When I was younger, I used to hate chores like making the bed. My thinking was, if I'm just going to sleep in my bed and mess it up again, why should I even make it in the first place? I felt like that was a perfectly logical argument to make, but it never seemed convincing to my mom and dad.
As I get older, I realize that putting things in their proper place can actually save you time and effort later on down the road. Even though I still hate making the bed, folding my clothes, or organizing my desk at work, these tasks save me a lot of effort and stress. I'm not perfect and I still slack off on my chores, but it's not a principled stance like the 6-year-old Ian, it's just pure laziness in the moment.
Sunday, Cyd and I spent hours and hours dealing with the onslaught of leaves that have attacked our house. The beautiful oak and maple trees that first drew us to the house have now taken their revenge. There were leaves stacked on top of leaves stacked on top of older, colder, and wetter leaves. The wet leaves resisted the leaf blower, so the majority of the work had to be done the old fashioned way: with a rake.
I was also up on the roof scooping frigid, wet, stinky leaves out of the gutters. My hands were cold, my back hurt, and the job was a pain in the butt. Cleaning out the gutters is never a fun task, but at near freezing conditions on a windy day it was especially terrible. Even though I would have rather been doing something else, the gutters needed to be cleaned.
Doing those fall chores Sunday put something about teaching in perspective for me. First, it felt really good to get the job done, even though it was difficult to make myself work. While I didn't enjoy raking leaves or cleaning gutters, I did enjoy looking back and seeing the progress I had made. It was tangible and real progress. Every foot of the gutters that I cleaned was a foot that I didn't have to go back and clean again. It felt good to be making progress.
Same thing with raking the leaves into piles. It is satisfying to watch the piles grow and consolidate and to watch the green grass show through on the part you have finished. You can see the unraked areas shrinking and can watch your job inch toward completion. When you start the job it seems like it will take forever, but you just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and keep pulling more and more leaves together until you finally finish.
It's really the same thing with teaching. There are a lot of tasks that
are really boring, that you don't want to do, and that take a long
time. Even though the tasks are no fun, there is a great sense
of accomplishment when you finally finish. There's nothing like when you grade that
30th and final science test and your desk is clear again. I never
thought I would be so excited about having a clear desk.
This week was the last week of the trimester and a number of kids were rushing to get their grades up before report cards go home. Students are allowed to retake tests and redo work that they got a bad score on, so a lot of kids were coming in to make up lost work this week. The problem is that the work was from 3, 4, maybe 6 weeks ago, and students struggle to remember information for that long. It is hard enough to get them to remember something for 15 minutes, much less remember crucial information for weeks or months on end. Waiting until the 11th hour is not a smart way to get ready for the ball.
As sad as it was, I saw some kids retake tests multiple times without improving their scores. They simply did not remember the material well enough and did not prepare for the retake. Whatever gaps in understanding they had the first time were still there the second time around. They may be working hard now, but learning requires sustained effort, and there simply wasn't enough effort. It would be like me raking the top layer of leaves on my lawn, but leaving all the wet, cold, and old leaves underneath. That simply doesn't get the job done.
I really dislike grading as a way to assess learning, but it is interesting how motivated some kids are by grades. When it comes down to it, there are a number of kids who will simply slack off without some extrinsic motivator like a grade. I understand that. I wish that these kids were intrinsically motivated to learn - and some are - but there is a large group that needs the carrot and the stick to get moving.
The problem with grades is that they cut off at an arbitrary point in time and only work as motivators in a short time frame. The kids who are only motivated by grades only start to pay attention in the last few weeks of the term, when they realize they are almost out of time. By that point, they have missed so much of the fundamental knowledge that they are usually out of luck. You can't just do chores once a trimester and expect to end up with a clean house.
I don't think that grades provide meaningful and sustained motivation for students, but I don't know that anything would do the trick. I know that I am reaching most of my kids, but there are some students who want to do the bare minimum just to eke by. I hope I can teach them the value of regular practice, but it might be something that has to happen later on in life, when their brains are a bit more developed.
Let's just hope that next trimester they keep up on their chores a bit better.
