Undoing the Work of Other Teachers

It’s an inescapable fact of education that what we do as teachers today affects the work of other teachers later in a student’s life. That means we inherit strengths a good teacher built, which is great. It also means sometimes we have to fix mistakes other teachers made.

This fact came to mind last week as my classes worked on proportions. Some students referred to something called the “Fish Method.” Let’s use this proportion:

Start with the number in a fraction with x (in this case, 8). Draw a line from the 8 diagonally up to the 2 (multiply those numbers), curve down to the 3 (divide by that), then diagonally up to the x (your answer equals x). What you’ve drawn looks kind of like a fish.

To be clear, this isn’t a “mistake” I had to fix. Rather, it’s a case of students clinging to a method that only works in a limited number of cases. For instance, proportions like these had them flailing.

We had to discuss other methods that had broader scope. This isn’t a bad thing—I’m all for discussing multiple methods and their respective limitations. But whenever something like this comes up, I try to tread lightly. I don’t want to say that their other teacher was wrong, bad, or not as cool as I am.

There are other situations, though (not like this proportions situation), where that’s exactly what I’m thinking. It even happened to me as a student. When I was very young, I was told by a teacher (a student teacher, to be fair) that “it’s” always has an apostrophe, whether the contraction or the possessive. Yes, really. It took me a few years to (a) figure out she’d been wrong, and (b) correct my bad habit.

I’m sure it can go the other way, too. A teacher instills all kinds of wonderful things in a student, and another teacher down the line destroys all that work.

Is there a way to avoid it? Maybe not. There will always be human error, whether intentional or not. All I can do is try not to be one of those “bad” teachers, and try to repair damage where I find it.

Have you observed or been affected by cases of teachers working against each other? How did it impact you?

The Teenage Human as Observed in the Wild

… the “Wild” being a local junior high school, and the specimens under study being around fourteen years of age.

This list will be random and undoubtedly incomplete.

• Teenagers have a dysfunctional sense of auditory volume. No, I don’t mean they play their music too loud (because, well, so do I). They talk too loud when they don’t want the teacher to hear them and too soft when they do.

• They have an amazing capacity to disregard (or at least not notice) the needs of anyone other than themselves.

• They have an amazing capacity to assist with others’ needs with no prompting or incentive.

• They still say thank you.

• They leave messes just like they do at home.

• They clean up better than they do at home.

• Most of them can grade their own work on the honor system just fine.

• Many are happy to read with any spare moment in class.

• A few are Rubik’s Cube geniuses.

• Some broadcast their emotions from fifty feet away.

• Some have very non-emotive faces. You have to watch their eyes.

• They will surpass your expectations.

• They will live down to your expectations.

• They will smash your expectations.

• They see each other differently than we see them.

• They don’t mind geeky adults (as long as the geeky adults care).

• They laugh at dirty jokes.

• They laugh at clean jokes.

• They laugh at dumb jokes that have been retold since they were in first grade.

• They don’t know what to do when they’re angry.

• They don’t know what to do when they’re sad.

• They know exactly what to do.

• They don’t want to be treated like children.

• They don’t want to be treated like adults (not 100% full-time, at least).

• Some already have to act like adults.

• Some think they’re more on top of things than they are.

• Some think they’re less capable than they are.

• Even the quietest have distinctive, interesting personalities. “Mary Sue” and the bland, empty-beaker persona don’t exist … and if they appear to, you’re not looking hard enough.

The Name Game: Go Anglocentric or Go Home?

Naming characters is something every writer has to deal with, and every writer has strategies. Some use baby name sites/books to find names with certain meanings, some draw from names in their own lives, and some (hello, fellow sci-fi/fantasy writers!) make up names from scratch, among other methods.

I want to talk about those character names today and ignore the making-it-up situation, assuming we’re in some kind of contemporary setting.

First, a day-job detour.

I’ve heard some people bemoan the lack of time-honored, long-standing names like John and David among YA characters. As I approached the start of this school year, I looked at my class lists. Out of about 200 kids, all around 14 years old, I have no one named John. No one named David. No Sue or Jane. I do have a couple of Josephs (one goes by his initials), and a handful of Annas-or-Anns. A couple of Nathans and Andrews.

You know what else I have repeats of? Braden (or Braeden). Cole. Hunter. Parker. Brianna. And all kinds of variations on McCall, McKenzie, McKayla and the like.

So we can conclude that these names were trendy fourteen years ago. Maybe that trendiness didn’t hold, so by the time our books are published, a teenager with that name may seem out of place. In that sense, the advice to use more “tried-and-true” names makes sense.

But here’s something else from the day job that happened just yesterday. We were discussing a couple of story problems in class. If you’re in education, you probably know that in the last 10-20 years, textbook writers have made a transparent effort to include more culturally diverse names in things like story problems.

One problem involved a girl named Pietra. A student said, “That’s not a real name!” I said it was (and a boy named Pieter in the class noted it’s the female version of his name). We moved on. Another problem involved a girl named Pilar. Someone said that wasn’t a real name, either.

The Hispanic kids in class weren’t very amused, and neither was I.

Let’s bring this back around to writing.

Regarding one of my early stories, several people commented that I was trying too hard to make “unique” names for my MCs. I wasn’t—at least, I didn’t think I was. I’d chosen one Hispanic name, and one somewhat related to a Hispanic name. Not quite as straightforward as Rosa or Carmen, but Hispanic readers didn’t bat an eye. Both were names I’ve encountered in real life, so I didn’t think of them as rare.

The thing is, I didn’t state anything else in the book about the characters having any Hispanic heritage. It wasn’t the focus of the story. I’m clarifying some of that in a rewrite, but here’s my question:

Should we only use ethnically/culturally diverse names in stories deeply rooted in cultural identity or discovery? Do we stick to Tom, Dick, and Harry otherwise because that’s more “comfortable” for the caucasian majority?

Back to those sci-fi and fantasy writers. We have to be careful not to create names that are a reading-roadblock … the kinds of names that make our readers desperate to either buy or sell some vowels. Similarly, in contemporary settings, we probably don’t want to pick names that are difficult for the mental reading voice to get a pronunciation for. It interrupts the flow of the story, and no one wants that.

But is there anything wrong with a character named Pilar? Or Dai-Ling? Or Tiave?

Because those are real names.

(Of course, if we create such characters, making them culturally authentic is another matter entirely … but maybe one we should think about challenging ourselves with. Myself included.)

Who Sets Your Potential and Decides When You’ve Met It?

Sometimes I get students who come into my class saying, “I love math! It’s my favorite subject, and I’m good at it.” It’s awesome when I do, but those students are definitely the minority. More often than not, students come in somewhat indifferent about math. Just something they have to get through, most of them with a mix of good and bad experiences under their belts.

Then there are those who come in with “I’m bad at math” oozing from every pore.

Some of them really do struggle, and for a variety of reasons. Learning disabilities, interruptions in their education, a string of teachers who made it impossible for them to learn one way or another … But several say they’re bad at math—loudly—but I don’t believe them. Their work on quizzes or answers to questions in class show they have plenty of potential.

Says who? Says me.

Maybe they’re holding themselves to an impossible standard of perfection, and anything less means being “bad” at it. Maybe it takes effort, and anything that isn’t easy must be something they’re “bad” at. Maybe they just don’t want the image of being good at math (or anything school-related). Maybe something else.

Whatever the reason, I can’t sit back and ignore the potential, just like I can’t ignore the potential of kids who do struggle.

Observations like this got me thinking about potential as a whole, though. Like I said, I’m the one who’s declaring an unmet potential in many of these cases. Unless I can get the student to buy in and agree that the potential is there, though, it’ll probably remain unmet. I can force some small increments at the beginning, pointing out their successes to build confidence, but I can’t force the level of self-belief it takes to achieve more.

I can see theoretical potential, but the student has to take control at some point to make it real.

Then I got to thinking about meeting potential. It’s kind of a stupid concept, isn’t it? Has anyone ever said, “You’ve met your potential—you’re done”?

Maybe some superstar athletes, who’ve reached the pinnacle of their sport, achieved its highest honors (multiple times), and retire while they’re on top. But even then, are they done? Or do they turn the level of potential they’ve reached to another target?

How do you meet your potential, when it should always be dancing ahead of you, just out of reach?

I may have mentioned before, but when I was in elementary school, everyone said I’d be a doctor. Not any particular reason other than that I was a brainy little thing, and becoming doctors is what smart people do. There are those who thought becoming a math teacher was a waste of my potential.

Was it? I’m the first to admit my academic pathway was not perfect, and there are things I’d like to have done differently. I missed opportunities. I made mistakes. But is the end result a waste? Maybe I just had a ways to go to narrow the gap to that initial potential.

After a few years of teaching, I went off to enter the world of deaf education. It added more challenges, maybe pushed me closer to that initial potential everyone saw in 10-year-old me. In the midst of that, I began writing novels, activating a part of myself that had been quietly lurking in the corners. Definitely a stretch.

I signed with an agent, and now I’m to be published. All while I’m still a math teacher.

Is this enough to equal my original “going to be a doctor” potential?

That’s the wrong question.

My potential is what it is. What I do with it can’t be quantified and compared to earlier expectations. It’s not something for me to reach, but rather something to keep me moving forward.

People in my life help me see my potential, and in the end, I’m the only one who can decide whether I’m moving toward or away from it.

So that’s what I’ll try to do with my students … help them see their potential, point them in the right direction, show them that its current position is something that can be achieved. All the while, making sure they know that by the time they get to that mark, their potential will have moved forward even more.

And that the only way to not “meet” their potential is if they refuse to move at all.

What is Genius?

I admit, I’ve been called a genius before.

I also admit this was by young-ish people who knew I controlled their grade. Or who were easily impressed by my mathematical abilities.

As much as I appreciate the compliment, I’m no genius. Not by official standards, anyway. I test well, but not that well. I have moments of cleverness, but too many of them strike me long after the needed moment. I do plenty of stupid things.

You know, I bet certified geniuses do stupid things sometimes, too.

And I bet to some students, I am a genius … in a way that has nothing to do with MENSA.

So unofficially, what is genius?

It’s not about passing tests (and I say that as an ace test-taker … near meaningless in my opinion). It’s not necessarily about book-smarts, though there’s nothing wrong with having those. Traditionally, book-smarts is about regurgitating information, re-creating someone else’s genius.

To me, a genius is someone whose ideas or works spark a feeling of newness, differentness, freshness in my mind. Sounds a lot like having creativity and imagination, and those may be part of it. But I’m not sure they’re required, either.

I think that spark of newness explains why some students call me a genius. I may talk about mathematics (or anything else) in a way they haven’t heard before. It sparks a new connection.

Under that definition, genius is relative. It depends on our own experiences, expectations, and priorities. No membership cards, no certifications … just our own acknowledgement of each other.

I kind of like it better that way. Maybe I’m a genius to some of my students. Many of them have been geniuses to me.

Who are some unacknowledged geniuses in your life?

The Real Teens of YA County

Hopefully this is preaching to the choir. A lot of YA writers are great about having textured, nuanced teen characters. Still, sometimes the cast is filled with an overabundance of “the regulars.”

The jock. The cheerleader. The nerd. The nondescript average teen.

Wait, there’s no such thing as that last one. Never in all my classrooms have I come across one of those. They show up in novels, though. Weird, that. It got me thinking about what I have seen. Here’s a sampling of students I have taught or am teaching.

Students who weren’t supposed to live past the night they were born.

Students whose parent is world-famous.

Students whose entire family is deaf (and sometimes that student is the most hearing among them).

Students who excel in a sport and qualify as a “geek” in another area (math, music, theater, …).

Students with such a mix of half- and step-siblings, there are six or seven different last names in their household.

Students whose bodies could break all too easily.

Students with the most spectacular cases of ADHD.

Students who are in foster care because their parents are in jail.

Students who aren’t supposed to have much of a life expectancy.

Students who are quiet for a reason … and very NOT quiet when you get them going. (By the way, this group is never, EVER boring.)

I could go on if I let myself, but you get the idea.

Some of those I see in novels. Some not so much. (Of course, I’m not as super-wide-read in some genres of YA as I’d like to be.) Some only when it’s the “issue” of the story. Maybe some things could be incidental to the plot. The MC’s best friend is in a foster family, but that’s not the point of the story.

Or maybe that’s just me and my preferences. Maybe some people would read that and keep waiting and waiting for that fact to become relevant.

What do you think? Are there certain types of teens you’d like to see pop up more in YA literature?