New Leaves

Well, not to say I was not trying to work against the grain before, but in response to a comment on the last blog post - yes I have been trying to be more prepared, especially since the video.

The video was taken very early in the semester and after my advisor visited my class I did prepare more, although this is not something that can be seen in the video.

I do more worksheets for my students, make more problems available to them, grade on a more regular basis and pass back papers every day, maybe not all the papers I should be giving back, but I pass back more than they give me so I am catching up with the amount of papers I have to grade.

I am thinking that next semester I will raise my standards a lot. Why? Because of a MathForge article that I read about student achievement and "fun" in the classroom. The original story that prompted the article can be found on CNN.com right here.

So, if my students have less fun are they more likely to do well? To be honest, I do not hold much faith in statistics. Well, it is not that I do not hold faith in it - it is just that you can draw too many bad inferences from statistics that just are not true. For one thing, in statistics - implication does not imply causation. So the real question of why these students are doing well is still left unanswered.

Maybe since the instructor does not have to make the material "fun" and they can teach math the way mathematicians learn it the students have more material given to them and have to absorb a certain amount.

Maybe in the areas where these students are doing so well they come to class enough to get all of the material they need to learn.

Maybe in the areas where these students are doing well the students take their coursework seriously and if they do not understand the material, they work towards a better understanding of the material.

Seriously, there are a million reasons why United States mathematics education is not as effective as certain other countries mathematics education but what are the reasons that I, as a disseminator of mathematical knowledge, can effect in my classroom? Those are the things I would like to know.

Can I really, honestly effect the classroom environment? If a student interrupts my lesson consistently, how do I tell them to stop doing that if they never come by my office hours? Do I call them out about it in class? If I do that, am I being responsive to my students' questions? I lose either way. If I allow my students to ask questions, I never get through my lessons. If I do not allow my students to ask questions, they will not understand and feel that I am not being thorough.

There are so many quandaries left unanswered in my mind that I will not get to today but since I am giving my students a quiz today I must get going. I also want to see if I can grade yet one more stack of papers before I start studying for an exam I have next Tuesday. The professor said we could ask questions today and if I come up against any difficulties I want to be able to make sure to ask them instead of trying to make his office hours which are at unusual times for me. Wish me luck and hopefully, more questions will become answered as time goes on.

On the brighter side of things, since I wrote "A Sham" I have come to the realization that no, I am not a bad teacher. I do work hard to get my students the information they need for the course, but unfortunately my students are not always willing to meet me halfway. I have a ton of absences and that alone has made my job difficult. Since my students are absent, when they come back they are lost and confused because they do not understand the material we covered from before. Why does x times x equal x-squared? Because of your exponent rules, which we covered on a day you were absent... My frusteration is growing as the absences are accumulating but I do not tell my students much about showing up for class besides that it is important.

I will have to admit. One or two absences is not killing them, it is when they have 4 or 5 or more absences where they are getting in trouble and missing so much information. But this is also a blog post for another day and I really need to finish making that quiz.