Cheer Them On #students #edchat

An interesting thing happened to me today. I was waiting under a bridge along a 10k course waiting for a friend to come through so that I could cheer him on. I arrived at this location, which was a little past mile 5, about 5 minutes before the lead runner came through. I applauded of course as he past.

I am not sure he heard me. I then saw the second runner and applauded him too. Soon, runner after runner began flowing by. I kept cheering them on. I am a runner myself and I know what it feels like to be near the end of a race when your energy is flagging. The end of a race is also where you find the fewest spectators. I kept cheering them on. I was not sure if my hands would hold out. My friend is like me. We usually finish in the top two thirds. In a race of 2000 people, we will finish around 1500th place. I kept clapping, smiling, and cheering the runners on. They were slowing down. As I persisted, I started hearing whispered thank yous. I started getting requests for high fives. The crowd began to thicken as the middle of the pack approached. I started to wonder if I could keep it up but I did, even after I found my friend.

When I was student teaching, I had two mentor teachers. One interacted with and laughed with students. The other explained this to me about assessment. "You will get a bell curve for every test and quiz. This is expected. If you get too many A's, your test was not hard enough." I took this to mean that I could expect students to fail every test and that the class as a whole, should have grades that fit the bell curve. In the first semester of my second year of teaching high school, I experienced this. I had a bell curve and thought, this was normal. However,  I noticed was that the students had grown to expect to be in those spots on the bell curve. They knew where they should fit and they seemed comfortable with this. I was shocked. The grades were non-motivational. Of course extra credit would be meaningless because the students knew where they should fit. In the following semester, at a faculty meeting to discuss standardize testing procedures, another teacher jokingly yelled out that grades were arbitrary. I thought, that's right they were. Assessment and grades meant nothing to students. I began to struggle with motivation. I could lecture and test them and the curve would not change. My mentor teacher would have been fine with this. I was not.

I started exploring ways to find motivation for students. By the time they reached high school, the students had expected their place in the bell curve. I felt that excellence was achievable for all students. It was my job to cheer them on. It was their job to struggle through and learn how to persevere. Keep cheering them on because the bell curve is not enough!