Connecting to Individual Students

February 8, 2008

As a child could you recite all your times tables faster than everyone in the classroom? Did you live to practice the twenty designated vocabulary words each week? Was anticipation racking your brain wondering what exciting science project your teacher had in store for you? Did school always make sense to you?

If you answered yes to all of the preceding questions I would be astonished. But this is the student that all teachers secretly hope for: the accomplished, internally motivated, eager learner. Wait…Is it? Perhaps it is that we hope our ways of teaching will inspire such enthusiasm. But the equation of successful teaching is not as simple as…

Create great lesson plan + Implement it = Success.

In contrast to this naïve formula, I believe that the relationship between individual students and their teachers is one of the biggest determining factors that facilitate successful learning experiences.

I’d been working with Wade on his math facts for weeks. Personable, friendly, sometimes shy, and an extremely polite third grader, Wade was working with me because his teacher decided that he needed extra help catching up with peers who could recite math facts faster than he could. (Not to mention the administrations desire to boost standardized test scores.) That’s the basic story. What was behind his struggle was surely more complicated and nothing I could fix.

So we started with flash cards. The good old standby that reminds me of the countless times I, myself, used flash cards and wondered if they really ever taught me squat. After weeks of flash cards, the progress was minimal.

Everyday, I try to strike up a conversation with Wade hoping to figure out just what makes him tick. Could there be some answer to the riddle of his brain that might unlock math facts for him. Wade tells me that he spends his weekends working on the family farm helping with the cattle. Mind you this boy is about 4 feet tall and skinny as a rail. At his age I thought weeding dandelions was hard work let alone rounding up cattle. I start to wonder if labels of school failure have been misused. This kid has more practical knowledge about cattle than many of his “city” peers who already have their times tables memorized.

Drawing from my own experience, I thought back to math class with Mr. Tiberio where I had found success. One of the most notable things about the way he taught was that he always made sure we understood the rationale behind math concepts. His idea was that if we simply memorized something we would never truly understand it. Well if that worked for a high school math class, why couldn’t it work for Wade?

And so our conversation grew. As Wade and I worked on math facts we started to draw a relationship between his work with cows and the numbers. He told me about injecting cows with 2 ccs of an antibiotic. So we thought about how much antibiotic he would need for 20 cows. We talked about starting with 12 ccs and dividing it among 3 cows. The practical applications started becoming apparent and the math facts started clicking.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all teachers had more time to develop these necessary relationships? Too many students have no idea 1) why they are learning what they are learning and 2) how it could actually apply to their own life. In a time when standardized testing seems to guide our schools we have seemingly forgotten the importance of knowing our students and helping them understand why it’s all worth it. Or more importantly letting them tell us what they are curious about!

Picture taken: December 2007 Ice Storm in Central City, NE