You win some, you fail some

One thing about being an engineer is that your mind processes things differently. Certain subroutines take place in your brain without conscious thought, and so when people ask you to explain them, it takes a concentrated effort to even realize that there is a possible question there.

Such was my lesson two Thursdays ago (July 9) on the difference of squares method. This is a very simple concept, where when you have an equation of the form x²-b² you factor it into two parts: (x-b)(x+b). That's the way it is, no explanation needed.

The thing is, when you teach math to a class of Algebra 2 students, there needs to be an explanation. I just figured that the explanation for this fact would come out as I explained the process.

Turns out it doesn't work like that.

That is literally how I had planned that lesson; to teach the students that when they saw an equation of that form, that they should recognize that it breaks down into the two stated factors, and it's always like that. Which it is.

The breakdown occured about 30 seconds into the lesson, after I had explained all my planned lesson material, and I realized that the students had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. So I painfully wallowed at the front of the room as I attempted to explain this concept that according to my brain, just works like that. And ultimately, it was a great failure. I had the students work on their homework assignment, which was 20 problems of that form, and ran from student to student, dousing fires of confusion.

What a disaster. Strangely enough, they all did the assignment just fine, but I know that they didn't understand the process or why they were doing it. Thus, at the expense of my students education, I learned a very important lesson early on.

My brain isn't going to interpolate the details of a process that just works when I'm in front of a classroom of 30 students. It just doesn't happen. I mean, maybe once I've been doing this for more than say, 2 hours, it might get easier. But for my second lesson - what a huge failure.

What did I learn? Well, from that point on, as I've planned the rest of my lessons I actually started teaching to myself, out loud, the process of what I'm doing. I explain it to myself in the exact same manner that I'd teach it to my students. And I've gotten to know them well enough in the last two weeks that I've pretty good at foreseeing where they're going to have trouble, and elaborating in those areas.

Apparently it's been working rather well, because on Friday my CMA (Corp Member Advisor) asked if I would explain this process to the other collabs in my CMA group (there are 3 collabs to a CMA group). Evidently they're having the same problem that I was having.

Honestly, after that lesson I felt completely aweful. I felt that I had failed my students, that I had failed as a teacher, and that this was going to be a lot harder than I had anticipated. The thought of having to stand in front of my students and teach the next lesson on Friday almost killed me. How could they have confidence in me as an instructor when I had failed them so badly?

Turns out, students have short attention spans, and had all but forgotten about the previous day - lesson content included. We had to review it at the start of class again. Anyhow, invigorated with the pressing failure from the previous day, I finished the week with the strongest lesson of them all. My FA said that it was a fabulous lesson, and had no suggestions for me, which was very uncharacteristic of her.

However, as cycles go, another failure was just around the corner. Time to set the stage.

Week 1, TFA. We're supposed to have lesson plans for every day of the week. There is a strict format we need to follow, we have to have a daily assessment, homework, guided notes, key points that have been artfully articulated, plus a rough draft of every lesson plan within the next five days. These are due on a daily basis, along with a bunch of other planning documents, and we're supposed to print out every document within an allotted number of pages that they assigned us from day 1. We get 120 printed pages from the computer lab each week, and 700 pages total from the copy center for the entire duration of institute.

Nobody was prepared for the madness of the first week. The copy center was supposed to close at 11:30 p.m., but there was no way that they closed before 1 a.m. a single night that week. My latest night, I got to the copy center at 11:15, I had to wait for 20 minutes before getting a machine, and by the time I left, there must have been at least 100 people waiting in line after me. That was at 11:45.

The group of people waiting for the copy center at 11:45.

I would walk down to the computer lab at 1 am, and every machine would be filled, and I'd have to wait 1/2 hour just to get a computer to print my documents. Fortunately, my latest night that week was 2 am, but when you consider that we had to get up at 5, 3 hours of sleep just doesn't mean a lot. And I think I was on the heavy end of the sleep spectrum.

And this cycle repeated itself every night that week. So that failure story above was running on about 15 hours of sleep that week, and there was a certain level of desperation that was setting it. It was all I could do to get through the week.

The stage is set. Now, in order to prevent a repeat of the previous hellish week, I decided to dedicate my weekend to getting ahead. So Friday I went to bed at 10 pm, woke up at 9 am, and worked on lesson plans for 10 hours. Sunday, I finalized a couple things, went to the copy center early to beat the rush, and I thought I was done. I had my lessons for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday all written out, with Mondays and Tuesdays plan printed and ready to go.

My Monday lesson went well, but not fantastic. It was a tough concept, but the students fared ok on the assessment. So come Tuesday, I plowed ahead with my original plan, especially since I had all my handouts printed and ready to go. Plus I was done, so I didn't need to think about it anymore.

Big mistake. I get to class on Tuesday, and pass around the handout. The students didn't do so hot on their Do Now, and didn't follow me at all as I introduced the new material. We were working on completing the square (not to be confused with the difference of two squares), which isn't a concept that is very difficult.

However, I definately chose the rocky route as I explained the concept to them, and it just failed miserably. It turns out that due to the fact that my students hadn't completely internalized the lesson from the previous day, they were still shaky on a number of concepts. But my lesson plan that I had put together had been founded on the fact that they would know that stuff well. And so when they didn't understand the foundation material well, they definitely didn't understand the new material that was building on top of that.

And I realized this, and I attempted to compensate and adjust my lesson to cater to their misunderstandings. Which worked ok, but then I attempted to tie it back into the handout that I had given them, which just didn't align. And so they ended up more confused.

As the bell rang, I stood in the front of the classroom and apologized profusely for the crappy lesson, I understood that things hadn't made a whole lot of sense, and promised them that I'd clarify everything during AIH the next day.

I spent that night vigorously putting two plans together, one a make up lesson to clearly explain completing the square, and the other, new material which was adjusted to compensate for that days weaknesses.

So on Wednesday with my new lesson plan in hand, I effictively explained in 15 minutes what I couldn't even begin to convey in 45 the previous day. Needless to say, it went very well, as did my lesson later that day, and once again, I recieved high praises from Ms. Reisenfeld.

I seriously have the best students though. They are really patient with all of us as their teachers, and they have been fantastic as far as classroom management goes. They participate when we need them to, they are fun and lively, yet work hard and are silent when they need to be. We couldn't have asked for a better group.

It's hard to say whether our students act this way because that's just the way they are, or if it's because of the classroom culture that we have fostered. I honestly don't know, but I'd suppose to some degree it's largely a combination of the two. The real test will come once I have my own classroom I suppose.

At the end of the day, I really do love teaching. There were numrous moments during the week that invalidated any previous failure that I had experienced. Taking the time for those *inhale* "ooooooohhhhhhhhhh" moments are the best, when you work with a student one on one over a concept they have been struggling, and seeing that light of understanding flip on in their eyes. It's awesome. Sure, last Tuesday and the previous Thursday were aweful, but that's all part of the improvement process. It takes those experiences to motivate me to not let it happen again. I can only wonder - what failure am I going to encounter this week?

As I said in my last post, expect more frequent, shorter posts this next week. I want to get off this habit of making posts of "epic" proportion.