Yesterday

Couldn't pull my brains together well enough to report in last night--although a couple of things happened that I think are worth reporting.

In the KB 101, I put the kids in groups, as I had done with MB on Wednesday, to have them work on thesis statements. One group simply would not work. Every time I listened in on them, they were just chatting about whatever. One young man in particular was a lot of the problem: he is a nice enough kid, but in groups he just talks nonstop about anything and nothing. However, the problem was worse because he was also in a group with a young woman who doesn't seem invested in anything having to do with school--but especially not group work. It was luck of the draw that they ended up together--and that the two other students in the group didn't have strong enough personalities to rein them in: in terms of a personality combo, it was a disaster. I kept going over to get them back on task, with increasing firmness. Finally, I said, "OK, if you don't want to work, you can split. Go ahead and take off." A minute later I looked back and saw that no one was moving but no one was working, either. I said, "I'm serious: you can split--you can go. If you're not doing anything productive, there's no reason for you to be here, so you might as well leave." I didn't say it in an angry way (I don't think, though their perception may be different); I was just matter of fact. The young man explained that they had thought I meant they could split up into pairs instead of a group of four--but I reiterated that no, they should just go away, and then I heard him say, "Well, I want to work..." and lo and behold, they did. Not terribly well, perhaps, because the "I don't care" girl pretty much did her own thing and didn't interact with the rest of them, but it did make me wish I'd resorted to that tactic before, as they might have gotten productive earlier if I had. It's very strange, psychologically: sometimes students act like they don't want to be in class, but if you tell them to leave, they want to stay. Go figure.

The other thing was a nice little interaction between me and Monkey Skulls--a name I know use with some affection rather than the hint of bitterness I felt previously. He was working in a group--not being very effective, I have a feeling, as I don't think he'd done the reading, but at least he was there and participating in some way. At one point, another student in his group had a question, so I was standing next to him, explaining--and out of the corner of my eye, I saw him imitating my hand gestures. So without turning my head, I whacked him (gently), a little backhand across his shoulder. He laughed, as did the rest of the group. I then looked at him and said, "Would you like to just get up and teach this?" (Shook his head, did a little "no, no" waving gesture with his hands.) "Are you sure, since you seem to have my hand gestures down exactly, maybe you want to just take over for me?" (Laughing, again, shook his head, and mumbled something about it being OK, I should just go ahead.)

It was all very light-hearted and fun--and then at the end of class, when I was returning papers, he said, "Did I do OK? Were you proud of me?"--and I think he genuinely wanted the reassurance, the approval. It was lovely that I could give it, and tell him his paper was indeed much improved, and that I was, in fact, very proud of him. Today I got an e-mail from him: he had asked in class if he could use a Penn and Teller video as a source for his paper: at first I said yes, but today he sent me the link--and I had a moment to consider--so I had to rescind the permission. But he signed his message, "your favorite hand-gesturing student." The funny thing is, he is becoming one of my favorite students, simply because of the transformation in his attitude. Now I just hope he does enough work to pass....

There were other things going on that I could probably dig into and explore, but I'm just not in the right frame of mind. Sea cucumber time rapidly approaches.