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.Sep 18, 2021

lol sure man

lawl dude its not authoritarian if they don't intend it to be, teachers are only trying to get them to focus!!!! i hate how the language is so hidden like "emotional and social tranquility" bruh youre just saying they shut up and listened bc you coerced them to

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.Sep 19, 2021

also holy shit tyranny of the clock is like so so so real in school holy fuck

.Sep 20, 2021

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willow @dreary.dev

alt text backfill

Inside Teaching: How Classroom Life Undermines Reform, Mary Kennedy, pg 106, Sources of Problems in Teaching

Kimberly opened the lesson by portraying air as an example of a resource, which he defined as something nature provides that we can use. He reminded them that they had studied water earlier, and that water was a resource too. He then asked: "Does air fit our definition of a resource?" Most students appeared to be nodding or saying yes, except Michael, so Mr. Kimberly asked Michael what his reasoning was for disagreeing. Michael said that different places around the world had different resources, and since the entire world had air, it couldn't be a resource. Michael's argument suggests that he understood resources as being attached to specific locations. He could have picked up this idea from the unit on water, or perhaps from a unit on minerals as resources. Kimberly could have addressed Michael's conception of a resource by comparing air to other kinds of resources that are location-specific, but he chose not to. Instead, Kimberly repeated his criteria for a resource, this time in Q&A form:
Kimberly: Is air something we get from nature?
Ss: Yes.
Kimberly: Is it something we can use?
Ss: Yes.
Kimberly: Is it a resource?
Immediately after this exchange, another student said he also didn't think air was a resource, because we didn't ask nature to invent it, and nature didn't give it back to us, but instead it was already there for us to use. Again Kimberly repeated his criteria, pointing out that air was from nature and we used it, and therefore that it was a resource. In each case, his students were intellectually engaged with the concept of a natural resource and had their own thoughts about what made something a resource, and in each case

Inside Teaching: How Classroom Life Undermines Reform, Mary Kennedy, pg 168, Sources of Problems in Teaching

definition of a resource, not have a big conversation about it. Remember the definition: Something you get from nature that you can use. Write that down for me, please." After students wrote the definition of a resource, Kimberly moved on to the second question, which asked for a definition of atmo-sphere. Again he gave them the definition they were to write. The room continued to be noisy as students wrote the definitions he had given them. Kimberly then circulated through the room to see what students were writing. One student hadn't written anything. He stopped at her desk and said, "Resource. Atmosphere. What is it?" The student shrugged sullenly, and Kimberly walked off to another desk without offering the student any further help. She continued to sit still, staring blankly at her paper.
Later Kimberly introduced the term "troposphere" to students, saying that it was the part of the atmosphere that was closest to us, the part "that we really use." It extended above the earth for 10-20 miles. He then asked students what they thought we got from the troposphere, and pointed to a student. The student said, "I don't know, but some of us are really confused." Instead of asking the student what was confusing, or asking how many others were confused, Kimberly didn't respond to this comment at all; he simply called on another student.

Kimberly then moved on to the next part of his portrayal, which was a physical demonstration. He told students that the atmosphere went up 62 miles, but then said this was really a very thin layer. To il-lustrate, he draped an overhead transparency sheet over a globe and said this thin cover was the equivalent of 62 miles. A student said he was confused: How can something that thin also be 62 miles thick?
Kimberly said: "I's a comparison. It's a comparison. It's a compari-son. This is 25,000 miles around [hand encircles the globe) and this is 62 miles high [the transparency). It's a comparison." At this point, numerous students began speaking simultancously, saying things like
"He's taking everything and making it smaller" and "Now I'm really confused." The commotion in the room suggests that students were actively attending, but also still confused on this point, but Kimberly apparently felt he had finished his portrayal and moved on to his learning activity, with no further discussion of the relationship between the transparency draped over the globe and the 62-mile-high atmosphere.
The learning activity involved filling out a worksheet. Kimberly's approach was to lead the students through it, helping them figure out what to write in response to each question. The first question asked students to define a resource. Students seemed unclear on what to write, so Kimberly said, "Something from nature that we can use.
Write it down." At this point, a student asked if the air could ever get a hole in it. Then another responded excitedly, saying, "It does have a hole in it!" Numerous excited voices then filled the room. Kimberly tried to quell this enthusiasm by using his hands to ask them to lower their voices and saying, "We'll get to that. We really will. (Still numerous voices) There is not, there is not a hole in it. [Still numerous voices. MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE! Time out. Kate.
Dylan. Eyes right here. [Quietly:] I asked you to write down the

Then Kimberly went into the components of the troposphere. He handed out a circle graph with three different-sized sections marked off and asked students which one they thought represented oxygen (a guessing-game question, since he had given them no basis for answering this question). After several students offered guesses, he said oxygen was the middle-sized wedge. The largest was nitrogen, and the smallest represented inert gases, which he described. Then he said there was a very tiny slice on the chart that looked like no more than a heavy line, which had other types of gases, such as hydrogen and carbon dioxide. As students considered this news, two interesting exchanges occurred. In one exchange, a student asked about ni-trogen, thinking it might be a dangerous gas. Kimberly said, "You've been breathing it for 12 years! Has it hurt you yet?" Then another
student asked if nitrogen made you sleepy, if it was a sleeping gas.
Kimberly said, "In that case, you'd be sleeping all the time, because you're breathing nitrogen right now." Then a third student asked if nitrogen was that stuff that makes you laugh, that the dentist gives you. Kimberly said, "There may be nitrogen in there, but it's combined with other things." The entire sequence suggests that students were confusing nitrogen with nitrous oxide, but Kimberly didn't seem to pick up on that confusion, and he didn't address their underlying concern until after several exchanges. Finally he told them that the gas used by dentists was nitrous oxide, but he said nothing more about the relationship between nitrous oxide and nitrogen.

Kimberly chose not to address their ideas, to explain the difference between his definition and theirs, to show them which kinds of resources fitted these definitions, or to do anything to help them see the relationship between his definition and their own prior ideas.

April 3, 2025 at 11:30 AM