Comments | pamelina: The Delicate Art of Teacher Handling

pamelina

The Delicate Art of Teacher Handling

Feb 20, 2005 18:03

In siderea's journal, She's coping with a desire to read ahead in her grad school textbooks, while needing to keep track of the things she's not supposed to know yet from unassigned chapters. That reminded several people that one thing they hated about English classes back in elementary school was when the teacher would assign some number of chapters and ( Read more... )

Comments 9

pamelina February 21 2005, 00:51:07 UTC

Bob and I met with Will's guidance councilor and his english teacher already. They developed a "403" plan for Will, with supposed extra support for writing and organization. Nothing changed. We've got another meeting lined up for all of his teachers. Maybe that'll help... sigh.

Reading ahead cvirtue February 21 2005, 01:38:23 UTC

I'm sure Will already understands that some teachers can have different values than his parents, or himself. That's just part of life.

So if you're ok with him reading ahead, and I expect you are, tell him so. And tell the teacher that you're thrilled when he wants to read more than what is assigned. Clearly it must be the excellence of her teaching, that inspires him so, right?

As for the organizing, I have no good suggestions, sorry.

As for LJ, how much of this sort of discussion do you want read by the subject of the discussion? Some things which might make good advice might be best veiled in mystery in the discussion phase.

Re: Reading ahead rufinia February 21 2005, 02:32:04 UTC

Clearly it must be the excellence of her teaching, that inspires him so, right?

Oooooo. That's good. That's very good.

Re: Reading ahead cvirtue February 21 2005, 02:32:51 UTC

*I* never manipulated my teachers, oh, no, not me!

rufinia February 21 2005, 03:08:46 UTC

I am not an educational professional, nor do I play one on TV. But I did butt heads with teachers over *how* I wrote things- and that started right about in 6th grade. And I have an idea. Don't know if it's any good.

Just get him to write his ideas out- first run, don't worry about organization, or coherency, just get the ideas on paper. Once it's on the paper, he can look at it and if he needs to move stuff around so it makes more sense. Maybe even go so far as to take each idea and put it on a large post-it note and rearrnage it that way.

My final for last semester was written more or less like that- I wrote sections, and then shuffled the sections around, and moved paragraphs around until I was happy with it.

pamelina February 21 2005, 06:00:51 UTC

Yep, I think that's a good way to go, too. Dump all your ideas out onto the screen or the page, then move 'em around.

cvirtue February 21 2005, 09:19:46 UTC

or 3x5 cards, which is what I've tried when writing something looooonnnng.

umbran February 21 2005, 16:03:19 UTC

How do I get her to do a better job without criticizing and insulting her, and besides what if she can't make the skills of organizing writing and editing writing more clear and/or organized?

The first step in gettign a person to do a better job is to understand why they're currently doing the job they way they are. Before suggesting, requesting, or demanding changes, recognize why they do things they way they do. There may be a method to the madness, and you ought to know if there is before you step in.

It also puts you in a less confrontational position in the discussion. When you go in asking for information first, you take the role of a thoughtful person who wants to be fully informed, rather than as a hard-nose critic who's made up her mind beforehand.

pamelina March 6 2005, 18:34:48 UTC

I think you've got an excellent point.

In the end, I didn't address the issue, because the teacher is loquacious and well-meaning, and even getting into the questions I had would've been kinda like laying down in front of a tank. That's saying a lot, too, because I don't intimidate easily.