Why are These Kids so Dumb?

It’s a lament I hear (too) often from my teacher colleagues.

Why can’t my students identify the main idea in a paragraph? It’s right there in the first sentence!

Why can’t my students follow the steps in the equation? They have the steps in front of them and we practiced it for three days!

Why can’t they follow directions?

Hearing complaints like this is as normal as hearing colleagues greet one another in the morning. It’s part of the culture of our school, that the students are behind and they’re unable and/or unwilling to complete the tasks we teachers put in front of them.

I’ve struggled with this issue. On one hand, there’s legitimacy to some of these complaints. The academics in my school are less than stellar. Along with that come behavioral, involvement, and other issues that make the task of teaching that much harder than it already is. On the other hand, the reasons for this are so complex that any attempt by an individual teacher to solve it inevitably ends in frustration. And sometimes the issue is simple and the solution available but the will isn’t there. On another hand, there’s the problem of teacher’s beliefs and their effect on the students. A teacher might not be able to alone believe a student to graduation, but a teacher can believe a student into dropping out. That’s already too many hands, and I could delve further into this bizarre aspect of the surreal world of teaching. But that’s besides the point.

I don’t know what the point is. So here’s a scenario that happened yesterday that exhibits the highs and lows of teaching, the confusion and bewilderment that is my everyday life.

I teach a class titled 21st Century Literature Strategies II. It is a scripted program bought from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I’m pretty sure they come around in a wagon with fancy writing on the side driven by a tall, charismatic man. This class is for students who score below 1000 on a reading-ability test. It is the epitome of school district’s buying expensive programs from textbook publishers in order to address a “need.” It is checking off an item on a to-do list without ever following up to see if it is done. This also is beyond the scope of this post, but suffice it to say I have intelligent kids in a class that labels them “below.”

Today I started off my class with two questions on the board:

What’s one specific way you can show respect to your grandparents’ generation? 

What’s one specific way your grandparents’ generation can show respect to you?

I often get awkward silence when asking a question to the class. I’ve been in classes as a student where this happens so there’s nothing significant in this alone. However, this silence is significant when it reveals students don’t understand. It’s sometimes easy to interpret this type of silence since no one will say anything at all. Or if someone does, it’s a few words and then a “Never mind.”

In each class, after the awkward silence, I had nearly every student say they didn’t understand the question. As the day progressed and the periods moved along, I grew more frustrated. The same thing as yesterday is the same thing as today which is the same thing as tomorrow.

Here it is: how the fuck is it possible to not understand those questions? To me, they are simple. There are no big words; there are no complex concepts. The questions aren’t worded in a difficult way. Having to explain questions on this low level is a waste of time and evidence of…something? I don’t know, but I view a student not understanding these questions as I would view someone who willfully walked into heavy traffic. The stupidity of it reeks.

And that’s where I might be wrong.

One student said she didn’t know how to answer the question because she didn’t know what her grandparent’s generation did.

In my final class, a girl asked me to explain the question and when I asked her to tell me what part she didn’t understand, she said, “Everything.” I wanted to do two things: walk out, and begin explaining every single word. “What” is a question word that asks for information. “One” is a number, the first after zero. “Specific” means something precise instead of general. I wanted to do this in order to drive home the point that this girl should be able to interpret those questions. Easily.

I might be wrong there too.

The girl in my final class did finally understand and her answers were awesome. What worked? Another student gave her an example. I told the student I couldn’t explain it. The girl next to her said, Let me try. She didn’t explain it so that the first girl could come to the answer herself, which is what I do because I think giving an example leads them to close to the answer without them getting there themselves (I might be wrong there too). She gave her an example. And that’s what helped everyone in the other classes: one student giving an example.

Setting my frustration and bewilderment aside, quality learning happened in this situation. Throughout the day I engaged the students in conversation. I collaborated with other students to help those that didn’t understand. I asked questions to understand why they didn’t understand. Once the students were able to answer the questions, we had an in-depth conversation about it. They learned something.

But I don’t understand why they needed to start where they needed to start. I still can’t wrap my mind around it. Even if you don’t know how your grandparents were, can’t you make inferences based on your experiences with other adults? Am I expecting too much by expecting them to make those deeper connections?

This issue is too much for me. Maybe this is all frustration. Maybe I need to be more ok with where the students are and more ok with meeting them there. Maybe I’m holding them to standards I was held to. Maybe and maybe and maybe and maybe. Maybe I don’t need to understand; maybe I just need to do what’s required in the situation. Maybe. Or maybe I’m the dumb one.