This month, we’re discussing Paul Tough’s “Getting an A,” a chapter from his outstanding book, The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us
Great article and well written! I found it very inspiring. It also reminded me of my husband because he was never much of a test taker and no one motivated him like this excellent teacher motivated Ivonne. He returned to get his BSE when he was unemployed in 2014 but was discouraged in Calculus. The teacher literally told the class that half of you would fail. To me that was a crappy teacher, but it was enough for my husband to accept a job and leave school again. Treisman sounds like a great guy.
This article was so great. I loved seeing how Treisman is working so hard to bring good teaching into university classes (it's needed everywhere, but it seems that it's harder to break from traditional models in post-secondary). I especially loved seeing him incorporate socio-emotional learning into his classroom and content. And, as someone mentioned in the annotations, he is such an awesomely reflective educator.
It has left me wondering about the ways the different forces affect each individual student and, by extension, what lessons should we take away? Is it primarily about the emotional support? Primarily about the teaching styles/structures/etc? How did it play out for other students who weren't well prepared by high school math (i.e., how much of it was Ivonne)? <--I guess that last question Tough could potentially answer
Another question I have is why have the really innovative teaching happening primarily outside of official class times?
this read was very relatable - i connected with the stories of ivonne and uri in many ways. it was a couple years ago that i was a student at any institution but the memories (and traumas) of that are still very fresh.
what the education institution does so effectively is gaslight very bright and capable students into believing that their "failures" are reflective of their potential and capabilities. screaming from the mountain top, it is not!
what paul does so well is not make ivonne's experiences a cliche of marginalized-student-works-hard-struggles-then-by-magic-overcomes-it. what resonated with me most is the scene where ivonne cries out of frustration in the moments leading up to her midterm. the image strikes me as the most human thing, that sometimes our own head gets to us and we can't help me to release what's bothering us the most.
[questions for paul tough & the group]
- while i admire uri's approach to education, how sustainable is it for educators in the current state of things? educators are already spread very thin and placing the responsibility on the educators to provide more to their students (at no extra cost!) seems like a one way ticket to burn out.
- i'm a bit conflicted by uri's way of teaching freshmen calculus, especially in how he introduced a very advanced theory that was intentionally meant to challenge students in ways they haven't before. does this approach make the subject more inaccessible? what are your thoughts on this?
Regarding the opening with the advanced theory, I think it has great *potential* to create a hook or need-to-know, but there has got to be SOOO much support at the very beginning. Productive struggle, not abject struggle. I know Ivonne turned it around, but it seems like it'd be more effective for more students if after "getting them off balance" and "shaking them up" they experienced an early success. There has got to be a way to structure it so that this can happen--like chunking it into different steps they can master on the way to the whole thing?
Great article and well written! I found it very inspiring. It also reminded me of my husband because he was never much of a test taker and no one motivated him like this excellent teacher motivated Ivonne. He returned to get his BSE when he was unemployed in 2014 but was discouraged in Calculus. The teacher literally told the class that half of you would fail. To me that was a crappy teacher, but it was enough for my husband to accept a job and leave school again. Treisman sounds like a great guy.
This article was so great. I loved seeing how Treisman is working so hard to bring good teaching into university classes (it's needed everywhere, but it seems that it's harder to break from traditional models in post-secondary). I especially loved seeing him incorporate socio-emotional learning into his classroom and content. And, as someone mentioned in the annotations, he is such an awesomely reflective educator.
It has left me wondering about the ways the different forces affect each individual student and, by extension, what lessons should we take away? Is it primarily about the emotional support? Primarily about the teaching styles/structures/etc? How did it play out for other students who weren't well prepared by high school math (i.e., how much of it was Ivonne)? <--I guess that last question Tough could potentially answer
Another question I have is why have the really innovative teaching happening primarily outside of official class times?
[my first impressions]
this read was very relatable - i connected with the stories of ivonne and uri in many ways. it was a couple years ago that i was a student at any institution but the memories (and traumas) of that are still very fresh.
what the education institution does so effectively is gaslight very bright and capable students into believing that their "failures" are reflective of their potential and capabilities. screaming from the mountain top, it is not!
what paul does so well is not make ivonne's experiences a cliche of marginalized-student-works-hard-struggles-then-by-magic-overcomes-it. what resonated with me most is the scene where ivonne cries out of frustration in the moments leading up to her midterm. the image strikes me as the most human thing, that sometimes our own head gets to us and we can't help me to release what's bothering us the most.
[questions for paul tough & the group]
- while i admire uri's approach to education, how sustainable is it for educators in the current state of things? educators are already spread very thin and placing the responsibility on the educators to provide more to their students (at no extra cost!) seems like a one way ticket to burn out.
- i'm a bit conflicted by uri's way of teaching freshmen calculus, especially in how he introduced a very advanced theory that was intentionally meant to challenge students in ways they haven't before. does this approach make the subject more inaccessible? what are your thoughts on this?
Regarding the opening with the advanced theory, I think it has great *potential* to create a hook or need-to-know, but there has got to be SOOO much support at the very beginning. Productive struggle, not abject struggle. I know Ivonne turned it around, but it seems like it'd be more effective for more students if after "getting them off balance" and "shaking them up" they experienced an early success. There has got to be a way to structure it so that this can happen--like chunking it into different steps they can master on the way to the whole thing?
Who’s first? Please share your first impressions, questions, and discussion topics here!