Only barefoot or wearing sandals...
I've had several unsuccessful teaching moments, most of which have been unmemorable. My days of repeating the same lesson using 4 different approaches are far from numbered. I think Friday, though, was one of those memorable days in which I realized how much my kids had been cheated in their education.
My fifth period had amazed me lately. I'd been absent two days because of illness and had gotten really positive sub reports. To top it off, they'd taken a quiz on atomic structures and scored a 79% average (that was 10-100s, 10-80s, and only 7 below that).
However, when the time came to teach them electron orbitals it all kind of fell apart. I have several theories regarding their lack of success in this department. The first was my approach, it wasn't engaging (not going to lie), and that's because I learned it that way. The second theory is that in order to place the electrons in their proper orbitals one must be able to subtract small numbers.
I'm not picking on my students when I say this. I know for a fact that when given a paper and pencil, they can subtract in a matter of seconds. But when asked on the spot ("What's 10 - 6"), they often resort to using their fingers. After showing them what I expected them to do, I walked around the room to monitor their progress. They had to fit 2 electrons in the first shell, 8 electrons in the second shell, and 18 in the third shell. The only problem was, whenever they had an odd number of electrons (read: they didn't fill the shells) it all fell apart. The first two were easy enough ("I know what 13 - 2 is, Miss.") but anything after that was just plain difficult. At one point I had to borrow six extra fingers from another student (damn sulfur) to get one of my slower students to understand the process.
What happened to that subtraction standard from back in the first grade? At this point, my kids should be able to do that in their heads (along with basic multiplication, addition, and division with fractions). It's no wonder they find my class so difficult. Anyone with basic math skills would understand the concept of speed (s=d/t), they would understand forces (f = m x a), and they would know how many of Sulfur's electrons would fit in the last orbital after using up the first two (16-10 = 6).
Not only is it unfair to expect them to catch up after 7 years of falling behind; to compete with others who have had a satisfactory education, it is ridiculous to punish them for their inability to do so. Maybe my kids would be more invested in their educations if they weren't shuffled around like inmates every morning. If they had extracurricular activities that demonstrated to them the glorious opportunities offered by education. It's not their fault that they're behind, and it's about time the adults owned up to their misdeeds. The educational system has done nothing but fail them for the last 9 years, so they feel no obligation towards it.
Maybe if we teach them to add and subtract when they're six, we won't have to put all of our financial resources towards catching them up when they're 13. Maybe if they learn to read when they're in kindergarten, they can take art and computers instead of "Creative Expression" and "Space Science" when they're in middle school. Maybe if we all just did our job, our kids wouldn't hate us so much for shoving education down their throats.
Then again, maybe I'll just have to wear sandals through the rest of this unit.
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