Embrace the Suck.

[learnteach]

Thanks Xartle!

Working on it.

Rule #1: Don't let the Drama stick.
Rule #2: Lead.
Rule #3: Don't take it personal, don't hold grudges.
Rule #4: Embrace the Suck.

Percent of students who attempted last night's homework: 0%.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Is it possible, functional, or advisable to discuss with the students buying into a system, or agreeing to support a social contract to get the benefits, or some other metaphor for buying in to a system rather than putting oneself at odds with it?

[ianhess.livejournal.com]

Sorry, thats me.

Lovely thought...

[learnteach.livejournal.com]

don't have the infrastructure to support it. Problem with the discipline system: Not a lot of possible penalties that promote proper behaviour.

Re: Lovely thought...

[ianhess.livejournal.com]

Understood. However, the gamer in me starts to wonder about alternate victory conditions. They are used to this being a struggle with an authority figure. There is probably an informational "warfare" method possible to get inside their language and recast the interaction to suit your purposes. If they listen at all, or will talk about something they care about, it might be possible to negotiate in their interests for attention.

Basically, I think the sales/support/diplomacy method of matching someones semantic and then using it to control them might be an unexpected, and thus more effective tool to use.

[gizbot.livejournal.com]

Blurk.

Traditional trick is to throw in some *really* softball questions in each problem set to get people in the habit of doing some. As long as you assign all the rest, you may get by the "Ve Haf An Agenda (A-gen-da)" glueheads.

Grr. Wish world was brighter.

Hey there

[lokimom.livejournal.com]

Hi,
This is my first LJ comment and did my first entry today, so go easy....not sure you got my email - I sent one via my hotmail but it may be in your yahoo spam folder...I wanted to send some suggestions to give you courage and some food for thought (some book links)...

My suggestion in the mail too, was, is it possible for you to hold open office hours where kids can come in and get help with homework? Immediately after classes end for the day, can you set up a workshop maybe once a week and invite them to come (can you bring them cupcakes as a bribe?) How much leeway do you have to have parents come in to help out? Other ways to get them engaged in the classwork - again like it was mentioned above, trying to engage them in how it applies to real life might be a workaround...how about outdoor class one day - are they that out of control that sitting them all in a circle on the grass with no other distractins 9that might be hard with cell phones) and teach outside?

One other thing I learned working at the Evil Empire is that (esp. as a woman) that lowering your voice in meetings makes people pay attention. So would it work for you to teach in your softest softest big blonde engineer voice (kind of like Milton in Office Space) to make them pay attention? this worked wonders for me in the software world, where most of my meetings were with shouting devs.

Finally, how does a costume sound? It would distract them if you came in one day in full SCA garb - anyway you can tie that into what you teach? (What subject again?) leave off the weaponry for obvious reasons but armor and garb might get them engaged in that day's lesson plan. Maybe then if they show up for office hours you can do this too. Unorthodox but it may intrigue them enough to get them working.

Other than that, how about games? Word games that are verbal that would encourage them to shout and be goofy and get it out of their system for 10 minutes at the beginning of class, then they can focus?

Just some ideas... :-) Good luck, you can do it!