Jeffery E. Frieden Classroom Culture, Uncategorized

How Do You Put It?

Have you been in this scenario before? You’re in the middle of what has unintentionally turned into a long-winded explanation, and you start to feel it: the students are losing focus. You still have a little more to say, so you want to stay on your train of thought just a bit longer. But you’re concerned you’re losing students at one of the critical junctures. Then you think you’ll pause, just really briefly, and check in with them with a simple yes-or-no question. You just want to know if they are making the effort to take it all in, and snap their focus back into place for a few minutes more.

At this point, which version of this question are you likely to use:

A. Does this make sense to you?

B. Does this make sense?

C. Am I making sense?

Let’s think about this from another angle. You’re attending a professional development workshop, and as a member of an audience drifting off, your presenter asks the crowd if one of his points is making sense, which version of the above would you prefer? To what extent does it matter? Continue reading “How Do You Put It?” →

Jeffery E. Frieden Assessment, Grades, Make Them, Writing

Why I Almost Quit

In my seventh year of teaching, when I was really hitting my stride as a classroom instructor, I was ready to quit. I didn’t want to. I loved teaching. The best way to put it is that I had hit a crisis. In plainest terms, people experience crisis when their behavior and choice patterns no longer work work for them, requiring some kind of change. Another way to put it is, “What has ‘worked’ up until this point WILL NOT work from here on out.” That was me. I felt stuck in an endless loop that was wearing me down more and more each day.

My crisis centered around guilt. And this was no ordinary guilt, where I found myself going between two sides. This guilt loop had three elements, one for each of my main roles at the time: teacher, spouse, and parent. I had responsibilities for each role, and I wasn’t handling any of them well. Maybe I had people fooled, or maybe they were just being kind to me, but inside I was all tangled up in knots. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next for any of those roles, and felt like I was frantically running from one to the other. That caused a lot of stress, and I was exhausted. I was at quit point. Continue reading “Why I Almost Quit” →