the beautiful struggle

The mood dropped significantly after I introduced new material on two variable analysis to the 12 College class and gave out an assignment to work on... There are two students in particular who have good days and bad days- every so often they will fill the background with dramatic and vocal complaints about the teacher-- me, this time, since I've taken over this class. In my first week here I observed that this kind of totally distracting behaviour, from either them or the eraser-throwing crew at the back, never resulted in any consequences from their regular teacher, not that I would know what effective consequences might be...

I really needed to do something different for the next class. I made up a Review Quiz on Powerpoint with graphs, true and false questions, questions about definitions, and easy to read data tables. There were 10 questions, one per slide, and they were not difficult but did require a clear understanding of the concepts we had been covering (which are likely the easiest out of the course-- so I want them to do really well!). I had it set up when they walked in with the "Review Quiz" slide showing and when they were all seated I dimmed the lights and told them to not shout out any answers as I want everyone to get a chance to think through these questions in their head. (The culture I've seen so far is one of calling out answers, or more usually unrelated comments....)

They were into it!

At first they started calling out answers (and not extremely rude comments about me from the young lady in front, thank goodness) and I reminded them to let others think about it first, and to raise their hands please.

One by one we worked through each question, and each one led into other questions not planned for. And so for a little while, we had an atmosphere of focus in the classroom, and the focus was on learning together as a group... After the review quiz, they steadily worked on a second part to the assignment.

There's no telling what will happen next time (every day is completely different with them), but this was a peaceful and lovely class to be in.... today :)