Hi M. I was thinking more of what you'd said earlier about the rambunctious class versus the attentive class.
From reading your post it occurred to me that you might have expected more and therefor put more into the latter than the former. From that I was extrapolating, wondering if personality types factored into teacher effectiveness and if that could reveal itself on a careful review of changing performances on standardized testing.
And I confess that I was projecting. In high school I wasn't one of the kids chosen for the SAT prep that some of our teachers did on a voluntary basis even though I outscored their brainiacs on a regular basis on standardized testing...and, as it turned out, on the SATs.
I honestly believe that if I had been a teacher I'd have been less impressed by the spongelike, unquestioning and step by step minds of some of my classmates and more impressed by the bored, class disruptive, challenging students.
There was another guy in my classes who was even worse than I was but who also scored highly on standardized testing. We got into a lot of trouble together. One time, as sophomores, we were talking in class and our tough guy, wrestling coach teacher said, "If you want to talk, go outside and talk." We said, "OK," and left. We argued that he'd given us permission but he wouldn't let us back in without a note from the principal.
My fellow student had an immigrant, Italian mom, an American Indian dad and he used "ain't" a lot. After high school he went into a trade, had an alcohol problem, gave up drinking, went to law school and became an attorney at almost 40 years of age.
No teacher ever encouraged him. I don't think they could see past the rough, too rowdy exterior and see the potential. I was less rough and my immigrant mother and dad were a little more mainstream so I didn't have the self image hurdles that he had to jump but I've always thought that a great teacher would listen with his or her head and heart to every student and try to find an avenue to success for each of them.
I've done that with my kid's friends...listened to their minds work, heard their likes and dislikes and found some talent to encourage in them. But I don't have 120 kids every semester to listen to.
Still, who knows how many kids I've screwed up. g. Ed |
