The First Quiz

8/27

     Yesterday Mr. Carter gave a quiz to his Honors Geometry classes.   Today he expressed his disappointment with the results.  The quiz had no multiple choice answers.  Seven of the ten questions were short answers and three involved sketching examples.  He was almost baffled at some of the answers and I could see that he tried to retain his frustration in exchange for promoting the idea that student effort needed to improve.  He talked about the definition of bisector – which was a question asked on the quiz.  To drive home his point, he stood in front of the class and read anonymous to the question that asked for a bisector definition.  Some of those answers were

“Points that are far” 

“A line that divides something”

“Multiple points on a line.”

“Two points that make an angle”

It seemed that as he read the answers, his frustration amplified.  He read nearly fifteen answers and only two were correct.  He said that the quiz was so bad that he decided not to grade them.  He returned the quizzes and then assigned the four ROTC students in the class go from group to group and facilitate discussion aimed at comparing  answers and discussing solutions.  No one came to Africa who sat by herself.  I looked at her paper and saw that she had multiple wrong answers.   In her work book she was supposed to write an example of a bisector, but she sketched a right angle.  Yesterday she did not come to class so she did not take the quiz.  Two days ago, Mr. Carter spent a lot of time sitting with her and gave her direct instruction – this seemed as ineffective as any other teaching strategy attempted during that week.  After three minutes, Mr. Carter assigned question two and the students needed to find a conjecture.  They were supposed to share answers and discuss, needless to say that their conversations veered from time to time.  When the time that he allocated for them to create a conjecture ended, he asked various students to read out their answers.  Asia, sitting in isolation, waited until everyone who was asked to read did so.  Then she wrote an answer in her workbook.

                I struggled to understand what went wrong.  I could not help but to think that perhaps direct instruction in some cases was better than the process of “Discovering the answers.”  Jessica was extremely upset that she had four of ten answers correct.  She seemed relieved that Mr. Carter did not count the scores against them and the quiz was graded but not recorded.  For me, I could not avoid the thought that nearly 25 years ago, I was told the definition of a bisector and I remember it until this day.  It took the class nearly 30 minutes and only two were able to articulate the correct answer.  I was careful not to judge the process, as I drew the conclusion that the Agile Mind teaching strategy is new and the students needed to become familiar with the process first before they or anyone would see the results.  Still the thought remained that an entire week of class was waisted.

Driver Ed

Today was test day: the first test.  Jessica doesn’t have her work book – not because she didn’t try to get it, but because the business center ran out of books.  I took advantage of the computers in the class to apply for the English teaching job that I saw posted in the district.  Mr. Little asked for the work that the students “Owed” him.  He mentioned homework and Jessica was concerned because she did no Drivers Ed homework last night.  She was confused because the homework assignment was given three days ago and she did it the first night and turned it in the next day.  Little spoke very softly to her almost in a way that someone might call patronizing.  He was very forgiving to her – unlike the way he is with the other students.  He told her that she shouldn’t worry and that she and he would work it out.  There was a sudden panic in the air when he asked for homework.  Perhaps a dozen students began to frantically open their work books and stretch their heads to copy answers or inquire from others of the assignment.  The words “What homework?” came from the mouths of three or four students.  Mr. Little took no actions in preventing students from copying answers.  He had a system where he used the student role to call students to his desk to officially turn in the homework and look him in the eye to say that they did not have it.  He then promptly made a mark in his grade book. 

He was an old timer.  Taught school for nearly 25 years and had multiple degrees.  He had desires of becoming an administrator but was held back by his love for coaching football.  He understood that if he became an administrator he would have to give up coaching and the money offered for such a job was not compensation enough to the exchange.  After collecting homework from eight of thirty-two students in the room, he used the overhead projector to project an image of the assignment on the pulldown screen in front of the class.  It was at that moment that Jessica realized that she had already finished the homework assignment and gave it to Mr. Little two days ago.