taylweaver (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
taylweaver) wrote2005-07-14 07:21 am
taylweaver) wrote2005-07-14 07:21 am
Entry tags:
The weight of teaching
Over the past few days, I have come to realize just how much responsibility teaching puts on my shoulders. On Monday, I had to grade papers for the first time. With math, this is not so difficult - the answer is either right or wrong, and the questions I asked did not really lend themselves to partial credit - though that will complicate things next time. But when grading essays, things get much harder. There is no objective way to say which paper is better than another. I tried to quantify it. I tried to use a rubric.
For those who don't know what a rubric is - I sometimes forget that it is not part of everyone's everyday vocabulary - just mine - it looks something like this:
Outline Organization
1 Missing Poor
2 Incomplete Getting there
3 Great Wonderful
But add a few more categories, and a better description for each number.
So I tried that system, but I realized it did not quite match with my idea of which students were writing "good" essays. And then I had to tweak the system. And I had to read each paper multiple times. And it took me hours.
After all that, I still end up feeling like some of my decisions were a bit arbitrary. And these possibly arbitrary decisions determine what grades some of my students got - the difference between an A and a B, a B and a C. This is a big responsibility.
But I have learned that teachers also bear a different kind of weight. Teachers get approached with many questions. Some of these questions reach beyond the realm of education.
Yesterday, a ten-year-old asked: "What's a suicide bomber?" She then added, "What's suicide? So-and-so told me I should know already."
Without really thinking, I answered something along the lines of: "Suicide is when a person kills themself. A suicide bomber is someone who wants to kill other people so badly that he is willing to kill himself along with them."
It was only afterward that I paused to think about whether or not I should have answered at all - though, upon reflection, I decided that if she was asking, I should answer. She knew the context - she asked me if I had heard about what happened in London - and she had read the phrase in a newspaper - I am guessing it was in a headline.
What to say after answering is an even tougher call. Do I reassure her? Do I tell her these are very bad people? I didn't say anything of substance. In retrospect, I think I should have asked how hearing the definition made her feel, what was going through her head. Maybe then I would have know what she needed to hear next.
I suppose teachers are not the only ones who face these questions and decisions. Parents do too, of course. But in some ways, it's more complicated as a teacher. For one thing, I have known my students for little more than a week. And then there are the parents themselves - if I make a bad decision, or a decision that they think is wrong, I have them to answer to.
For those who don't know what a rubric is - I sometimes forget that it is not part of everyone's everyday vocabulary - just mine - it looks something like this:
Outline Organization
1 Missing Poor
2 Incomplete Getting there
3 Great Wonderful
But add a few more categories, and a better description for each number.
So I tried that system, but I realized it did not quite match with my idea of which students were writing "good" essays. And then I had to tweak the system. And I had to read each paper multiple times. And it took me hours.
After all that, I still end up feeling like some of my decisions were a bit arbitrary. And these possibly arbitrary decisions determine what grades some of my students got - the difference between an A and a B, a B and a C. This is a big responsibility.
But I have learned that teachers also bear a different kind of weight. Teachers get approached with many questions. Some of these questions reach beyond the realm of education.
Yesterday, a ten-year-old asked: "What's a suicide bomber?" She then added, "What's suicide? So-and-so told me I should know already."
Without really thinking, I answered something along the lines of: "Suicide is when a person kills themself. A suicide bomber is someone who wants to kill other people so badly that he is willing to kill himself along with them."
It was only afterward that I paused to think about whether or not I should have answered at all - though, upon reflection, I decided that if she was asking, I should answer. She knew the context - she asked me if I had heard about what happened in London - and she had read the phrase in a newspaper - I am guessing it was in a headline.
What to say after answering is an even tougher call. Do I reassure her? Do I tell her these are very bad people? I didn't say anything of substance. In retrospect, I think I should have asked how hearing the definition made her feel, what was going through her head. Maybe then I would have know what she needed to hear next.
I suppose teachers are not the only ones who face these questions and decisions. Parents do too, of course. But in some ways, it's more complicated as a teacher. For one thing, I have known my students for little more than a week. And then there are the parents themselves - if I make a bad decision, or a decision that they think is wrong, I have them to answer to.
Re: Suicide Bombers, & Suicide
I was discussing this with a friend of mine over Shabbos. (In fact, I gave her the URL for this site, and indeed, she very well may be one of the anonymous posters below. I really have no idea.) She said that while anyone may do bad actions, an evil (or bad) person is someone who has no conscience. I objected that the only person I know who seems to have absolutely no conscience is a homeless guy on Broadway, the huge black guy with the snot running down from his nose, who shifts his weight from side to side. He seems to have no sense of self-respect, even to the extent that he doesn't think of wiping the snot off from his face. Yet I would hardly call him evil; he is probably mentally ill.
In fact, if you don't have a conscience, how can one be considered good or evil? In fact, I may have exactly the opposite criteria for evility ;-) than my friend who spoke about conscience. Perhaps this goes to show that
And perhaps this will open up another can of worms, but I shall mention that I don't know whether or not "conscience" should be identified with the Jewish concept of yetzer ha-ra`, or the Freudian concept of the Super-ego, or some combination of the three, or some mental lightbulb which should be telling me that if I no longer know how to count to two, it's probably time to go to sleep...
And why is it that as I write these final lines, I'm fading in and out of a dream about being in the synagogue of the Tahana HaMerkazit in Jerusalem? I guess it really is time to go to sl...
Re: Suicide Bombers, & Suicide
And a conscience would be the opposite of a yetzer hara - one is a voice that tells you to do good; the other is a voice that tells you to do bad.
And remember the part about not going off on tangents? Your last line would be a tangent.
Re: Suicide Bombers, & Suicide
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "cognitively impaired" here? Would this not be a type of mental illness? (It sounds sort of like the kind of thing that could be a category in the DSM-III, or DSM-IV, or whatever number they're up to now.) Or do you mean something like "low IQ", or "mentally retarded"?
And a conscience would be the opposite of a yetzer hara - one is a voice that tells you to do good; the other is a voice that tells you to do bad.
I meant to write yetzer hattov. However, I was also thinking that the conscience could be a combination of the two "yetzarim". If you are interested, I could post more about this idea in a further post).
Re: Suicide Bombers, & Suicide