It’s midterm time and I am feeling it. I’m having a hard time staying focused this week, and my sleep patterns are off. I had a paper due Tuesday, and I submitted it about 5 minutes before it was due. (And yes I was on Facebook when I should have been writing.) I missed study group on Sunday, so the homework from that class is proving more difficult. I keep finding myself on the net instead of working tirelessly at understanding the problems. I can see that I’m walking in the wrong direction, but I can’t seem to get turned around. It’s temporary thing, I’m sure, but I’m just tired this week and in need of ME time.
I’m not so proud of my teaching this week either. It’s a test week. As a teaching assistant, I don’t write the test. In fact I don’t tend to receive it until a day or so before I give it. So in some ways I’m blind to how they’ll be tested. I guess I’m OK with that, although it makes me nervous during test week. I want them to do well. When they don’t, I view it as a reflection of my work. Some might say that it is a reflection of the effort that they give, but I think that’s only partially the case.
Part of my reason for saying that is based on how we teach as opposed to how they are tested. Due to the level that my students are at, we have a prescribed curriculum. Its focus is on processes. This is the algorithm for factoring by grouping, for example. Given the vast amount of material to be covered compared to the amount of time available, there isn’t much time for constructivist teaching, although I try to do what I can to help them discover why this method works. The problem is that we test via application to some degree. In other words, the test has “story problems” and contextual situations, while the examples we give in class and the homework we assign are what I call “raw, naked problems”.
So now I need to give some serious thought to how I will incorporate context into my teaching without deviating from what I am required to teach.
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