting their values from you, they are most certainly absorbing standards and beliefs elsewhere.

Next time your kid messes up (chances are by the time you finish reading this paragraph) try to keep these two thoughts in mind:

1) Nobody ever learned anything by being yelled at.

2) Now is my chance to get in the game and do some good.

If I learned to refrain from going thermonuclear when a 16-year-old didn’t know her trigonometric identities, surely your can avoid going apoplectic when your kids need you the most.

I’ll stop writing now so you and your eighth grader can sit down and work calmly on organizing her assignment pad.