Consider This: Teaching English to STEM Students
The other morning I was in the car with my HSC son as he drove to school (I take the car back home after he gets there). We were having an interesting conversation about his recent half yearly exams and resultant school report. His STEM results (Physics [S], Multimedia [T], Engineering Studies [E] and Ext 1 Maths [M]) are really quite outstanding for a student who spends little obvious time studying, but he really does struggle with English, no matter how much review he does. I was the same (as previous Blog posts will attest to). I get it. Our brains work differently.
These exam results for English are especially frustrating for him because he really put a LOT into the study for this exam and he has received very little useful feedback from his teacher. More than this, he had been given good feedback on what he had shown his teacher and then got a bad mark for it. He practiced his creative writing, he reviewed his essay topics.
But with an English teacher who does little actual explicit teaching of analytical techniques, textual techniques, essay writing, thesis statement synthesis or creative writing he feels like he is floundering with no direction. I had a similar teacher who seemed to think I would just "pick it up". Well, I didn't (not until I had to teach it to my older son when I home-schooled him with an Excel Book on Essay Writing). It was not enough for the teacher to put the texts in front of me. I could not see themes, links, techniques or the ideas that she seemed to be sprouting. In fact, I saw nothing more than the words on the page and little else. Perhaps they were obvious to her, but certainly not to me. To me they were an enduring mystery.
But back to my discussion.
Apparently my son's regular English teacher is on leave and they have a substitute who has explicitly laid out for them all the themes and links in their current text and topic. He's written more in his English notebook in this short time than he has in the past 18 months. This teacher is also, apparently, and "English head" because she talks about writing essays and Uni and her Masters course and such, but I am tipping that, if he asks her, she may just be one of those rare entities that is/was also good at STEM subjects! She seems to understand the needs of STEM students and can teach to them.
At any rate, reflecting later on our discussion it appeared to me that my son, as a STEM student, has a great advantage which is also a great disadvantage. He sees patterns but not the ethereal ones the English teacher does, more concrete ones. And these are obvious to him so:
1. Since they are obvious, he thinks they are obvious to everyone and discussing them in an essay would be pointless; and
2. He has little idea of how to articulate these in anything other than dot points.
It was only when I was at Uni doing my own Master of Arts in Creative Writing that I realised my observations (obvious to me) were not so obvious to my experienced fellow English students. They had done BA degrees majoring in English. I had done a BE in Electrical Engineering!
There was this short story we were discussing called The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro. The title of the short story prompted me to start singing in my head as I walked around the house. Was this a real song? Yes "The Bear Went Over the Mountain". The title of the piece really didn't fit with the themes of the story until I realised that when the bear went over the mountain, all that he could see was the other side of the mountain - ie, nothing different. And that was happening in the short story. When I brought this up in our discussion group and experienced English teacher said she had studied and taught this piece before and had never made that link! (Kudos for this Engineer!)
But, something that was so obvious to me was worth a mention because it had not been thought of by another! And this is the lesson my HSC son needs to learn. His obvious insights may not be obvious to others and are worthy of exploration.
But this leads to his second disadvantage; the inability to articulate himself in the written form. Verbally he's really strong but struggles to put on paper thoughts that he feels an English teacher would mark well. He complains that he writes this simply and as he sees them, whereas he feels English teachers are looking for flowery words and clever language to express in three sentences what could be written in one. And he is probably right. At Uni essays have word limits, so the distillation of thoughts into the simplest of language is important (and this can be done WITHOUT high fallutin' words) but at school teachers seem enamoured with flowery nonsense. I've read some Band 6 essays (ie those that receive the top marks) and I even wonder if the students comprehend what they are saying or are just throwing together random words that make them seem smarter than they really are. But why should those who express themselves simply be penalised?
This deficit in articulation now extends into the STEM subjects as they have introduced the "extended response" question which is a mini essay that requires linkage and such. Rather than content being the focus of these questions it is the expression and argument within them, which seems bizarre to me for a STEM subject (the person who put the touchy feely into STEM subjects should be shot!).
As a result he is sitting in ranking behind students who do Advanced English simply because these students can get full marks in the extended responses - despite not necessarily being as knowledgeable in the content! Unless a STEM teacher takes it upon themselves to fix this deficit, it will never be addressed by an English teacher because they have no idea how to do this for STEM students (unless they, themselves, were also STEM students).
Anyway, this little discussion and analysis is going to make for some interesting and very different parent teacher interviews next week. No cookie cutter "he needs to review more, do more home study, do more HSC practice papers" interviews for us, thanks. It's going to be "why aren't you doing anything to address this English deficit" and "where is the specific and explicit feedback that is going to help him improve in this area"?
These exam results for English are especially frustrating for him because he really put a LOT into the study for this exam and he has received very little useful feedback from his teacher. More than this, he had been given good feedback on what he had shown his teacher and then got a bad mark for it. He practiced his creative writing, he reviewed his essay topics.
But with an English teacher who does little actual explicit teaching of analytical techniques, textual techniques, essay writing, thesis statement synthesis or creative writing he feels like he is floundering with no direction. I had a similar teacher who seemed to think I would just "pick it up". Well, I didn't (not until I had to teach it to my older son when I home-schooled him with an Excel Book on Essay Writing). It was not enough for the teacher to put the texts in front of me. I could not see themes, links, techniques or the ideas that she seemed to be sprouting. In fact, I saw nothing more than the words on the page and little else. Perhaps they were obvious to her, but certainly not to me. To me they were an enduring mystery.
But back to my discussion.
Apparently my son's regular English teacher is on leave and they have a substitute who has explicitly laid out for them all the themes and links in their current text and topic. He's written more in his English notebook in this short time than he has in the past 18 months. This teacher is also, apparently, and "English head" because she talks about writing essays and Uni and her Masters course and such, but I am tipping that, if he asks her, she may just be one of those rare entities that is/was also good at STEM subjects! She seems to understand the needs of STEM students and can teach to them.
At any rate, reflecting later on our discussion it appeared to me that my son, as a STEM student, has a great advantage which is also a great disadvantage. He sees patterns but not the ethereal ones the English teacher does, more concrete ones. And these are obvious to him so:
1. Since they are obvious, he thinks they are obvious to everyone and discussing them in an essay would be pointless; and
2. He has little idea of how to articulate these in anything other than dot points.
It was only when I was at Uni doing my own Master of Arts in Creative Writing that I realised my observations (obvious to me) were not so obvious to my experienced fellow English students. They had done BA degrees majoring in English. I had done a BE in Electrical Engineering!
There was this short story we were discussing called The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro. The title of the short story prompted me to start singing in my head as I walked around the house. Was this a real song? Yes "The Bear Went Over the Mountain". The title of the piece really didn't fit with the themes of the story until I realised that when the bear went over the mountain, all that he could see was the other side of the mountain - ie, nothing different. And that was happening in the short story. When I brought this up in our discussion group and experienced English teacher said she had studied and taught this piece before and had never made that link! (Kudos for this Engineer!)
But, something that was so obvious to me was worth a mention because it had not been thought of by another! And this is the lesson my HSC son needs to learn. His obvious insights may not be obvious to others and are worthy of exploration.
But this leads to his second disadvantage; the inability to articulate himself in the written form. Verbally he's really strong but struggles to put on paper thoughts that he feels an English teacher would mark well. He complains that he writes this simply and as he sees them, whereas he feels English teachers are looking for flowery words and clever language to express in three sentences what could be written in one. And he is probably right. At Uni essays have word limits, so the distillation of thoughts into the simplest of language is important (and this can be done WITHOUT high fallutin' words) but at school teachers seem enamoured with flowery nonsense. I've read some Band 6 essays (ie those that receive the top marks) and I even wonder if the students comprehend what they are saying or are just throwing together random words that make them seem smarter than they really are. But why should those who express themselves simply be penalised?
This deficit in articulation now extends into the STEM subjects as they have introduced the "extended response" question which is a mini essay that requires linkage and such. Rather than content being the focus of these questions it is the expression and argument within them, which seems bizarre to me for a STEM subject (the person who put the touchy feely into STEM subjects should be shot!).
As a result he is sitting in ranking behind students who do Advanced English simply because these students can get full marks in the extended responses - despite not necessarily being as knowledgeable in the content! Unless a STEM teacher takes it upon themselves to fix this deficit, it will never be addressed by an English teacher because they have no idea how to do this for STEM students (unless they, themselves, were also STEM students).
Anyway, this little discussion and analysis is going to make for some interesting and very different parent teacher interviews next week. No cookie cutter "he needs to review more, do more home study, do more HSC practice papers" interviews for us, thanks. It's going to be "why aren't you doing anything to address this English deficit" and "where is the specific and explicit feedback that is going to help him improve in this area"?
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Consider This
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