Lightbulb Moments

I have had two revelations this week.

I have become more and more painfully aware that unlike the majority of the female gender, I do not multi task well. On the days that I have a moderately good lesson or two at school, I become acutely attuned to the filthy and unloved state of my house/car/garden. On a day after a house cleaning binge I invariably have dreadful lessons because I have not 'prepped' sufficiently.

On the occasions that I cook dinner we eat at 8.00pm because I have been simultaneously helping the BA with her homework/piano practice/emotional angst or trying to clean the kitchen as I go.

Himself is a wonderful husband because he does not say things to me like
"You never finish anything." or "What are you meant to be doing." or "don't whinge to me about stress when you waste half your life on your blog..." . No, he says nothing like this. Although, occasionally lately he has made pointed comments like "So what time do you think we will be eating?" or "Do you need this mop and bucket anymore?" (finding them in the bathroom after half an hour with nothing mopped yet....).

I think one of my problems is this Asperger's-ish tendency to detail. I start to do something on a big scale and become ensnared by the small scale. I cannot simply wipe the benches, I need to scrub the wall tiles and spray everything with mould killer. I start to sort the washing and when putting some of it away I end up sorting my daughter's drawers. When I am cooking dinner and the BA asks about finding the area of an irregular shape, I cannot simply leave her to it with a brief exhortation to 'look at the example' but must instead drop everything to divide up the shape into rectangles and show her how the geometric laws enable us to deduce the length of the mystery side. Dinner is late again. This may be why Himself does a lot of the cooking :-)

It would be fair to say that it is rather late in my life to be having this revelation.

The second revelation I had this week was about my students.

I attended the second day of a course on Wednesday. It had been a late-ish night I guess and an early morning as I had to get the BA to her bus and then into school to drop off my reliefs before braving the traffic and the storm to get down to Glenelg. I had thoroughly enjoyed the first day of the course and had no reason to believe that I would not similarly reap the benefits of a second day focussed on 'differentiating Maths in the Middle School Curriculum'.

I felt a bit tired on arrival but had a quick coffee and started to 'fire'. The first activity involved the group creating 5 complete squares from a handful of tangram pieces without speaking or indicating. The only thing you were allowed to do was give a piece or pieces away. Four of us quickly completed our squares leaving the unfortunate fifth group member under the full spotlight glare of four pairs of eyes. No pressure there. For some reason she could not arrange the 3 pieces to form a square.

The rest of us of course could see exactly what she needed to do but were unable to help her. One pushed her completed square at our unfortunate colleague who laughed and returned the pieces, seemingly to the amusement of the donating colleague. I think she may have tried again and got a similar response and I remember thinking 'what is she doing? Is she trying to show the other woman how to make the square by showing her pieces???? That doesn't make sense, they are different squares!!!' Silly me.

Eventually after a period of great frustration and a few clues, the confounded colleague reversed two pieces and completed the puzzle. When we were asked to analyse our group interactions, the question arose as to why we had not simply handed the paralysed colleague one of our squares and allowed her to relinquish her pieces in order that we complete the puzzle as a team.

Of course. That was what our friend had tried to do. And we had completely failed to see what she was doing, or think of it ourselves. In fact, all I could think of was "I didn't think we were allowed to do that!!" It was only the beginning of a day full of 'failure to launches' on my part.

On the next activity I missed a vital instruction, and misinterpreted the next. I was lost. I asked my neighbour and thus missed the next instruction. I gave up on the activity. I was angry with myself.

We had been given a series of handouts, unsorted and similar in appearance. When asked to find one, I was confused as to which of two similar front pages was the correct item. "The one without the pictures on the back" came the advice. I flipped both over. Neither had pictures on the back. I turned angrily to my neighbour who patiently took the sheaf of pages and flipped to the last page. One had pictures the other didn't. How could I have made that mistake?

And so it continued all day. I realised at morning tea that I was exhausted and not functioning properly so I had one of my famous catnaps on the floor which did help to some degree. But before lunch we were asked to 'plan a unit of work' and I realised with sickening certainty that I did not even have an idea of unit of work I needed to plan! The problem with special ed is that you are constantly trying to find where the students are 'at' in order to plan for what to teach them. At the moment I do not even know where they're at. :-( More importantly, I don't know where I'm at.

The upshot of all of this was that I was suddenly and sickeningly placed in the position of my students. My own rapid fire explanations and knowledge of my own handouts was laid bare before me. The ease with which a seemingly obvious instruction can be misinterpreted was both frightening and illuminating. Th feeling of inadequacy created such a well of anger in me that I was almost overwhelmed.

I knew exactly how my students felt.

The saving grace for me was that I know I am capable of doing all the maths presented that day and of interpreting all the instructions. I've done it before. I have my Matric in double maths (albeit from 30 years ago). I knew I was tired. I knew I was not operating at full throttle.

But what about my kids? Most of the time they are doing the best they can. Often they are tired or unable to concentrate due to attention deficit difficulties, epilepsy or being 14. They know with the same certainty that I know I can do it, that they cannot do it. They never have. They have always failed in this subject. I gave up after one game. Why am I surprised when they give up before they enter the room?

So with this insight, what do I do? Perhaps just be a little more patient with them? Perhaps make it more fun? More of a game? Perhaps take it less personally when they completely ignore me in the classroom? It is tough but it is something which I have to consider.

On Thursday and Friday I had quite calm and engaging lessons with both Years 9 and 10. I'm not sure what they learned. Perhaps nothing? But at least we weren't battling each other all the way to the bell.

Image credits: Midvale School: Gary Larson
Light bulb: http://gallery.hd.org/_virtual/ByAuthor/AHD/