I’m proud of my successes as a STEM teacher working toward equity, but I’ve also had failures. In order to get better, I need to understand, and correct for, those times when I’ve made mistakes. Here are some examples I’m thinking about now.
Irina
I met Irina when she was in 10th grade because she was doing a project in physics and wanted to talk with the school’s physics teacher about it. I knew that she was interested in technology and science in such a way that engineering would be a great career for her. Nevertheless, she was very reluctant about taking physics. On course selection night, she told me repeatedly that she felt she wasn’t intelligent enough. I tried to allay her fears, and I guess I was successful enough that she enrolled in my physics course.
Over the first semester, she did okay — Bs and Cs, mostly. We talked again about her career plans at the end of the term, and she told me she’d decided she wasn’t intelligent enough for engineering, and that her middling grades were evidence of this. Although we talked many times after this, I was never able to change her mind.
Irina needed some extra help in the first semester, to master some essential math and physics skills and build her self-efficacy, but I didn’t see that. In the future, I’m going to be more careful and more supportive with new students who have low self-belief and fixed mindset-style attitudes. This is especially relevant for girls and minority students, for whom self-efficacy already tends to be quite low.
Robotics Club
In an after-school robotics club, one student was explaining to two others his idea for using tank treads for the robot. He wasn’t doing a great job of explaining his idea, so I asked him to try again; he did, although with a bit of an exasperated tone. When he finished, I turned to the two students and asked them, “Did that make sense to you?” “Yes, I know what a tank is,” replied one.
The two listeners went off to work on something else. Later, they told me that many of the other students weren’t taking their ideas seriously. They interpreted my question (and their peer’s explanation) as condescension, and that was sort of the last straw. I apologized and tried to explain, but by that point the damage had been done: I restored their trust in me, but not in the robotics club. They came to the next meeting, but interacted with almost no-one, and didn’t return after that.
My microaggression against these two students happened because I briefly stopped focusing on their affective experience. For students in STEM, there are so many threats: my job as a teacher is to remove these and make a safe learning environment. Going forward, I’m trying to be more sensitive to the environment and careful about my own actions.
Joe
A student in my math class, Joe’s academic record was weak. His academic language skills were particularly poor because, as our program coordinator explained it, he’d never developed a first language. Instead, he spoke French early in his life, then German with his mother and friends, and then English when he moved and found a new school and a new social circle.
With Joe, I was insufficiently proactive. I didn’t insist on extra help after school, I didn’t establish strong communication with his mother early in the year, and I didn’t differentiate my instruction or get him alternative resources. By the time his weak grades started to pile up, he was too far behind to properly catch up and he had decided he couldn’t succeed in the course.
Epilogue
These students all went to university, at least for one year. They’re pursuing their dreams and doing alright. I’m pursuing my dreams too: being a better teacher for my next class of students.
Teaching Danny... 