After reading the Art of Possibility by Zander & Zander, Chapter 12 "WE approach"
Artwork by Dennis Moon (11), Never Admit Defeat.
After giving out report cards in the beginning of the every year, couple students approached me and asked me,
“Miss, why did you fail me?”
“ I didn’t fail you. You failed.” I used to be frustrated by their obvious question. I had present the excel file with the calculated grades and explained how it came out to their grades. They seemed to understand that I did not go by my feelings on students but they did not understand. I showed them the formula to prove that I did calculation to come up with the grade. Then I lectured them.
“You have a great potential but if you don’t try hard enough, talent doesn’t mean anything. You need to work harder. You are responsible for missing works and you must come to class everyday on time. If you fail, nothing happens in my life. Why would I bother? Because I want you to pass. Should I leave you alone and you get whatever grade? Or push you to work harder for you to pass? You choose.”
“You can push me.” They smiled.
I re-located the responsibility from me to them. It is important to raise the sense of responsibility and the ownership for them. There were times I succeeded in helping them. There were times I failed it. As I was reading about “WE” approach in the book, the Art of possibility by Zander & Zander, I should have used WE approach.
“What can we do to increase your grade? It hurts both of us when you fail. I am your teacher and I want my students to succeed. What are we missing?”
It is already the end of the year and I seriously should work harder to make all students succeed. That is my job.
Soyeon,
ReplyDeleteI think it is really interesting that you say it is your job to work harder to make all of your students succeed. Initially I though, "NO WAY!" I was taken aback at the enormous amount of responcibility that one statement places on a teacher. I began to rationalize that I was right and that was totally incorrect. I used the, "You can't make them learn if they don't want to," excuse. But as scary as it is to think about it and as much as it literally makes me shake in my boots, that is our job. It's our job to be in their face with their education and their lives, because sometimes we are all they have. They might hate us, but I'm ok with that if I know I have done everything I can for them. You are so right, that is our job, suddenly it is a little more intimidating, but there it is. :-)
Yes, it is intimidating to me too. It just sometimes is overwhelming. But, we try our best to help them. There are times I wanted to ignore thinking "They will fail anyways." But, there are times that I need to push me, not the student, harder.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment, Christen.
Soyeon,
ReplyDeleteI agree that we need to help our students take responsibility for their actions. You made a great point when you said that it is our responsibility as teachers to help our students figure out what we can do together to help increase their grades.