Everything Counts in Large Amounts

I made her cry!

My week was pretty full, lots of meetings and assignments to grade. I felt like the new year has been productive. But today but I made a student cry which wasn't nice. She told me she hated my class and luckily for her there's less than 1 week left of it. It kind of surprised me and I tried to be nice as it unfolded. I have posted instructions on my google classroom and a video on how to do the assignment in question. When I asked if she had looked at the instructions, she said no and claimed she hated google classroom! Well, of course she was frustrated! I spell everything out for my students pretty clearly and give presentations, then offer videos for support. So it's pretty frustrating for me to have a student fall apart in frustration not understanding how to do a project because she refuses to look at instructions. I wasn't sure how to deal with the situation. It's certainly not nice to hear a kid tell you how much they hate your class while bawling their head off. When I relayed the story to my daughter she assured me the student was upset about other things not about my class but I wonder. I'll be honest, I create classes that allow students to work for independently allowing me a lot of free time to multitask. I love digital classes because I AM COMFORTABLE on the the computer. I forget not all student are as comfortable. We talk about 21st century skills as educators and often we mean technology but I think some of those skills are about finding answers on your own and knowing how to navigate the classroom without a teacher holding your hand the whole way. As the semester comes to an end I offer anonymous classroom evaluations to get feedback.  In my illustrator class one student wrote, "I just wanted to learn more advanced techniques in this class that will make my life a lot easier in Illustrator. We went over pretty basic concepts but I'd love to go more In depth. The projects that we did were fun and all but I felt like I got barely any practice with new features. I came into this class not knowing much about illustrator which is why I took it but many of the assignments weren't as meaningful and fulfilling as I thought they'd be."  Wow! That is the kind of feedback I want but it hurts a little. The problem is that I also got, "Nope! I think this class was great with covering subjects." I have students of all levels, grades 9 through 12. I thought by having everything spelled out in google classroom I was helping to pull up some of my younger and lower end kids but that's only if they can read directions.

It's a new year...

Winter break is over and it's a new year. There are only 8 days left of the first semester, with finals to follow. With the new year comes the slippery slope to the end of the school year. My seniors are getting excited. We got a proof of the yearbook cover today and kids were very excited to see our ideas come to life. Kids worked a little more today. As the semester runs out of time, kids either step it up or fall off altogether. Seniors are making decisions for college and starting paperwork for dorms and financial aid. It's a weird transition. They have to finish, but it's a lot to ask them to finish strong. Many believe they deserve a break. They leave class early, come late and procrastinate. I have a lot of empathy. My second semester of my senior year (that was in 1983) I only had three classes and left school after 3rd hour to go have lunch with my friends in the Valley.