The Education Thread

[TheLastWolf]

You guys have grades!? Lucky buggers 

I and millions of my countrymen are stuck with 'marks'. 

0-10 Useless 

10-30 Fit for nothing 

33+ just pass 

50-60 average 

60-70 above average 

70-80 potential is there 

80-90 first benchers

90+ Toppers, Role models, achievers etc 

I'm usually in the 90+ group but no teacher will ever call me any of those listed. I'm too eccentric for their conventional life 

I usually end up in 80-90 when I don't study properly, but then I am a last bencher 

[Buckwheat]

18 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

That sounds like a bad policy.  Surely lots of cheating is only revealed by suspiciously identical answers?  In your post above, you had pretty clear evidence of three cheaters.  That’s not the same as hearsay after the fact that cannot be substantiated.

I’m not a teacher but I think a good practice is to have everyone read and sign an honor code or integrity statement before they begin any test.  And then any cheating must receive the absolute punishment.  Soft pedaling to avoid conflict isn’t helping anyone here.  Students are learning about integrity and consequences as much as they are learning the literal subject matter.

I guess. I don't know, it was months ago at this point. We have been schooling online almost since that happened, which is almost ... f********* four months already. And I suppose I got used to the fact that if students didn't already cheat during testing in an actual classroom, they have even more opportuinty to do that online, sadly. In this particular group, I don't feel sure enough to test them online, but with some other groups, they are going to also get written grades online - let's say I trust that one particular group less than the rest.

I don't think such a statement would help at all.  Those who are already upstanding people will not cheat anyway, and it isn't because of some signature. Those who have the intent to cheat won't be deterred by having to sign any statement.

I am just so over this online schooling, which has been going on since mid-October already, with no end in sight, and yes, my country's politicians seem to think everything else takes priority before education. I know it is necessary because coronavirus , but none of this is what a school should look like. This week I had two preparation tests before the actual graded tests next week with different groups of students just to try out the mechanics of the website we are using. I got the feeling that the students needed most of the time to figure out the mechanics instead of concentrating on their answers:

"Professor, I got locked out! What happened?"

"Whoops, bad connection, what should I do?"

"I cannot sign in at all!"

"Should I log in again? It says the name is already taken!"

"I tried to submit the test, but accidentally deleted everything!" (Yep, that one also happened.)

"I cannot find the signs ä, ö, ü, ß on the keyboard!" (I've explained how to type special characters numerous times in the last few months. I tell them that I put those signs in the file they have open in front of them as a last resort for them to copy.) "But it doesn't allow me to copy them!"

So yeah, our school really does do its best according to the students - we have frequent videoconferences and try to explain what we would in classrooms and also grade their work and all, but sometimes it feels ... pointless. I am sure my frustrations with it are more suited to the mental health thread at this point, so anyway. So over this whole ordeal already, and nobody knows how long this is going to take still.

[Iskaral Pust]

50 minutes ago, Buckwheat said:

I don't think such a statement would help at all.  Those who are already upstanding people will not cheat anyway, and it isn't because of some signature. Those who have the intent to cheat won't be deterred by having to sign any statement.I

Don’t discount it.  It’s a “nudge”.  See the book by Richard Thaler.  That type of psychological prompting is pretty effective.  It won’t deter a determined or systematic cheater, but it will deter many cheaters who are making a bad decision in the moment because they feel stressed and unprepared and fearful of a bad grade.  Adolescent minds don’t weigh long term consequences very well.  Using the honor code as a nudge will help reassert the long term consequences and the identification (“I think I am a person of integrity”) that will deter many from cheating. 

[mcbigski]

I learned today that if you decide you want to make some mac and cheese after already posting in the mixology thread, and then decide that you want that mac and cheese to have something of a kick, you ought not go rubbing your eyes.  Not quite the magnitude of the don't cut jalepenos pre masturbation lesson but orthogonal.

[HexMachina]

On 10/22/2020 at 8:17 PM, Buckwheat said:

I don't really understand why the school system is different in different states in Germany. Could there not at least be a centralised final exam that would be the same for the whole country, so you could compare schools at that level? I realise that this is way easier to organise in my small country than Germany, but it should be doable, right?

 

My question: Is it too much to demand of 14-/15-year-olds if I expect them to figure out how to 1) turn a picture/scan by 90° so they don't submit the writing lopsided, and 2) paste a picture into a Word document (or alternatively convert it into a PDF) after I explain them that I will allow for assignments to be submitted in Word or PDF? One group of my students clearly has no problems with that. The other one, same level of education, same age, is experiencing terrible problems with it and keep sending me emails about how they cannot submit the assignments into the e-classroom ... yeah, no, I told you jpg-s aren't supported and told you what to do ...  

This is an old post now but on the bold, part of my job requires me to review documents submitted by clients of our client and its really quite shocking how difficult some of these people find it to either submit properly scanned documents (I've had upside down pages, pages scanned down the middle so the text is cut in half, horizontal pages)or sometimes fail to submit the full document (its truly shocking how often we receive only the odd or even numbered pages of the documents). And these people are professionals who do this kind of thing regularly.

Which is all a long winded way of saying I'm not shocked that 14/15 year Olds are not managing this  

 

[Buckwheat]

15 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

This is an old post now but on the bold, part of my job requires me to review documents submitted by clients of our client and its really quite shocking how difficult some of these people find it to either submit properly scanned documents (I've had upside down pages, pages scanned down the middle so the text is cut in half, horizontal pages)or sometimes fail to submit the full document (its truly shocking how often we receive only the odd or even numbered pages of the documents). And these people are professionals who do this kind of thing regularly.

Which is all a long winded way of saying I'm not shocked that 14/15 year Olds are not managing this  

 

Most of them have figured it out now. Now we are still working on the properly signed documents - I want their first and last name in the name of the file, since getting 20 documents titled "German homework" or "Scanned Document 2021-02-04" is confusing and annoying. Oh, and we are also still working on learning how to type characters not in our alphabet - finding ä, ö, ü and ß on a keyboard is the hardest to learn.

[TheLastWolf]

I'm in a country with fairly high infection rate and deaths, and they're opening my residential/boarding institution... What do you guy feel? 

Personally, I'd love to survive this year in online classes, have Sundar Pichai help me with exams... But nope. Luck ran out 

[Toth]

Can I vent a little?

Is this weird that I'm looking at my relationships with one of my classes with a mix of "would be nice to have them in person again to have a shot at engaging them better" and "but would it be? Those who do work now at least do something instead of nothing".

I have this one class that I had taken over very late in the last semester. Their previous teacher due to Covid fears only taught them once every two weeks, if she wasn't called in sick anyway. So when I replaced her, the class after a month only had a single history lesson and I was forced to start from scratch. The atmosphere was always... weird. The loudest troublemakers made it clear that I'm just the "asshole who is taking away their free slot that day" and that they had no interest whatsoever to engage with my lessons. The following weeks were a grueling affair where lesson after lesson was an abysmal failure because the students were always doing a ruckus and barely engaging with my lessons.

The additional problem is that, as harsh as it sounds, I'm pretty sure the majority of the class is barely literate. I already had classes which had language troubles, but not to the degree that 100% of the class can't write anything down to save their lives, even those select few who are relatively eloquent verbally. I cut down tasks to filling out gap texts and half filled out tables, which is the most that I was able to expect for them to accomplish. But whenever I asked them to make notes, not even sentences, just notes, they just stared at the blank page and do nothing. I was trying some lessons focused around describing pictures or summarizing texts with pre-made sentence snippets, but even those lessons failed spectacularly both due to their aggressive disinterest and their inability to have any connection whatsoever with words. Forming arguments to express opinions, the point of my usual lessons, became a distant dream.

That it's that bad feels extremely obvious now that they are forced to turn in their notes digitally. Because they are barely decipherable. Last week they just had to summarize an already extremely simplified explanation text which boiled down to just recounting a number of events that happened and why they happened. Just an introduction I wanted to use as a groundwork to go explore the event afterwards. But nobody managed to accomplish even that. By those students who attempted it, I was asked what basic words like "outline" and "compromise" means. We are talking of 16 years olds here.

I guess the point of this rant is to express a certain amount of helplessness, but also ask what the hell the go-to solution for this is. I could just give up trying to teach history and solely focus on training the German language, but then again the class is absurdly unmotivated as it is and the majority only half-assedly engages with my lessons, if at all. I was trying to 'get them' with virtual field trips where they should explore historical sights through 360° picture galleries or comparing historical maps with the present day, but the response to those lessons was in the low single digits and even those felt extremely out of their depth, not really sure what to look for. Now imagine me attempting to hook them for something that is supposed to train their language skills, something I'm only vaguely trained in. I had two courses about how to ease the language demands in your lessons for students who have language trouble, but never to the degree that I felt able to do it with all of my lessons without an unreasonable amount of effort.

[Buckwheat]

Schools are opening again here, I had three hours with the same group of 15-year-olds today. They are ... not very used to sitting in class calmly anymore.

I asked them at first if they are glad to come back to school, and they said, nah, it was fine at home. Half an hour later, they admit they really missed each other. This group was never calm and silent, but it is much harder to make them concentrate now because they lost the usual discipline and they missed being around people, I assume, so they need to get all out on being their usual unruly and active and chatty selves.

I have another three hours with the same group tomorrow - I am sure they will be delighted to have a language class instead of sport.

That said, I am glad that I get to have at least some in-person classes. Not all yet, but ... it is an improvement.

[Buckwheat]

@Toth

I am moving this discussion here, where it is better suited than the dating thread.

Re: teaching simultaneously in person and online

I tried this. I mostly avoid it and tried only when a student specifically respectfully asked me by email. I basically logged into Zoom on my laptop that I brought into class, and sent him the materials others were getting on paper by mail. I have a habit of walking up and down the classroom, so he didn't see me the whole time, but I think he heard most of the explanation. This is really as much as I can do. I know some teachers do it in a more sophisticated manner, with the headphones and writng everything on their tablet, that is simultaneously connected to the e-whiteboard in the classroom as well as the Zoom whiteboard for the ones online ... but I fear just setting up the technology takes up way too much time for it to make any sense in a 45-minute class.

I feel sorry for you in the system where half the group is in school and half at home. At our schools, we have half the students at home and the other half in school, on a weekly rotation - but they don't cut classes in half. It is that one week, all of the 2nd graders are at home, and the next week they come to school, and the 3rd graders come; and the same for the rest.

Re: not teaching at the school you were once a student at

Interesting. I have never heard anything like it. Plenty of students do their placements/practice at schools they once went to (I did too, part of it), and generally the former teachers welcome the former student warmly.

[Toth]

Today I utterly lost my cool and... I'm not sure where to go from there. I guess I can be glad it's Friday, so I have a whole weekend to try to calm down the anger that left me shaking.

First up: Today is the first day where the mask obligation in Germany is lifted. While we have the highest infection number we ever had. Awesome. Yay, us! Apparently our economy can handle a pandemic or a war, but not both, so we have decided that the pandemic is over.
I'm arriving at school and the mask apparently became overnight a social stigma. Only very few students, usually those who already had very few friends, still wear the mask and are incessantly mocked for it. So I started out immediately wedging myself in and shouting at the bullies as I completely lost my mind straight away.
Then I arrived in the staff room. Most colleagues also without mask. Asshole extroverted sports teacher came in and gushed to me, to ME, about how awesome it is that nobody wears a mask anymore. I snarl at him "Good for you!" and leave.
I arrive in my classroom. The entire class arrives without mask and all of them immediately pester me why I still wear a mask, after all it's not necessary anymore. I, still completely out of my mind, walk up to the first one and shout: "It went very well for me wearing my mask while you never managed to wear yours properly, so to me this is still the exact same situation and I don't need to justify myself to you!"
Lessons start. I barely manage to calm down, the class is completely bonkers. 12th grade. Those idiots are supposed to get a high school degree next year. They all show aggressive disinterest to the topic and my brainstorming about revolutions was met with a barrage of bullshit answers, made up nonsense and movie plots until I had to abandon my idea, just handed them two worksheets and told them to shut up and write till half o'clock.
THEN while they are working at it, the 13th grade shows up. Or at least the part that fell from the changing table a couple dozen times as kids.The thing is: To my utter bafflement, the 13th grade this week turned completely bonkers. It's their last week of lessons before the finals, which traditionally means 'motto week', where students come dressed up to different themes each day. A harmless fun tradition. Not so for some students from our school. They completely misunderstood the purpose and somehow think it's a 5-day "Abi-Gag" in which they are free to march through the school, forcing their way into classrooms to terrorize students and teachers with water pistols and confetti and when the doors are closed, they hammer and throw themselves against them until they either open or the hinges break.
This is the fifth fucking day of this nonsense.
I came out and shouted at them that they have no reason celebrate before they passed their finals and that they'll look like utter morons if they sit here again next year because they failed all of them. It then turned into a shouting match when some dude two heads taller and twice my width erected himself in front of me, claiming they are allowed to do that and that I'm the one overstepping the line for talking like this to him.
Deciding that I'd probably loose if he threw a punch at me, I whispered "Oh go on, have your fun!", left him standing there and went down to the principal's office and demanded consequences for the students, but was only told that they will put a stop to this. A stop. Now. On the last fucking day of this insanity. When I came back and my students mockingly cheered me on, my noticed my hand was shaking as I was typing the students' answers into the computer.

The lessons after that were thankfully very quiet and the 13th grade was gone, though I still noted the mask issue marking some students as pariahs. Now I'm back at home with a sore throat and hatred for the world.

[Zorral]

I'm so sorry to read this, Toth.  How utterly awful, and no, this shouldn't be the case.

Here too, things are insane in education, like so many other 'service' professions.  Teachers are quitting in herds.

 

[Toth]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

I'm so sorry to read this, Toth.  How utterly awful, and no, this shouldn't be the case.

Here too, things are insane in education, like so many other 'service' professions.  Teachers are quitting in herds.

Thanks. Though I have to insist that I didn't want to make this about the general situation of teachers, it's mostly my personal issue with things that had reached a boiling point and caused me to act this unprofessionally.

Seriously, it's weird. Usually my problem is that I am far too lenient and take far too much shit without reacting much at all, so it's weird when I fly off the handle so much within such a short time frame. And to be honest, it makes me feel rather helpless because once I am at that point, I'm unable to impose necessary measures and allow students to walk all over me. Today it was pretty much the same, I was just outwardly angry about it.

[Zorral]

Like institutions whose organization, structures, morale, mores, behaviors and expectations of acceptable/unacceptable, by who or whom, without a regular examination and rehall, we as individuals within those institutions all have breaking points, Toth.  That you have hit your personal breaking point is more than understandable.  What to do about it, w/i These Times, is evidently beyond our personal influence it seems all too often, so that contributes enormously to our personal breaking points.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 4/1/2022 at 9:35 AM, Toth said:

Today I utterly lost my cool and... I'm not sure where to go from there. I guess I can be glad it's Friday, so I have a whole weekend to try to calm down the anger that left me shaking.

First up: Today is the first day where the mask obligation in Germany is lifted. While we have the highest infection number we ever had. Awesome. Yay, us! Apparently our economy can handle a pandemic or a war, but not both, so we have decided that the pandemic is over.
I'm arriving at school and the mask apparently became overnight a social stigma. Only very few students, usually those who already had very few friends, still wear the mask and are incessantly mocked for it. So I started out immediately wedging myself in and shouting at the bullies as I completely lost my mind straight away.

This is interesting--I teach at a university in the U.S., and our mask policy went away about three weeks ago. Some students wear masks, some don't--but no one has ever been shamed for doing it. That's more likely to happen over here when you go out and wear a mask in a general public setting.

Though I stopped wearing a mask while teaching, I certainly have vocally supported those who want to remain masked. 

Sorry about the rest of the B.S.--hang in there, friend.

[DMC]

24 minutes ago, Centrist Simon Steele said:

This is interesting--I teach at a university in the U.S., and our mask policy went away about three weeks ago. Some students wear masks, some don't--but no one has ever been shamed for doing it.

Yeah I'd expect that behavior to be much more prevalent in high schools compared to universities, at least here in the states.  Which is part of why I've never been interested at all in teaching high school.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

19 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yeah I'd expect that behavior to be much more prevalent in high schools compared to universities, at least here in the states.  Which is part of why I've never been interested at all in teaching high school.

I sit in a lot of high school classrooms observing student teachers--and I'm always pretty surprised how easy going kids (and adults) are to those who still wear masks. I'm sure if I were there every day, I might think differently! 

Side note--I sometimes think I could go back to secondary schools when I finish my PhD in the fall. I'm in a position that is currently being converted to tenure track for me, but the pay is about 20,000 less than I'd make as a high school teacher! Ugh.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Centrist Simon Steele said:

but the pay is about 20,000 less than I'd make as a high school teacher! Ugh.

Yeesh that sucks man!

[Teng Ai Hui]

@Crazy Old Guy It's pinyin (without the tone marks).

téng ài huī 

疼爱晖

[Toth]

Well, sometimes you win, sometimes you loose.

Just want to state that after my abysmal day on Friday I had a really, really good day on Monday even though I had twice the lessons and one with one of the classes mentioned last time. Wanted to write that back then, but was too stupidly busy all week.

At the end of the day you need those bright spots to carry on.