For over an hour we had a terrific conversation of this episode and one other episode of the same group. Like the OST video discussions I am used to, it was full of interesting observations, claims, values, questions, and so on. I was feeling pretty happy with the whole thing. Then, right at the very very end of class, this happened. The first speaker, who is off-camera, is an elementary science coach. The second speaker is an elementary teacher who was sitting at the same table. (There are a couple seconds of silence at the start - persist!)
Rachel: Go ahead, and then I'm going to wind this up.
K: One last thing. Coming from the elementary, we do this a lot, but I kept thinking what kind of scaffolding is there around this room for them as they're having this conversation? Just like, in an elementary classroom teachers would have all the forms of energy that they've been learning about, all the stuff they've been drawing and so forth, hearing about in lecture, on a chart somewhere. To direct them back, "are we even talking about the energy right now? or are we mixing that up with force, or work, or..." And so, I just, so often, you know, the kids they don't have a lot of scaffolding. They're just in a room with a worksheet to fill out and talking to each other and just, it seemed like they could have used...
C: And, I saw nothing that indicated any mental stimulation here. They were discussing but there was nothing hands on, there were no analogies that they could make, there were no comparisons they could make with perhaps some prior knowledge. What if it wasn't a person pushing against a wall, what if it was a machine?
Rachel: So that's the sort of analogy you would have liked to have seen.
I remember that I began to hit the ceiling (internally.... it is amazing to me how calm I look on video) when C said, "I saw nothing that indicated any mental stimulation." What is she saying - the students are morons? Comatose? At "nothing hands-on," I thought, does she perhaps think that "mental stimulation" requires manipulatives? When she said "no analogies they could make, no comparisons they could make with their prior knowledge," I was just plain confused, because that stuff is all over their discourse. Perhaps she meant no teacher-provided analogies? While I was struggling to understand what she might mean, and also struggling with my own emotional response, she went on.
C: I just didn't see any excitement. I question the worksheet. I question the assignment. What is the validity, what is the learning goals that this instructor has for these students? Because they didn't have any [one?] that I could see, except getting it done.
Rachel: Hm. Did other people see that same lack, disconnect between what they were, the physics they were talking about and anything else that they might have related it to? Seemed like you were talking about them struggling to make that relationship, but maybe not successfully, is what you're saying?
C: I would think that these students walk away from this thinking, "Bleh bleh [inaudible]."
[laughter]
someone: Physics is so
Rachel: Biology is so *whew*
[more laughter]
Rachel: I gotta close this up here, but this is actually a good note to end on, because [cut]
It was NOT a good note to end on - that was sheer sleight of hand on my part. Nor do I have any idea what C said that we all laughed at; nothing was funny to me; the laughing, for me, was pure tension. But whatever, we had to end class, so I diverted - I said something like, "It's worth pointing out that we don't have to agree on whether this is an exemplary episode in order to have a good discussion about the student thinking that is in it," and somehow got us out of there.
Even if there had been time, though, I could not have thought clearly enough to locate an appropriate response, if there even is one. The students weren't doing shit, was what I heard, and it's the instructor's fault for putting them in a situation that ignores the most basic pedagogical requirements. In other words, we can blame this pedagogical shambles on the instructional design's "validity" and the instructor's incompetence. I was boiling sea of inappropriate responses combined with an intense urge to run out of the room. In my favor, at least I knew I was flooded. Although I thought of all kinds of things to say (for example, spitting back at them that this is MY worksheet and what did they think of THAT), I was pretty sure that whatever I said would be coming from a bad place, so I did my best to say basically nothing at all. I pathetically packed up my free DVDs.
Later, when I had calmed down some, I tried to think over why the things these teachers said had gotten under my skin so much. Part of it is surely that I am not so sure about my own legitimacy and competence as an AYPD instructor. Another part of it, I think, is that they were dismissing an episode I love and find worthwhile. I was saying, "Hey, look, see what I brought!" and they were saying, "That's garbage. You should know better." And it's not just the episode I love, it's the students in that episode. I love them! I delight in their free-ranging conversation, the connections they make, their friendly skepticism. And they were telling me that they are not delightful, not lovable. Just in that offhand way like "You can't be cold, it's perfectly warm in here." They can't do that to my students! But they did, and seemed to think nothing of it, and I got confused and defensive and stuck.
Stamatis and I talked about it and agreed that this had been rough, but that it was much better that it was me rather than one of the teachers, and that it would provide a heck of a basis for us to establish the norms for future video discussions. We agreed that the next AYPD session would make explicit use of what had happened. You can imagine how much I was looking forward to that. Not.
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