A Science Guy’s
Almanac #29. Year 2. July 25, 2016
A Room with Tables:
Part 1 – Identifying the Need
When I
started teaching in 1973, the Grossmont Union High School District’s (GUHSD) science
graduation requirement was:
Driver’s Education and Health.
From
today’s perspective, that seems almost criminal. However, when you consider
that every true science class was an
elective, taken by students who
actually wanted to be there, it made
my early teaching experience very pleasant. Threatening a recalcitrant student
with “I’ll transfer you to health class,” was a most effective final discipline
step.
In the
mid-1980s, California passed a law requiring one year of life science and one
year of physical science for all students to graduate from high school.
Driver’s Education and Health became the electives and true science classes—Biology
and Chemistry or Earth/Physical Science—became the requirements. New science
teachers were an immediate need.
The in-district
pool for the necessary science teachers consisted of the teachers who’d been
teaching Driver’s Ed and Health. Since those classes were now electives,
enrollment dropped like a rock in both. At least 25 teachers were looking for
teaching assignments in the district. Most of them were PE majors, so the depth
of science knowledge was, well, shallow.
GUHSD provided
40 contact hours of training. Most of that training was done in classrooms at
Monte Vista. To their credit, many of the cross-trained individuals became
solid science teachers. One of them taught science at Monte Vista for nearly 20
years after he completed the training. He was even elected as the Science
Department Chair for a couple of terms.
We also
got to hire some new teachers. That was an experience. Two short asides.
- One interviewee was asked by our principal as the first question of the interview to, “tell us something about yourself that makes you the best qualified applicant for this position.” As he answered, the candidate reached into his oversized valise and pulled out one stack of documents after another until he had five piles in front of him. After straightening each pile, while continuing to talk, he pulled out a stapler. His answer droned on while he made and distributed a stapled set of the documents to each of us interviewers. After twenty minutes, the principal interrupted him, thanked him for his time, and dismissed him. He didn’t make the list of candidates for whom we checked references.
- The principal at Monte Vista during this time was a conservative man. We were almost always among the last two schools to post openings. This meant that we had shorter lists of candidates to interview than other schools. We hired Teacher X for an 80% assignment the week before school started one year. It was soon obvious that we’d made a mistake. By the end of the semester, the Assistant Principal had campus supervisors staked out in the office at the back of X’s room. They were tasked to determine which student(s) were drinking beer during X’s class and hiding the cans in the lab tables’ drawers. X was released at the semester, and we hired an outstanding young teacher who went on to do great things in her career at the middle school level.
Now back
to the blog . . .
Our most
animated new teacher was Mary. She was born and raised in New Jersey. Everyone
knew that by her speech and mannerisms within minutes of meeting her. She
described herself as a “Jewish mother type.” Short, round, and highly animated,
Mary’s class was almost always a show. To this day, I consider her to be one of
the best teachers of low-level, low-motivated students I’ve ever worked with.
She could guilt almost any student
into turning assignments in by her persistent— No, she just nagged
the kids. But they knew she cared, and most of them responded positively.
Unfortunately,
Mary had only two emotional states: calm and volcanic.
My room
shared a common door with Mary’s. At least once a day for the first several
weeks of school, my class and I would experience an eruption of Mount Mary. It got so bad that students
established a daily monetary pool as to the time of the first eruption of each
class.
Imagine
you have money in the pool and it was one minute until the time you’d paid for.
What would you be tempted to do?
Many
students did not resist that temptation. There was an ongoing competition to
set off the eruption as each pool time approached. By the sixth or seventh
week, Mary had a permanent eye twitch.
“Mary, What’s wrong with your eye?” I
remember asking one morning.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she assured me as
she tried unsuccessfully to hold her eyelid in position.
After some prodding, she admitted
that she was very stressed. I suggested that it might be because of her
periodic explosive reactions to situations in her room. She admitted that
sometimes the kids seemed to be intentionally trying to goad her. With some
reluctance, I explained to her about the daily pool. She was mortified.
Together we decided that she needed
to become a three-position switch: calm, agitated but controlled, and volcanic. By adding this middle ground, she could diffuse the
class situation before it got out of control. Her goal was to avoid the third
option entirely.
“However,” I added, “you might have
to sacrifice a student to get this to work.”
Her stunned look indicated I needed
to explain.
“On Monday, you need to pretend it’s
the first day of school all over again. This time, you will explain that you
have three levels of emotion; call them whatever you want. Be sure that
students understand that the second level—agitated but controlled from above—is
as far as you are willing to allow any situation to escalate before consequences
are applied.”
She nodded.
“The sacrifice of the kid,” I
continued, “will most likely be required the first or second day when some of
your chief adversaries want to test the new you. When they continue to goad you
after you reach your new intermediate stage, refer them to the assistant principal.
Request them to be suspended from your class for disrespectful behavior.”
Mary nodded but did not appear
convinced.
“Write up a referral form for each
class for what we just talked about. Leave the name blank. If, or more likely,
when you have to issue the referral, you’ll only need to fill in the name and
date. Show the referral form to each class on Monday to let them know you mean
business.”
A light clicked on in Mary’s eyes.
The next Monday, a new Mary arrived at school. It was third period that the student sacrifice occurred. After that, I heard only a very occasional volcanic eruption for the rest of the two
years she taught at Monte Vista.
Next
Almanac: A Room with Tables: Part 2 – Identifying the Room
Follow me on Twitter: @CRDowningAuthor
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