When I say these kids are discouraged, I mean they are *extremely* discouraged. Many of them failed Algebra 1 once already in the eighth or ninth grade. Many of them are repeaters. Psychologically speaking, a large number are hunkered down into a defensive crouch. They’ve never had any success in their math studies, so why should they expect anything different in this class? Their goal is simply to endure it.

What’s frustrating is that these same kids are all superb artists in their artistic disciplines. Admission to our school is by audition only, and the competition for spots in the freshman class is fierce.

And therein lies the paradox. These kids undergo a reverse-Superman transformation when they enter our classroom, going from superhero to supplicant as they pass through the open door. They leave their confidence in the hallway.

As both an artist and a math teacher, I find this painful.

The net result is that they have given up before they’ve even had a chance to begin. They’ve quit, not because they are quitters, but because they are conditioned to believe they *cannot* succeed in a math class, and so why even both wasting the energy it would take to try.

This is the classic posture of the discouraged child, as outlined by Rudolf Dreikurs. Fro this reason, I have to take a totally different approach to the binder checks with these students. I believe Dreikurs when he says the only antidote to discouragement is to encourage their courage. And so that is my sole emphasis with binder checks in this class.

I did as much advertising and previewing of the Binder Check requirements in Algebra 1 as I did in Algebra 2. I constantly grilled them about which section each paper belonged in. They would mumble half-hearted responses and shrug in their seats. So I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that only half the students actually even turned in a binder. But I was a little bummed out.

In hindsight, I can see that they couldn’t even hear me giving Sam’s speech about how Binder Checks are really just “free points” for them. They had cloaked themsleves in so many protective layers against further shaming and failure that nothing could have penetrated through their defenses to reach their ears.

There was only one thing to do — and that was to not accept opting out as an answer.

I graded all the binders I received — which were all moderately terrible, as I expected. But with these students and with others, I held mini-conferences to discuss remediation (or doing, in most cases). We looked over everything they had in their backpacks and “binders” — most of which looked horrible — and I made each student a starter list of what they still needed to assemble for me to remediate and reassess. I broke things down into recipe-level detail. I made it clear that the goal here was to learn how to do this so that they would be better equipped to succeed in this class, but that it was OK with me if they needed a little more support at the beginning to achieve lift-off.

This produced a lot of cognitive dissonance for them. Most of them are conditioned to believe that they can get the teacher off their backs if they simply fail to perform the assigned task. Then they can simply sit through a shaming “wonk wonk wonk” lecture before they pull the covers back over their heads and return to their preferred state of invisibility until the end of the year.

They were not prepared for patience.

If they failed again, I worked with them on improving their own lists of needed deliverables. I have done this three or four times so far with some students. But they’re starting to come around.

What I want them to understand is that in *this* class, it will actually be easier for them to simply *DO* the Binder Check and get it over with. Otherwise they are going to have to continue to deal with me and my possibly mental-patient level of patience. I am as sticky as gum on the bottom of their shoe, and I am building alliances with parents, with paras, and with the Special Ed team. The Special Ed teachers are especially enthusiastic about getting on board with the binder checks because these students really need it. Plus they are well-armed with binder supplies in their resource rooms.

Basically, we have them surrounded.

- Elizabeth (aka @cheesemonkeysf on Twitter)

As for the do-over, actually I did something similar in my non-SBG Algebra 2 class. We have 2 binder checks in the first quarter, and of course, the first one of the year is always awful. But most of my kids improved on the second one… since I was grading organization, and their correcting their work, if they improved, I took the second binder check as their quarter binder score.

However, this will not happen again, since now my expectations have been clear and I’ve done enough to coach them.

And finally, I love “The Homework That Looked As If It Had Narrowly Escaped From a Colony of Feral Pigs”

Sam

I’m doing Binder Checks with two very different classes — my Algebra 2 class, who are students at the top of their game, and my Algebra 1 class, which is more than 50% Special Ed (diagnosed with specific learning differences) and more than 60% Algebra 1 repeaters (i.e., students who failed Algebra 1 in eighth grade or later). Both classes are mostly 9th graders with a light dusting of sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

This is a summary of how things worked with Algebra 2.

My Algebra 2 students are very on top of things. Give them a new tool and they’ll grab hold and start using it well. Within a day or two, they’ll have excellent suggestions on how to improve it. They’re just that good.

Still, as Sam kept warning me, they totally flubbed Binder Check 1. I’m talking #epicfail . Some kids didn’t have a dedicated binder as required, some didn’t have five labeled divider tabs, many were missing one or more of the three HW assignments from which the Binder Check questions were drawn.

In other words, it was a blood bath.

The fact that I am using an SBG assessment model raised a thorny question for me: should I give them the chance to remediate and reassess — or not?

This was a true test of faith. It forced me to question my values. Should I maintain the purity and integrity of my new Binder Check system and let the kids suffer the slings and arrows of an eternal stain on their transcripts? Or should I risk my newfound reputation as a mathematical hard-ass and give them a chance to remediate and reassess?

I wrestled with this question that first weekend. Many of these students, while strong students in general, are pretty traumatized math learners. And most are first-generation college-bound. So on the one hand, I didn’t want to discourage them further.

On the other hand, I have seen the power of the SBG model, and in the end, my trust in SBG won out. I decided it was more important for them to learn how to organize and use their notes as a learning tool than for me to make my point for its own sake.

So I declared a universal do-over.

This was probably for the best, as my first aid and CPR skills are not extensive enough to keep 30 achievement-oriented adolescents from having a collective nervous breakdown.

However, they were not going to get off so easily. On Monday morning, I opened my lecture with a declaration of Binder Check #1 as an #EPICFAIL. In my Keynote slides, I showed them photo after photo of epically-failing Binder Check Crimes, including:

• The Binder With No Tabs
• The Binder With an Empty Homework Section
• The Homework Paper With No Date
and
• The Homework That Looked As If It Had Narrowly Escaped From a Colony of Feral Pigs

I blacked out all the names and incriminating details, but there was plenty of guilt to go around. What was more, the photographic evidence allowed me to turn the episode into a teachable moment, namely, “Do you HONESTLY BELIEVE this is ‘A’ quality work?” And because the evidence was so extreme, laughter eventually won out over horror.

I told them I would let the bad grades stand until Binder Check #2, at which time I would reevaluate whether or not they had taken my criticisms to heart or had dismissed me as yet another “wonk wonk wonk”-speaking clueless grown-up.

I waited two more weeks for Binder Check #2, long enough to let them stew in their suffering, but not long enough to have to defend myself against a barrage of parent complaints to my principal.

During those two weeks, my reputation as a hard-ass spread across the school. Teachers I hardly knew were coming up to me in the lounge to shake my hand and give me props for holding the kids to such a high standard. 

I started to wonder if I was committing career suicide. But I decided to suspend judgment until Binder Check #2.

In the meantime, I took advantage of the fact that I had really gotten their attention. Every note-taking moment or worksheet became an opportunity to ask the musical question, “What section of your binder do you think this paper should be filed under?”

And to their eternal credit, they got the hint. They began to use their binder as a valuable learning tool.

Validation arrived in the form of Binder Check #2. The lowest grade in the class was a 91%. And I wiped out their grades from Binder Check #1.

SBG had triumphed once again.

In our next episode, how things went in Algebra 1.

-Elizabeth (aka @cheesemonkeysf on Twitter)