Overheard between students
God, I am so sick of Mr. Fisher (name changed to ensure privacy).
I like Fisher. He’s a good teacher.
Yeah I guess, but he never teaches.
Yeah he does.
Yeah but not Math. He spends half the period trying to teach us life lessons.
Ha ha ha ha … true
I relayed this story moments later to the teacher.
Who was it?
I don’t remember. I was busy helping some other students and I overheard it.
Ha! That’s fantastic. Sometimes I look at the board and wonder ‘is this really what these kids need’?
I know.
I mean somebody has to teach them this stuff. They aren’t learning it at home.
I
have had the pleasure of witnessing Mr. Fisher educate his students on
a number of occasions and I often find him take a 20 minute tangent
from his scheduled lesson plan. Now as teachers in a failing school we
have learned that we are not allowed to deviate too far from our
‘anchors’, unit plans and lesson plans. Every detail of our students’
education has already been established. Heaven forbid if we deviate
from geometry to instill the importance of professionalism. But what
happens when our students ask why? Why must we learn personal finance?
As
an adult, it seems clear to me that any student about to graduate (or
leave) high school would greatly benefit from the advantages of
understanding personal finance. And as students growing up in a city
that is riddled with debt, homelessness, joblessness and a slew of
other financial deficiencies, one would think that it is obvious why
one should learn personal finance. Sadly it is not. A large number of
our students have a different perspective. For a glimpse into that
viewpoint I would like to focus on an incident that occurred in a
different math class with a different teacher.
“Mr.
Stacks, how much you make a week?” a young student blurts out as class
ends. Mr. Stacks returns a quizzical smirk with no verbal response.
The student, eager to show how much more money he makes than Mr.
Stacks, whips out a wad of one hundred dollar bills. He starts fanning
through the stack asking “This much? This much? This much?”
“Put that away”, Mr. Stacks replies.
“It prolly takes you all year ta make dis”.
“Yup,”
Mr. Stacks agrees. The student puts his fistful of dollars away
looking satisfied that he makes more in a weekend than a teacher can
make in months of hard work. Who needs personal finance? Sadly that
student ended up in jail a week after that incident. And that is when
we as teachers know that we need to teach kids life lessons and
geometry, to teach students manners and biology, persistence and
theater.
God, I am so sick of Mr. Fisher (name changed to ensure privacy).
I like Fisher. He’s a good teacher.
Yeah I guess, but he never teaches.
Yeah he does.
Yeah but not Math. He spends half the period trying to teach us life lessons.
Ha ha ha ha … true
I relayed this story moments later to the teacher.
Who was it?
I don’t remember. I was busy helping some other students and I overheard it.
Ha! That’s fantastic. Sometimes I look at the board and wonder ‘is this really what these kids need’?
I know.
I mean somebody has to teach them this stuff. They aren’t learning it at home.
I
have had the pleasure of witnessing Mr. Fisher educate his students on
a number of occasions and I often find him take a 20 minute tangent
from his scheduled lesson plan. Now as teachers in a failing school we
have learned that we are not allowed to deviate too far from our
‘anchors’, unit plans and lesson plans. Every detail of our students’
education has already been established. Heaven forbid if we deviate
from geometry to instill the importance of professionalism. But what
happens when our students ask why? Why must we learn personal finance?
As
an adult, it seems clear to me that any student about to graduate (or
leave) high school would greatly benefit from the advantages of
understanding personal finance. And as students growing up in a city
that is riddled with debt, homelessness, joblessness and a slew of
other financial deficiencies, one would think that it is obvious why
one should learn personal finance. Sadly it is not. A large number of
our students have a different perspective. For a glimpse into that
viewpoint I would like to focus on an incident that occurred in a
different math class with a different teacher.
“Mr.
Stacks, how much you make a week?” a young student blurts out as class
ends. Mr. Stacks returns a quizzical smirk with no verbal response.
The student, eager to show how much more money he makes than Mr.
Stacks, whips out a wad of one hundred dollar bills. He starts fanning
through the stack asking “This much? This much? This much?”
“Put that away”, Mr. Stacks replies.
“It prolly takes you all year ta make dis”.
“Yup,”
Mr. Stacks agrees. The student puts his fistful of dollars away
looking satisfied that he makes more in a weekend than a teacher can
make in months of hard work. Who needs personal finance? Sadly that
student ended up in jail a week after that incident. And that is when
we as teachers know that we need to teach kids life lessons and
geometry, to teach students manners and biology, persistence and
theater.
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