Alien Pedagogy

I do pretty well at parent-teacher interviews here. I use a pretty consistent formula. I thought that the teachers next to me would be bored by my repeated jokes, insights, and suggestions, but they were actually impressed.

So here’s the formula that I’ve been using for my school’s five-minute interview.

• One hand raised like a flight attendant. “Welcome to my office. Let’s put [student] in the middle chair, shall we?” (I’m actually at a table in a hall filled with all stakeholders of the community)
• Grab the report card, asking “how’s high school?”
• Validate whatever the student says and use it to bridge to the next step.
• “We’ve been working on [major assessment], which is very difficult. How are you doing at it? … [student's response] … Many students are finding it difficult, but here’s what I’m offering them to make up for that… (explain late policies, etc.).”
• Homework Issues — segue to Moodle and online grades.
• Things to do at home? Yes, you can encourage your son or daughter to fall in love with reading. Buy him or her any book that you think she or he would want to read. 100 words a day of writing is also great, but only if you have a beautiful journal to write in. You might practice vocabulary on quizlet.com. Let’s set up a specific time to get our homework done. Remember to ask questions by email because I reply very quickly. Sometimes I recommend a tutor.
• Not participating? It must be because you are intimidated by my bald head. Still, this is how we learn…
• Academic all-star? Let’s make sure that you’re getting enough food into you, that you’re getting enough sleep, and that you’re taking time to relax your brain every day.
• Floater? Let’s increase our leadership and extra-curricular achievements.
• Joker? Discuss maturity.
• Questions? Often these are questions that I have already answered.
• Push the report card across the table, saying “thank you for coming.” I’ve never had to stand up to invite someone to leave, but I would if a parent refused to leave.

I generally smile throughout this process and communicate a lot using my eyebrows, shoulders, and hands.

This formula has worked very well over the last two years because it’s very fast, positive, and encouraging.

I go through nearly twice as many students as many of the other teachers because I teach 9th grade.

I try to highlight study & learning strategies as well as things that the parents can do to get involved in their children’s education besides everyone’s favorite refrain, “work harder.”

Note: My school has very few students that are raised in difficult living conditions.

This week, I’ve realized that the P/E teacher at my school is unbelievable.

He is currently running an athletic council that is working unbelievably well. It gives leadership roles to many students who do well academically but are consistently outshined in the classroom. So far, the athletic council has completely outshined the student council (which is loaded with academic stars) due to the P/E teacher’s subtle guidance (I’ll qualify that I think the student council will produce some pretty impressive achievements by November).

Further, the hours that he works are unreal. Worse, he plays sports after he finishes coaching.

Finally, he works with every jock in the school in order to motivate them to pass their subjects.

In this article with the AV Club, Stone responds “Responsibility, history. I’m a dramatist. Dramatists have a right to look at history and interpret it the way they see it.”

I can’t deny that I was very excited to see this (even if he does qualify the statement). However, I was even more excited when I realized that I’m about to teach poetry based on historical events.

Some day I’ll break down just how much of what I use for class discussion comes from AV Club.

While there’s nothing wrong with energy and humor, my classes are dominated by males that rapidly become overstimulated unless they are given a very specific tunnel for that stimulation. Much of my personality is becoming a disruption in the classroom.

To solve this, I’ve begun starting my classes in a very calm and soothing tone. I only release my enthusiasm for teaching at very specific moments. Ex/ I often end the class with a lot of humor and because that’s when students seem to run through their learning cycle, that humor seems to stick, just as the sincerity that I use to open the class seems to stick.

These moments are not the only ones that build my reputation amongst the student body, but they do have an impact.

Today I spent an entire class explaining to the 9s what it means to be a good learner. I approached it as a skill that can be practiced just as dribbling a ball can be practiced.

For this group, it requires the ability to connect objectives with assignments and activities when working on major assignments and projects. It requires being able to read instructions — which requires the student to read instructions. Students also have to be able to ask for help.

I finished by pointing out that being a good learner has little to do with one’s intelligence, though it’s an intelligent decision to learn about learning.