Teaching and Learning

 My brother John has been on a writing kick recently, and I have enjoyed reading about his exploits and adventures, some of which I remember, and some of which occurred when I was overseas in the Army.

One posting in particular caught my attention, because it concerned the problems he had in high school with various teachers and classes.

It is obvious to me that there is a strain of similarities in the way our brains are wired through the generations. His experiences in school mirror mine almost exactly. And he told a story of our mother way back in the twenties, and her problem with at least one teacher.

Before I go any farther, let me assure all my close friends and relatives that I don’t put down all teachers. I believe they are underpaid, under appreciated, and overworked. The criticisms I bring up here refer only to the particular persons involved, and the observations I give are for edification only.

John told me the story of my mother and a teacher in Merced named Mrs. Horne, when she was in grade school. The class was assigned to draw a map of some area (I don’t know where) and my mother went home and using the skills her mother taught her, (her mother had been a school teacher earlier) carefully drew up the map. It had all the colors identifying the roads, rivers and buildings, and she was rightly proud of the map.

When she turned the map in to Mrs. Horne, she was accused of plagiarism, copying or tracing from some other map. She got an “F” for the paper. My mother bitterly remembered the name of that teacher thirty years later!

I got mostly good grades through my elementary school years, and most of that was due to the small Seventh-day Adventist school I attended. There were never more than four or five in any grade, and so there was lots of time for the teacher to learn about the students, as well as the students to learn the lessons.

My teachers were able to help me individually when I needed it, and very seldom was homework required, as there were several grades in each room, allowing all extra work to be done while the teacher was busy with another class. There was seldom any homework, and that was how I liked it.

I first ran into trouble when I went to Lodi Academy in the junior year of high school. Now there were twenty or more students per class, and there was no time to do extra work, since the next hour was taken up by the next class. I was not inclined to spend my evenings doing exercises on subjects I had already learned that morning, and I had better things to do with my time, I figured.

If the teacher graded heavy on tests, I got “A”s. If homework was required, I tended to get “C”s. Mr. Jackson, who taught me classes on Algebra 1 & 2, and Plane and Solid Geometry, graded 100% on classwork and tests, so consequently I made straight “A”s in his classes.

In my senior year I needed some core classes to get me graduated with enough credits to start an Engineering major in College. I signed up for Physics, which was a class I needed. On the first day of class, Mr. Mayer, an older, soft spoken gentleman, explained that he graded 1/3 on classwork, 1/3 on tests, and 1/3 on homework. I knew my best chance would be 66 2/3%, which would be flunking.

I went from that class straight to the Registrar’s Office and requested to change from that class to another class taught by Mr. Jackson, Trigonometry and Analytical Geometry. I loved that class and that teacher and got straight “A”s.

I may be painting the term “homework” with too broad a brush. Mr. Jackson assigned homework, but it was never just repeating the classwork, and it was never graded.. It was usually a challenge, as “For tomorrow, read the next chapter, and see if you can figure out what it’s about. We’ll discuss it in the morning.” I was always ready for a challenge!

Once, when someone else in the class asked what good Trigonometry was for, Mr. Jackson showed up the next day with a transit, a survey chain, and some stakes. He sent us out on the school grounds to find the distance between the front doors on the girl’s dorm and the boy’s dorm. Since the admin building was in between, we had to drive a stake out by the flagpole, measure from there to the doors in question, and triangulate using the trig functions to get the answer. We all compared notes and figures and we all learned something I still remember from that day.

I’m pretty sure that John and I got our brains wired at the same place. He is sure his problem is ADHD. I have always thought that my problem might be Asperger’s syndrome. My son Wesley had all the same problems in school. As John says, we’re all on “the spectrum” somewhere.

Here is a quote from a recent post of John’s:

 I know I've mentioned before that I hated the whole idea of homework. I didn't like school at all. It was bad enough that I was required to spend my days where I didn't want to be, doing things I didn't want to have to do. The idea that I was supposed to go home and ruin my evenings, too, was out of bounds as far as I was concerned. So I never did homework in high school.

  

That was me all over!

During my senior year, a group from California State Education came to Lodi Academy and tested all of us in the school. If I remember, it was called the National Merit Scholarship test. Out of around 300 students in that school, I topped them all. I was immediately summoned to the dean’s office to explain why my grades were so low. I truthfully told them if they tested my knowledge, I would have gotten straight “A”s, but I didn’t do any homework. They berated me for awhile, but I was kind of used to that.

I graduated with enough credits to pass, including a correspondence class in U.S. History, if I remember correctly.

My son Wesley had all the same problems in school, getting low grades in class but passing the annual Basic Skills Tests several grades ahead of his place in school. Some said he was bored to death and should have been advanced a grade. In Winnemucca, they held him back a year.

His mother Carolyn and I got an appointment in San Francisco with a Pediatric Neuropsychologist and took Wes for testing. After nearly a day of various tests, the doctor told us, “There is nothing wrong with your son. If he was in Marin County Schools, he would be in AP classes.”

I went back to Winnemucca and relayed the findings, and all I did was piss the school administration off. Who was I, a lowly mechanic, to tell them such a thing?

After another bad year of low grades and confrontation with the school, the next summer we found a school in Ojai, California, that had special summer classes for kids who test high and grade low. We dug deep into our finances and signed Wes up for a month. 

On our way there we all stopped at the hanger in Mojave where the Voyager, the first airplane to circle the earth without refueling had just landed, before being taken to the Smithsonian.

I think he may have been a little overwhelmed by the other students, who were several levels above a country boy from Nevada. He found himself in school with Kasey Kasem’s daughters, among others. He soon made friends with another boy, and went to visit his “house” in Hollywood, I think, which Wes described as a mansion.

Wes impressed them when he said he lived on thirty acres in Nevada. Nobody in Hollywood lives on thirty acres!

When we went back to pick Wes up at the end of the session, we talked for several hours with the teachers at that school. They were amazed that Wes was having any trouble in school. He was tops in the computer class, wrote well, and was among the top students in every class. They also told us that his problem was with the school in Winnemucca.

I asked if they could talk to the people in Winnemucca and tell them what they just told me. I explained that the school had no regard for anything I said, because I was merely a mechanic, and I had tried before.

They promised to call and talk to them, and we left for home in Nevada.

The attitude in the school system seemed to improve the next year, until Wes had to have emergency surgery to correct some congenital defects in one kidney and the ureter on one side. We kept his schoolwork assignments, and after a month off, when he went back to school and turned in the assignments, the teacher said they could not grade all those papers, and he would have to start the year over. 

I requested a meeting with the school board, and got on the agenda for the next meeting. When it was my turn, I got up and told them they had failed my son once, but they were not going to have another chance to fail him again. I presented them with the legal paperwork to withdraw him and home school him through American School Correspondence courses.

Although it was sometimes boring, he could do the work in the morning and have the afternoon for himself. The school got to test him twice a year, and of course, he aced their tests every time.

Wes was offered the chance to take the GED test at JOIN (Job Opportunities In Nevada) and apply for a scholarship. After a few wasted minutes starting the Pre GED test, they looked over his shoulder, took that test away, and gave him the GED test. He easily passed it and was offered a 100% scholarship toward an Associate of Science degree at Elko Community College with RN certification. 

I guess the fundamental question is what is school for? Is it to impart knowledge and teach thinking skills? Or is it to teach a kid to follow orders, jump through the hoops when told, and work all day in a factory, learning to start when the whistle blows or the bell rings. Some of us never got regimented that good.

Different people learn in different ways, and if there are too many students in a class, some are not going to learn well.

I had a good friend who was an excellent motorcycle mechanic. But he only learned through hearing. When he had a problem, he would hand the book to me and have me read it to him. When I finished, he would thank me and tell me he understood it now. I am opposite. You can tell me all day, and I won’t remember much. As my mother used to say, “In one ear and out the other!” But if I read it, I can remember the page of instructions years later.

Some people I know only learn well by hands on practice. There needs to be a way to teach each person in the best way for that person. That could be impractical in our mechanized world.

This is getting to look like a book. 

Kudos to all the caring, skilled teachers out there. If I was king of the country, I’d double your pay and halve your class size. I still have great memories of wonderful teachers from years ago.