Getting in an 8th Grade Frame of Mind

Quote #2: "Ms. Broome, I honestly have no idea how your mind works." - KC It might have been a rough day but hearing my student say this to me made me burst out in laughter. I have long suspected that half of what my students and I say to each other is lost in translation and this quote simply solidified this belief in my mind. It must be a very interesting world in my students' minds because their over-the-top reaction to simple events makes me believe they see the world through a paradigm I really cannot even comprehend. And the fact that they do not understand my rationale half the time makes me think the feeling is mutual.

Which brings me to the larger issue dealing with the fact that maybe one small piece of the problem when it comes to student academic achievement is that students aren't really hearing what teachers are saying. I was having a discussion with two math teachers last year at the high school I worked at and they very assertively told me that "these students just can't do algebra." Well I'm sorry but I tutored some of these students after school and they, in fact, could do algebra however their minds just work in different ways. So when a teacher says coordinate-plane to these students I can guarantee that the first thing that comes to mind IS NOT a location where you plot points. There is a disconnect going on between what the students are hearing, what the teachers are saying, and how the teachers are explaining the subject.

I do not claim to be exempt from this problem. I definitely have had that feeling where I'm the teacher in the Charlie Brown show or where I get done explaining something and my students look at me like I am from Mars. However, at least I recognize this part of the puzzle and am making some sort of attempt to correct it, instead of blaming it all on the students' intelligence levels. I do not think the solution is "dumbing" the material down, instead we need to find a way to make is more accessible. Not everyone learns the same and I can, without a doubt, promise you that inner-city black students do not think the same as middle-class, suburban white kids. Instead of resigning ourselves to the idea that our students "just can't" do something, why don't we assume they can but there is a cognitive disconnect that we need to work around? It might be more difficult and not in our job description, but aren't we, as teachers, suppose to try exhaust all our options when providing our students with the opportunities to learn. I could not deal with giving my students less than all my effort and then blaming their failure on them. I cannot force a student to do something but I can try to provide them with the best opportunity possible.

There is a quote from The Wire where a drug dealer is trying to help his sister with a math problem. She can't do the word problem in her head so he puts it in terms of a drug deal and she gets it right away. When he asks her "why are you able to figure it out when I say it?" She responds "because if I get the deal wrong, I get beaten." I'm not saying we beat our students but this quotation just goes to show that our students do not think in terms of abstract concepts, they need something tangible to hold onto.