JP Reads

Chapter 1: On Roles and Tasks. 

So Chapter One has a central message:  Don’t be Atlas.  Atlas is the instructor who believes the world is on her/his shoulders.  Atlas is responsible for managing all classroom discussion,  to the point where no reasonably intelligent person can make and error.   Because spoken errors are to be feared and avoided at all costs.  And any errors must immediately be exposed to a horrified public, and be flogged with a tedious explanation. Because students learn from tedious emergency explanations. 

Don’t be Atlas. 

Of course, in my last 9 years of teaching, I’ve been Atlas.  I had to be. 

Here’s why:  I taught HIGH SCHOOL.  In my first year, there were thirty 13 year olds in my class who did not understand ANYTHING but discipline.  I couldn’t give them group or pair work, because they just would not do it.  I couldn’t count on them to ask each other communicative questions, because they didn’t get it:  they didn’t get that they were supposed to TALK to each other.  It was gross.  If they had a task, they would employ every strategy they could think of to get the task done as fast as possible; every strategy but following the directions. 

If I told them, work through these four questions in a group, they would say, ok, you do the first two, I’ll do the last two, and then we’ll copy.  Honestly, I had to teach these burros how to be in a language class.  And they resented me for it, they resented the low grades that they earned.  And no, I did not GIVE them low grades, they EARNED them.   

After my first three years, my department chair had mercy on me and put me in higher level courses with older students, so Advanced Grammar and Short Story Survey.  Although my strenth had always been input, I did not have the skills to do it with kids that young.  and sheltered.  and priviledged.  and needy. 

No, my colleagues were much better at teaching them how to be students, so teaching the higher levels worked out much better for everyone.  Me, I ended up reviewing verb tenses and short stories, where communicative input is a little less natural.  Sure, I tried every day to be an Architect rather than an Atlas, and my classroom ambiance certainly reflected that. 

In fact, when teaching grammar I was more like the passive agressive Atlas, I set up my lessons so that after a while, they were absolutely begging for the grammatical explanation, but in the end, it was still a form of lecture format.  I still couldn’t get them to talk meaningfully TO EACH OTHER about, for example, what they thought was a shame (subjunctive), or what they would do with $20,000,000 (conditional).   I think they just didn’t accept the model of classroom community.   They didn’t believe in it, and they wouldn’t do it. 

So yah.  I was Atlas.  But I was a high school teacher; at the university level, I was all communicative, all the time.  Believe it, baby.  Of course, by now, teaching at the university level is a foggy, distant memory. 

(p.s., the next post won’t be so all-about-my-students)