Over the past week I have had a few conversations about the nature of the school's current 7th grade class. One teacher who taught them last year confessed that he just found them "hard to like". I knew exactly what he meant. That very day I had given them their term exam and as I monitored the exam, I went down the rows of students and ticked off in my mind if they seemed to care at all about what I was teaching. Half I ticked off as not caring. At the time I thought, 'For most of them what is there to really care about - balancing chemical equations, the nature of acids & bases, physical properties of matter and how to calculate density.' Really - who cares? I felt kind of lucky that I had ticked off half that did seem to care. But now I was thinking it wasn't just the ultimate uselessness for most of them of what I was teaching. It was an attitude of not caring that permeated all their studies. I thought back to my science lab partner (a very creative and energetic elementary science teacher) from 2 years ago who had this group in 5th grade. She used to come back to the lab after a class with them complaining of how frustrating it was to try anything "fun". An element in the class would be intentionally obtuse or disruptive and prefer the putative peer approval for their shenanigans over any possible 'fun' they could have in learning something. Yesterday I was talking with the 6th grade/art teacher about what she would be teaching next year. She said they wanted her to teach 8th grade, but she really didn't want that group. The conversation took the same turn toward their attitude that made it hard to like teaching many of them.
What to do with this group for the last 9 weeks of my teaching career has been playing in my mind for a week now as I plan my last term. Today, as I was googling somethings I had made note of while reading Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs, I came across David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement address to a college class ( http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words ). The ultimate message was about choosing to "stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out". Institutionalized education should be a major part of the foundation preparing you to remain aware and skillfully alive in one's approaching adulthood. Wallace talks about finding a type of cognitive control. He calls it freedom. He refers to one type as 'the freedom to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation.' This is where I think a lot of the 7th graders are. They have embraced this "kingdom". Soon (hopefully for most of them) they will begin to become aware of the approaching responsibilities of adulthood, but for now the more important freedom Wallace exposited ('the freedom that involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people') is beyond them.
I'm now thinking I should end the year with how I start the 8th grade school year - exploring Piaget's stages of cognitive development. Let them test some of the pre-schoolers with Piaget conservation tasks. Give them a concrete operations perspective task, and then let them try to work out the factors that effect the rate of swing of a pendulum. The goal would be that by experiencing how their brain is developing cognitive functions, the thought will germinate that they need to pay attention to the direction and pace of the development of their thinking. Probably the ones that get it will be the half who already care and the other half will remain blissful in their 'skull-sized kingdom'. Most of them will at least have some fun playing with the pre-schoolers when they give the conservation tasks.
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