Re: unexpected obstacles

["B. Esser" <besser@MARIAN.CREIGHTON.EDU>]

I would like to begin by thanking everyone who has shared their
experiences in this area. Until now, I thought I was in a unique
situation. A parent has expressed "deep concern" that I have the temerity
to ask questions on a test that are not identical to those in the homework
or examples done in class. It is "unreasonable" of me to expect their
child to be able to do a problem they have not seen before. A biology
teacher here was asked to provide a "study guide" by a parent. The guide
was to include only those vocabulary words which will be on the test as
the girl should not have to "waste her time" learning things that will not
be on the test. Fortunatly, one of our adminstrators is an ex science
teacher and so far the administration has backed us.

On Thu, 19 Dec 2002, Scott Goelzer wrote:
<snip>
> had factions in the school, jocks, brains, druggies, kikkers, etc). The
> jocks were stereotypically non-academic. No more - my best students are
> now called scholar- athletes. These kids can manage all of their school
> work and sports. Why? Sports is now the last place a teacher can say to
> a child 'You lost, your performance was terrible - you will practice
> harder or sit on the bench' and be absolute. Parents will accept this
> behavior from coaches, but not from teachers.

I am glad that this is still the case where you teach. Around here many
students who are told to sit on the bench transfer to another school to
get more playing time. We have many  "elite" club teams in soccer
and basketball and parent's expectations are high when little Suzie enters
high school. When the state athletic association tried to make the transfer
rules stricter they were met with a lawsuit. Another  lawsuit over playing
time in a neighboring school last spring led to a coach quitting in the middle
of the season.

> classroom.  The other kids, with inflated self-esteems, view success as
> a lucky event - often discussions with these kids reveal them to be
> very fatalistic. They also feel that a grade is a judgment - of
> themselves as person, not their work. Doesn't make sense, but that's
> what I get from discussions.
There is also some evidence that boys and girls respond in different ways
to failure. "Boys and girls view academic failure very differently. Boys
often attribute their failures to lack of trying. Girls are more likely to
attribute their failures to a simple lack of ability" (1) Psychologists
call this "effort attribution". (2) Since most of the cited studies
occured in the 80's it would be interesting to see if a decade of
"self-esteem" edubabble has resulted in both genders thinking as Scott
indicates above.

> What have I been doing? I have found the outcome based labs are very
> effective with both groups. These are labs such as the classic
> 'calculate where to place the cup so the projectile lands in it'. There
> is a definite, concrete standard of success. No opinions or personal
> judgments.
When we first tried outcome based labs we were met with a lot of
resistance. The students saw it as a competition, with winners and losers
(and public losers at that).  We needed to reinforce that the opportunity
existed for everyone to be successful .... if everyone hit the cup on the
first try, everyone received an "A".
For lab writeups and other labs that are not outcome based we provide our
students with a "what constitutes a great lab report" example, with
cartoon bubbles explaining the rational for each part of the report and
its relative importance to the document as a whole. The example we use is
for a lab they will not do this year so they cannot actually "use" any
part of the writeup in their own reports. We spend a day explaining the
rational for each part of the report and why this has become the standard
in scientific reporting of results. Then when a student complains about
being docked for not having a date on a page or a collaborators signature
we ask them to put their complaint in writing, including the original
rational for the requirement and why this should no longer be required.
They still complain but none have taken the time to write up a formal
request to remove any of our requirements.


(1) How Schools Shortchange Girls; AAUW Report 1995. The footnotes for
Part four chapter 2 #9-11 provide about 15 referenced studies.
(2) School Girls; Peggy Orenstein 1994 p284++ Doubleday Press


Bruce Esser
Physics Teacher                    Something witty
Marian High School                     Should go here
http://marian.creighton.edu