I think most teachers who have been at it for a while could look out over their class the first day and assign grades based on where the students chose to sit. The bright, eager students would all be up front, the average students would sit in the middle and the slackers would be slumped in the back seats. Thus, it has ever been. When I was in First Grade at Rogersville Elementary school, we all sat at long tables, so the system didnt work, but after that we all got individual desks and this natural selection exerted itself immediately. Some teachers tried to get around it by assigning seats alphabetically. It never worked; the slackers still slumped, just more visibly so and the eager kids had to work harder, waving their arms frantically (Some even standing up) to attract the teachers attention from their seats in academic Tartarus. Not being a stellar student, but a pretty sharp observer and a natural conman, I developed my own adaptation. When I had the choice, I sat near the front, but chose a seat behind the tallest kid I could find, boy or girl. By making subtle movements and shifts in posture, I could stay out of the teachers view almost entirely; some may not have even known I was there. That worked for me until I got to 6th Grade and the teacher assigned seats based on some arcane system of her own devising. Possibly she had studied our records and seated us accordingly; Ill never know, but the upshot was that I found myself sitting directly in front of her. Let me add that I had always done the work. Id read the assignments, done the math problems and turned in the home work. It just didnt stick. No matter how much I studied the night before, I arrived in class the next day a blank slate. Then, the teacher did something I had never encountered before: she had us memorize a poem. We each had to come up front and recite it and then tell what we thought it meant. I learned it. but to me it was just a bunch of words. I dont remember the poem. but a do remember that, when my turn came and I started to speak, the words suddenly made sense! I knew PRECISELY what the poet had in mind. When I was through, I shared what I thought and the teacher said, Ive never looked at it that way before, but I think you are EXACTLY right. I almost fainted. No teacher had ever said that to me before. Since then, Ive read about learning styles. I know that some students learn by reading, some by hearing and some by more tactile experiences. I am. apparently, a VERBAL learner (Perhaps someone, somewhere, has identified this as a learning style, but Ive never read about it.) I started reading all my assignments ALOUD, even the math problems and their solutions, and it STUCK, it stayed with me. From a ghostly classroom presence, I was transformed into one of the eager ones. I still process information that way. Ask me a question and you may get a soliloquy on the way to the answer. it probably drives those around me crazy, but its the only way that it works for me. You can probably ignore the first minute or two of what I say because its all process, but Ill eventually arrive at the answer and youll also be privy to the journey I took to get there. I may even contradict myself a couple of times along the way, but that just means Im considering all the angles. Most of my friends and co-workers have learned to at least acept this and thats good. Otherwise, Id have to go back to hiding behind tall people.
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 11:57:22 +0000
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