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Try talking to them. Try asking them questions about what they think about things and then challenging them to defend it. Above all, try listening to them. Trul

Try talking to them. Try asking them questions about what they think about things and then challenging them to defend it. Above all, try listening to them. Truly listening. Not call and response. Not 3-second wait time followed by “good job” or “well, not exactly.” Students today, like kids always, eagerly seek connections with people, not content. Establish that first and the rest will fall into place. (That’s the good news. The bad news is that our education system, from federal level on down to the individual school board, will readily jump in and agree, but then require metrics and other “measurables” to show that students are cranking out “learning outcomes.” So with the best will in the world, and genuine interest in our kids and their lives as a predicate to meaningful learning in an otherwise highly artificial classroom setting, you as a teacher are stuck banging your head against an immovable concrete wall that gets refreshed annually with million dollar consultant contracts for outsiders who spend two hours every two weeks in your school to tell you what you need to do to reach your students. And at some point, you just say fuck you to all of it.)

saulpw 2y ago
Your method works well as a tutor with a single student. Try doing that as a teacher with a classroom of 30+ students.
- dmvdoug 2y ago
  I have for the past four years averaging 180-200 students on my rosters.
  - sky2224 2y ago
    Which I'm assuming is in a university setting, yes? In which case, I would also assume that at least a majority of the students in your class actually want to be in school somewhat. Apply this to middle/high school students and you're going to get a lot of students being annoyed since they're being challenged, are feeling stupid, and don't know how to deal with that feeling of being stupid; especially given that many of them don't see the point in attending school since they feel like it isn't helping them. There will be some that will engage, but those aren't the students we're concerned about here.
    - itscrush 2y ago
      Wrong. Their profile clearly states high school teacher. Why assume?
      - sky2224 2y ago
        Because I don't check every user's profile before responding. I made an assumption based on class size. The person I was replying too stated 180-200 students. So the assumption was that they were meaning a lecture hall of 180-200 students, which is typical for a college course. That is not typical for a high school course, in which case, I'm going to go out on a limb again and say that it's 180-200 students over 5-6 ~30 student periods.
    - JadeNB 2y ago
      > Which I'm assuming is in a university setting, yes? In which case, I would also assume that at least a majority of the students in your class actually want to be in school somewhat. In the US, it is maybe not completely wrong that a majority of college students want to be in school, but it is definitely wrong that a majority of the students in a given typical teacher's typical course want to be in that class (possibly unless it is a major-only course).
      - sky2224 2y ago
        This is true, however, when you have students that want to be in school, I think they're more likely to put the effort necessary in since they can clearly see what the end goal is.
    - spwa4 2y ago
      > There will be some that will engage, but those aren't the students we're concerned about here. Any school teacher can tell you: a single kid that refuses to engage easily holds back an entire class. The only way to get really well educated kids is to separate kids that engage. But do that, and the parents won't stop screaming at you ...
      - 2y ago
  - saulpw 2y ago
    My apologies. But I don't know how you can genuinely listen to hundreds of students every day, much less engage them each individually. Glad you're out there doing your best anyway.
    - dmvdoug 2y ago
      Numbers vary, but we’re on a modified block schedule, so it’s 180ish every two days. ;) Anyway, thanks for the kind words. I’ve been pretty down about it recently because it seems like we’re just papering over deep structural and systemic problems, which just hurts our kids more than acknowledging the realities would.
      - prox 2y ago
        What is your view to get out of the deep structural and systemic problems?
        dmvdoug 2y ago
        Fully acknowledge and confront the fact that public education serves as essentially a catch-all social service agency for a significant chunk of our populace and stop pretending it’s just about knowledge-transfer. For kids who come from stable family backgrounds (of whatever composition—-stability and reliability are the keys), and a stable (not necessarily affluent or adjacent—-again, stability and reliability) socioeconomic environment, that model works. Kids routinely make it to high school without being able to read or do math at more than a third grade level, because at some point, we can say well, we can’t solve society’s problems, but we also can’t “penalize” these students by holding them back several years (gotta get ground up by the economic machine as soon as they’re 18), so… well, it’s above our pay-grade. I have seen some interesting work and individual charter schools that are like “full service schools.” The problem is, for every decent idea in a charter school, there are 25 charter schools that are pieces of shit. I need to go take a shower and get ready for work, so I’m going to stop ranting, but the basic solution is to recognize that one size does not fit all. The career tech-normie hs-gifted division we operate with is too broad-brushed. The school I’ve been at has a shit ton of profound mental health problems among students. Poverty is real but it’s not as grinding as our rival school down the street (the “super ghetto” school I was told), nor is life-threatening violence necessarily a daily companion for our kids as for theirs. Yet we are both Title I urban schools. It’s complicated, man.
- rtpg 2y ago
  My favorite class I ever took was middle school algebra. We had a teacher, problem sets, and were put into groups of 3 or 4 to work through the problem sets together. The teacher would give a bit of a spiel to intro the problems, but the problems themselves were very self-directed, things like "measure these triangles, square these numbers, do you notice anything?" then introing the pythagorean theorem. The teacher would float around and basically help groups that were more stuck on things than others. But students would help each other a lot, meaning the teacher is not spending their time on people who can ultimately help themselves. This is not a format that works for all students and all class types, but when it works it works so well, and it's extremely scalable.
  - currymj 2y ago
    it’s called a flipped classroom and students universally hate it.
    - rtpg 2y ago
      Maybe I was in the massive minority then. Though part of it was that the format let me just work on stuff "by myself" rather than sit through a bunch of explanations I didn't need. flipped classrooms seem to imply work ahead of time though? But here we'd show up hands in our pockets and start working on the material on site
      - aoanla 2y ago
        Yeah, this isn't flipped classroom (that's "students do reading before the session on the set topic, and then question the lecturer - hence flipping the direction of "control" in the session). This is active learning with small group work and peer learning - which students tend to actually quite like. (Flipped classroom works better the more engaged the students are in the topic - for electives, fine, for mandatory courses, less good.)
    - viraptor 2y ago
      Depends on a group and the available tutoring time. It can go well, but not in every environment. If most of your group is not interested in the first place, you're not getting anything out of it either.
- protocolture 2y ago
  [flagged]
- noosphr 2y ago
  >Try doing that as a teacher with a classroom of 30+ students. I believe that OP is saying that's exactly the problem.
  - gwd 2y ago
    What percentage of the population are in K-12 any given time -- 15%? 20%? To have 1-1 tuition for all of them, we'd have to have at least that many adults also in education.
    - logicchains 2y ago
      It'll be quite possible in a few years with robots; there won't be any more need for shoving 20-30 kids together in a classroom.
      - riezebos 2y ago
        One of the main points of the top level comments is that students seek connections with people, not content. We don't know yet whether they will seek connections with robots.
        dmvdoug 2y ago
        Yeah, they’ll figure out how to feed the robot whatever will get the robot to shut up, and then go do things teenagers do when they have no adult supervision. Great model lol.
      - dwighttk 2y ago
        So you go from 1:20 to 0:20?
    - noosphr 2y ago
      Depends on the country. In the US it's ~10% of the population. Completely doable, especially since the participation rate in the economy is still lower than at any point in the last 50 years (minus covid). If that seems to hard I guess we can increase class sizes by 100% and have 2 on 1 education.
- schnitzelstoat 2y ago
  You can do it as a parent though.
iainctduncan 2y ago
no, it's not that simple. My supervisor, with whom I'm taking a combined undergrad/grad course, does this. It's like he's talking to a fucking wall. I did uni 30 years ago too, I remember what it was like. The blame does not belong to the teachers. Big tech's ability to make virtual crack if fucking kids up big time.

saulpw 2y ago

Your method works well as a tutor with a single student. Try doing that as a teacher with a classroom of 30+ students.

dmvdoug 2y ago
I have for the past four years averaging 180-200 students on my rosters.
- sky2224 2y ago
  Which I'm assuming is in a university setting, yes? In which case, I would also assume that at least a majority of the students in your class actually want to be in school somewhat. Apply this to middle/high school students and you're going to get a lot of students being annoyed since they're being challenged, are feeling stupid, and don't know how to deal with that feeling of being stupid; especially given that many of them don't see the point in attending school since they feel like it isn't helping them. There will be some that will engage, but those aren't the students we're concerned about here.
  - itscrush 2y ago
    Wrong. Their profile clearly states high school teacher. Why assume?
    - sky2224 2y ago
      Because I don't check every user's profile before responding. I made an assumption based on class size. The person I was replying too stated 180-200 students. So the assumption was that they were meaning a lecture hall of 180-200 students, which is typical for a college course. That is not typical for a high school course, in which case, I'm going to go out on a limb again and say that it's 180-200 students over 5-6 ~30 student periods.
  - JadeNB 2y ago
    > Which I'm assuming is in a university setting, yes? In which case, I would also assume that at least a majority of the students in your class actually want to be in school somewhat. In the US, it is maybe not completely wrong that a majority of college students want to be in school, but it is definitely wrong that a majority of the students in a given typical teacher's typical course want to be in that class (possibly unless it is a major-only course).
    - sky2224 2y ago
      This is true, however, when you have students that want to be in school, I think they're more likely to put the effort necessary in since they can clearly see what the end goal is.
  - spwa4 2y ago
    > There will be some that will engage, but those aren't the students we're concerned about here. Any school teacher can tell you: a single kid that refuses to engage easily holds back an entire class. The only way to get really well educated kids is to separate kids that engage. But do that, and the parents won't stop screaming at you ...
    - 2y ago
- saulpw 2y ago
  My apologies. But I don't know how you can genuinely listen to hundreds of students every day, much less engage them each individually. Glad you're out there doing your best anyway.
  - dmvdoug 2y ago
    Numbers vary, but we’re on a modified block schedule, so it’s 180ish every two days. ;) Anyway, thanks for the kind words. I’ve been pretty down about it recently because it seems like we’re just papering over deep structural and systemic problems, which just hurts our kids more than acknowledging the realities would.
    - prox 2y ago
      What is your view to get out of the deep structural and systemic problems?
      - dmvdoug 2y ago
        Fully acknowledge and confront the fact that public education serves as essentially a catch-all social service agency for a significant chunk of our populace and stop pretending it’s just about knowledge-transfer. For kids who come from stable family backgrounds (of whatever composition—-stability and reliability are the keys), and a stable (not necessarily affluent or adjacent—-again, stability and reliability) socioeconomic environment, that model works. Kids routinely make it to high school without being able to read or do math at more than a third grade level, because at some point, we can say well, we can’t solve society’s problems, but we also can’t “penalize” these students by holding them back several years (gotta get ground up by the economic machine as soon as they’re 18), so… well, it’s above our pay-grade. I have seen some interesting work and individual charter schools that are like “full service schools.” The problem is, for every decent idea in a charter school, there are 25 charter schools that are pieces of shit. I need to go take a shower and get ready for work, so I’m going to stop ranting, but the basic solution is to recognize that one size does not fit all. The career tech-normie hs-gifted division we operate with is too broad-brushed. The school I’ve been at has a shit ton of profound mental health problems among students. Poverty is real but it’s not as grinding as our rival school down the street (the “super ghetto” school I was told), nor is life-threatening violence necessarily a daily companion for our kids as for theirs. Yet we are both Title I urban schools. It’s complicated, man.
rtpg 2y ago
My favorite class I ever took was middle school algebra. We had a teacher, problem sets, and were put into groups of 3 or 4 to work through the problem sets together. The teacher would give a bit of a spiel to intro the problems, but the problems themselves were very self-directed, things like "measure these triangles, square these numbers, do you notice anything?" then introing the pythagorean theorem. The teacher would float around and basically help groups that were more stuck on things than others. But students would help each other a lot, meaning the teacher is not spending their time on people who can ultimately help themselves. This is not a format that works for all students and all class types, but when it works it works so well, and it's extremely scalable.
- currymj 2y ago
  it’s called a flipped classroom and students universally hate it.
  - rtpg 2y ago
    Maybe I was in the massive minority then. Though part of it was that the format let me just work on stuff "by myself" rather than sit through a bunch of explanations I didn't need. flipped classrooms seem to imply work ahead of time though? But here we'd show up hands in our pockets and start working on the material on site
    - aoanla 2y ago
      Yeah, this isn't flipped classroom (that's "students do reading before the session on the set topic, and then question the lecturer - hence flipping the direction of "control" in the session). This is active learning with small group work and peer learning - which students tend to actually quite like. (Flipped classroom works better the more engaged the students are in the topic - for electives, fine, for mandatory courses, less good.)
  - viraptor 2y ago
    Depends on a group and the available tutoring time. It can go well, but not in every environment. If most of your group is not interested in the first place, you're not getting anything out of it either.
protocolture 2y ago
[flagged]
noosphr 2y ago
>Try doing that as a teacher with a classroom of 30+ students. I believe that OP is saying that's exactly the problem.
- gwd 2y ago
  What percentage of the population are in K-12 any given time -- 15%? 20%? To have 1-1 tuition for all of them, we'd have to have at least that many adults also in education.
  - logicchains 2y ago
    It'll be quite possible in a few years with robots; there won't be any more need for shoving 20-30 kids together in a classroom.
    - riezebos 2y ago
      One of the main points of the top level comments is that students seek connections with people, not content. We don't know yet whether they will seek connections with robots.
      - dmvdoug 2y ago
        Yeah, they’ll figure out how to feed the robot whatever will get the robot to shut up, and then go do things teenagers do when they have no adult supervision. Great model lol.
    - dwighttk 2y ago
      So you go from 1:20 to 0:20?
  - noosphr 2y ago
    Depends on the country. In the US it's ~10% of the population. Completely doable, especially since the participation rate in the economy is still lower than at any point in the last 50 years (minus covid). If that seems to hard I guess we can increase class sizes by 100% and have 2 on 1 education.
schnitzelstoat 2y ago
You can do it as a parent though.

iainctduncan 2y ago

no, it's not that simple. My supervisor, with whom I'm taking a combined undergrad/grad course, does this. It's like he's talking to a fucking wall. I did uni 30 years ago too, I remember what it was like. The blame does not belong to the teachers. Big tech's ability to make virtual crack if fucking kids up big time.