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VOLUME XV, NUMBER 29

88 INNOVATION ABSTRACTS

PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STAFF AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (NISOD), COLLEGE OF EDUCATION,

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN « WITH SUPPORT FROM THE W. K. KELLOGG FOUNDATION AND THE SID W. RICHARDSON FOUNDATION

 

A Useful, and Rather Painless, Writing Assignment

Writing across the curriculum is not only politically
correct, it is a good idea—provided the assignment is
meaningful and useful, both to the student and to the
teacher. On the first day of class, I give my students two
writing assignments:

1. Tell me about your experiences with mathematics that
helped form your attitude about the subject; you may
go back to your high school or grade school days.

2. Tell me about yourself—your major, your goals, your
life outside school—but nothing too personal.

The assignments may be any length, but at least two
words (“Math stinks” qualifies, but | would like to hear
more). Grades are: ¥ (you did it); /+ (I was impressed);
“++ (I was very impressed); and /+++ (you got help from
a deity). These assignments quickly let me get to know
the students as individuals. Moreover, I discover intelli-
gence in students who are not very good in mathematics.
I tend to view them more favorably once I realize—and
this may be heresy to some—that being smart and being
good in math are not the same thing, regardless of the
messages I got from most of my own teachers.

Often, these assignments reap serendipitous effects.
For example, one of the best students, a man in his mid-
twenties, in last summer’s college algebra class, had failed
the course [taught by a different instructor] the preceding
spring. His essay about that experience was so moving,
insightful, and pertinent to the affective domain that I
asked him if I could submit it for publication. He agreed.
The entire essay follows, with only minor editing.

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| have been a student at this college for the past three
years. In this time, it has been my experience to encounter
teachers from various schools of thought when it comes to
principles and politics in the classroom. Personally, I
learned at an early age not to rock the boat in certain
situations—although there is nothing wrong with disturb-
ing the water slightly.

During spring 1992, I enrolled in a college algebra class.
From the very first day until the final exam, there was an
obvious lack of concern on the part of the instructor for a
quality education for 85 to 90 percent of the students. And

Ka

of the 10 to 15 percent who did receive some display of
compassion towards their advancement in mathematics, I
only can guess that half of them possessed a natural love
for numbers. These conclusions are based on short but
pertinent conversations with other students. Obviously,
without access to the teacher’s grade book, I have no way
of knowing how accurate my views are in relation to my
observations. Still, allow me a few lines to document the
other factors which contributed to my opinion of this
instructor.

First and foremost, each class was one continuous rush
of madness from the first second to the last, as if we did
not have enough time. We never got answers to our
questions which she felt were inappropriate. She almost
always waited until the last two or three minutes of class
to ask if we had any questions. Problems were solved on
the overhead and erased before we caught up and before
she was sure we understood what was being done. In
retrospect, I figure that the most disturbing trait of my
instructor was an inability to read the faces of her students
and to notice that a great majority of us truly were lost. |
am sure there is no such course as Face Reading 101, but
surely a teacher with a real desire to teach knows a little
about the subject.

Nevertheless, as time passed, I began to understand
why this teacher could not read our faces, why she did not
know the names of more than three of the students, why
she could not slow down and teach. It was because of
fear, the fear that she really did not understand how to
win back a room full of lost students, the feeling that she
might expose her own fears to those of us who wanted so
desperately to understand what started out to be a simple
college algebra class and was now chaos.

lama fair student with a love for math. I appreciate
the challenges and concepts of numbers. And, | under-
stand that not all teachers will yield to my expectations.
Still, I can recognize a bad apple when I see one. This job
should not be about teaching; it should be about caring,
about helping, and about working toward a goal called
education, in every sense of the word.

Anyone can pick up a book and talk for three hours in
front of 30+ students, but the students at our college want
more. It is important to many of us that a teacher has a

THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STAFF AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (NISOD)
Community Coliege Leadership Program, Department of Educational Administration
College of Education. The University of Texas at Austin, EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712