Teenagers are interesting

[novalery]

they‘re hyped to these “new thing” despite its being old...

its offtopic time

let set the background of the story a bit. I’m a teacher. And sometimes students like to share their interest with me. and as a teacher, sometimes i’m interested to know what’s “hype” lately.

so here’re some of the things that happen lately:

a student start a conversation with me about this “new thing” that have been the talk of “many” Lately. It was PM2.5 and PM10 levels of the city. So he bring out his mac and showed me a site with the scale and stuff and tell me that they “just started” showing this near a road.
To which i casually reply with: “actually the electronic billboards showing those data have been around since i can remember, especially near an industrial area and major highway”, and, i guess my teacher instinct kicks in, ask him “what do you think that scale means?”

His reply was interesting. he went defensive, telling me that those billboard are new, he never see it before. Also he said its a scale that show the CO2 level, and according to this, the CO2 level of our city is very bad. ( he probably never seen it before, its not that high, and also not CO2, though there is a correlation...)

 And so i start explaining what PM2.5 and 10 are and why they’ve been the talk as of late, i.e. the forrest fire that occur in many regions Lately, shows him the government meteorological and climatological site with no add that actually provide a better explanations of what it is and so on.

thankfully he receive my explanation well.. unlike the next one:

a student start a conversation with a teacher that sits right next to me, he was asking about something. So i ask what is it the he was so exited about.

So he start talking about this “new thing” on the neighboring country, a waste-to-energy power plant and how the smoke is filtered and how it became ”the” solution to waste and so on and so on. he was very exited because he said that one day he’ll be bringing this “new thing” to this country.   and just like the previous one, shows me a youtube clip about it..

to which i casually replied: “oh that. The city i went to college to, built one of those long time ago. and also thats just one of a solution for waste, not “the” solution”

 he didn’t believe me so i showed him an old article talking about it. The article also mention that the country has a few of these already operational. (The article is old, focusing on the newly operational PP at that time. The number of waste-to-energy powerplant in this country, of many types, has increase since then).

suddenly he became very defensive about it. “What about the filtered chimney, i bet thats new right” to which my reply was “thats actually an industrial standard everywhere since long time ago.”

I did notice that he was feeling down at that moment but i didn’t know whats got in to me as i said: “hey its a big country you can still add more”.... he was so down in the end as he went home.

 

i sometimes wonder whether i’m a good teacher or not. Hey... they need something to bring them back to earth... right?

[ChaoticEdge]

if your going get them talk political pretty much don't brother them with such thing too much or other wise they will grow up being negative in life.  Take for example for a dog which you can teach it do tricks and other stuff but if you don't teach it to be in right path and teach what it is pose to do or not to do pretty much the dog is going get put down due of bad teaching in some what ways.  For you have to teach what is not good and what is good in way keep things right but you have to know your judgement that is following of what is right and if you know what is wrong do not do wrong but show example the way of that road is wrong so they don't do it.

Then again people who believed "Alien" in Area 51 are running down there wasting their life to find an alien for they are dumb and wasted time for huge life time doing accomplishment for the goal is that way will find themselves breaking a fine amount, but hey that is humanity for we do lived with the dolts and commoner for that some what all of us are yet we always find ourselves outliving the smart people sometime.

 

P.S I won't reply back because I am just bored always in life for time being.

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3 hours ago, ChaoticEdge said:

if your going get them talk political pretty much don't brother them with such thing too much or other wise they will grow up being negative in life.  Take for example for a dog which you can teach it do tricks and other stuff but if you don't teach it to be in right path and teach what it is pose to do or not to do pretty much the dog is going get put down due of bad teaching in some what ways.  For you have to teach what is not good and what is good in way keep things right but you have to know your judgement that is following of what is right and if you know what is wrong do not do wrong but show example the way of that road is wrong so they don't do it.

Then again people who believed "Alien" in Area 51 are running down there wasting their life to find an alien for they are dumb and wasted time for huge life time doing accomplishment for the goal is that way will find themselves breaking a fine amount, but hey that is humanity for we do lived with the dolts and commoner for that some what all of us are yet we always find ourselves outliving the smart people sometime.

 

P.S I won't reply back because I am just bored always in life for time being.

Well that take a turn i didn’t expect

[(PSN)Viveeeh]

I don't think you're a bad teacher just because you tell your students they are wrong. I can feel with the students though, I still remember how fragile my self-confidence was as a teenager (it was almost nonexistent). If you're so enthusiastic about something and others just tell you you were wrong or extremely uninformed about it, you'll feel dumb. And a teacher doesn't want that.

A solution could be to encourage them to research the topic of their interest, maybe to write a paper about it for an extra mark. They'll find out soon enough they were wrong, but finding out themselves they won't feel that bad. They aren't losing face with a respectable adult like a teacher. They can choose to talk about it to you, or just decide they don't have time for that paper you suggested them to submit, it's up to them. They learn about the topic they came to you with, and learn to always double check themselves, potentially a win-win.

[Ahniar]

One of those moments I NEED a machine plugged to my brain to externalize all the information I want to show... This might take a wile to process into words. 

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

Anyone who discourages you from correcting a child, just because it may hurt their feelings, can go jump in a lake. 

It sounds like you're teaching some kind of science. Science. Science involves looking at facts and figuring out what the truth is. It's not about denying that truth just because it isn't what we want to hear. 

 

As long as you weren't belittling that student, then you were probably fine. 

[o0Despair0o]

I finished school years ago, but I still feel like that, all those years, my teachers just wanted me to suffer.

Like, seriously. We had a drawing class in 8th or 9th grade, the kind where you draw cylinders and 3D cubes. My line was off by literally 1 millimeter and I just got an F for it. I mean, really. 1 god damn millimeter? I could have understood getting an B or an C, but an F ?

[Corvid]

36 minutes ago, o0Despair0o said:

 

Like, seriously. We had a drawing class in 8th or 9th grade, the kind where you draw cylinders and 3D cubes. My line was off by literally 1 millimeter and I just got an F for it. I mean, really. 1 god damn millimeter? I could have understood getting an B or an C, but an F ?

You'd probably have a lot of fun in Engineering class. Having to work to 1/10th of a millimetre was quite interesting. Especially since we were filing down metal blocks, rather than just drawing things. Making a mistake near the end of a work piece would cause quite the panic.

[novalery]

On 2019-10-22 at 2:51 PM, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

Anyone who discourages you from correcting a child, just because it may hurt their feelings, can go jump in a lake. 

It sounds like you're teaching some kind of science. Science. Science involves looking at facts and figuring out what the truth is. It's not about denying that truth just because it isn't what we want to hear. 

 

As long as you weren't belittling that student, then you were probably fine. 

Yup a science teacher.

its just that i felt that i didn’t do a better job correcting them.

[novalery]

14 hours ago, o0Despair0o said:

I finished school years ago, but I still feel like that, all those years, my teachers just wanted me to suffer.

Like, seriously. We had a drawing class in 8th or 9th grade, the kind where you draw cylinders and 3D cubes. My line was off by literally 1 millimeter and I just got an F for it. I mean, really. 1 god damn millimeter? I could have understood getting an B or an C, but an F ?

You probably did something else that you didn’t remember

[o0Despair0o]

20 minutes ago, novalery said:

You probably did something else that you didn’t remember

Probably.

I mean, I rarely did my homework, lol

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

10 hours ago, novalery said:

Yup a science teacher.

its just that i felt that i didn’t do a better job correcting them.

I think that it was Zenna Henderson who said something about "touching a teenager means touching a sore spot".

Don't stress about it. 

 

 

I could tell you about my high school science teacher who used to cuss us out, call us stupid, write horrible things about our level of education on tests that he was correcting (which then needed to be signed by parents and returned).

He was, for all of that, one of the best damned teachers we had. 

He cussed us out, when we were acting or performing below our level, like he'd cuss the bright kids out for getting one thing wrong on a test, but the weakest kid would get 50% on the same test and not a harsh word at all for them. 

He called us stupid when we were being stupid, making silly mistakes, not answering the questions that we knew the answer for. But he never explained things as if we were dumb. 

Here wrote those horrible things because he knew that our shame at showing those remarks to our parents, and how much it would motivate us to do better. 

But most of all, when he praised us, we knew that it was genuine praise, reserved for when we had done something that impressed him. Heck, sometimes he'd just nod a particular way, and you would see that student stand a little taller. 

 

If we ever needed help he was open with it and would actually make the time to make sure that we got it in the end. He also taught us how to learn, how to analyze the question and our answers. How to think through to an answer, even if we fell into the trap of an easy answer, and the better one was harder to get to.

When I come across kids struggling to do moles calculations, I explain it to them the way he did (minus the throwing of chalk at students) and they pick up so quickly and then ask why their teachers didn't show them that way.

 

Don't mistake a temporary attitude, for a true response to your interactions.