"Your" a WHAT?!

Throughout my semester spent at my partner school, I have to say I have had an amazing experience. Despite the horror stories I had heard prior to beginning my stint as a student teacher, all-in-all the students were far more respectful and motivated to learn than I had been bracing myself for.

This is not to say that there have not been challenges that have presented themselves though either...

I was offered an entire afternoon to teach two grade nine grammar classes, as I had mentioned in a previous blog.  As part of my lesson, I gave the class a worksheet to work on their skills. I will admit, a worksheet is not my intended method of assessment, but my co-op teacher brought it up and I really just needed something that would fill up more class time. The worksheet was not overly difficult, and completing it did inevitably give students a clearer idea of what we went over in class.

I had the students hand in the assigned papers for a homework check.  That night, I went over them to ensure that they were on the right track. The majority of the students appeared to understand the lesson quite well and answered the questions accurately.  A few seemed to miss the point with less than satisfactory results, but it looked like they were trying at the very least. Finally, one of the last papers I looked at had no questions answered at all. In fact, all that was written on the page at all was "your a hoe."

I will admit, at first, I felt like a failure. I felt like I hadn't made an effective lesson at all.  But then I thought back to the other students that appeared to be having fun and thought of all the students that legitimately DID understand my lesson and did well on the worksheet.  Surely, my lesson couldn't have been all bad?? So after that, I started to feel kind of angry and insulted over the message on the page.  This prompted me to correct "your" into "you're" and leave a nice red "0" on the top of the worksheet.  Then finally, my thoughts transitioned towards what this student is really trying to say.  Writing a message like that on a paper is not normal behavior.  I would have NEVER done anything like that and I would be hard pressed to say that I know anyone who would do something like that either.  I began to wonder whether the students was going through a difficult situation.

In the morning, I brought the situation up to my co-op teacher at school.  Turns out, the student has had more than a few issues of acting out before.  The behavior is also likely attributed at least in part to family problems at home that involves a messy divorce of the students parents. My anger quickly subsided and transitioned to concern for the poor kid. His message, although inappropriate and not appreciated was a cry for help more than anything. It was a learning experience for me as well.  As teachers we should not act on impulses in these sort of situations.  We need to get to the root of the problem first.