Failure

To pick one failure story is quite a task.  I can think of countless times that I lost my cool in the classroom, said things I shouldn’t have said, gave up too soon, and didn’t hold up my end of the “bargain” with my students.  What I want to focus on, and the thing that bothers me most, is the fact that there are students I let fall through the cracks.  I like to think that I have a keen eye for everything that is going on in my classroom.  I’m good at mediating fights, helping students who are struggling and ask for help, challenging the smartest and hardest-working students, getting students with disruptive behavior on task, and keeping the mood in my classroom one of hard work.  However, there’s a certain sort of student that I just keep missing.  The student I miss is well-behaved, quiet, and appears to be on-task.  This student appears to work well in groups, and never asks me any questions about concepts, or asks to check his or her work against the answer key.  This is not the student that I have to send away from my desk during a test because he or she really, really, really, just needs one quick reminder please, please, please!  Sadly, at the end of the day, after all the chaos, if you asked me if this student was present in my third period class, I would have to think hard before I could give you an answer.  Even more sad, is that this student is probably not getting most of the answers right, and will just barely pass my class, mostly by merit of completing all the work.  In the middle of a long, often crazy day where I have to take care of any disciplinary issues, help the students who are constantly asking questions, and make sure my top test-performers are staying sharp, these students get forgotten.  When I imagine their parents sending them to school, hoping to give them a good education, I become extremely sad and disappointed in myself.  I am absolutely failing these students.  They are well-behaved, perform in the lower 25% of my students, and absolutely need my help.  There is no reason why I shouldn’t be able to assess every single student and provide feedback for them in a timely matter.  However, no matter how many times I remind myself, they keep slipping through the cracks.  It’s like that dream where it’s the end of the school year, you’re a student, and you realize that you’ve been missing a class all year long.  Well, for me, it was the end of the school year, these students were barely passing my class, and I realized that I’ve been ignoring them all year.  When I’m perfectly honest with myself, I realize that these students probably aren’t prepared for ninth grade math, and it’s 100% my fault.  

Comments

[FarmerMTC]

What a thoughtful post. I think often about the students who may very well pass a class by dint of silence, or hiding in plain sight. They are never disruptive, yet they say little and move even less. How to factor those students in your daily motions is an awesome task unto itself. I am sure you will do well. 

[Emily Serkedakis]

I was thinking about that today. Even just in the very few weeks of summer school we've had, I've noticed that there are students that I consistently forget about that badly need help. There's a small group of boys in my class that are nice, quiet, and never ask for help, so I tend to forget about them, distracted by the kids who are misbehaving or raising their hands constantly. I can imagine how much worse this would get when you have multiple classes of kids, with far more kids to keep straight.

[Catherine Gray]

This strikes home already. I spend so much time focusing on the students that make the most noise. I correct their behavior so often that I'm just dying for an opportunity to find something good in their work, so then I pay more attention to them during independent practice, too. I have no idea what's going on with the several quiet students who hardly ever volunteer but who do their work and keep quiet. Honestly, at this point it's difficult for me to assess anyone individually. I've spent the past couple weeks taking the pulse of the entire class and not really knowing where most of the students fall unless they're at the top of the class or blatantly struggling.