Be forever a student. He and he alone is an old man who feels that he has learnt enough and has need for no more knowledge.When I was a child, my most consistent memory associated with going to the dentist's office was Highlights Magazine. I haven't seen the magazine in almost twenty years, but I still remember one of the features of the magazine, "Goofus and Gallant". "Goofus and Gallant" was about two boys named, well, Goofus and Gallant. The feature would always show the two boys in similar situations, where Goofus would do everything the wrong way, and Gallant would do everything the right way.--- Sivananda
I've decided to tell two stories about my worst and my best students of all time. In honor of Highlights Magazine, I'll change the names of the students to Goofus and Gallant, to protect their identities.
This, the second tale, is about Gallant. This tale opens much the same way that the tale of Goofus did. But it will diverge very quickly.
My expectation, based on my experiences with numerous Goofuses in the past, was that she was going to let me know that she couldn't "do" math, and ask that I have pity on her and not grade her as harshly as the other students. But I was wrong. Completely wrong.
Instead, these were the requests that she made:
Gallant was obviously not a strong math student. But she did not give up. She asked questions every day if something in the lecture did not make sense. Frequently, when she would ask questions, other members of the class would sigh, or roll their eyes, or otherwise signal their displeasure with someone asking questions. I did what I could to discourage these students from this rude behavior, but Gallant was well aware of it and it clearly made her uncomfortable. But she didn't let it intimidate her into not asking questions. (The real irony is that most of the students who were so offensive every time Gallant asked a question scored much lower than Gallant on the tests, and many of them failed every test. So I guess they felt insecure about their ignorance, and rather than trying to correct the problem, they put on a front of knowing everything. It would have turned out far better if they had asked a question or two.)
Gallant spent about three hours a week outside of class in my office hours. She spent most of that time working problems on a chalkboard. I would watch, and I would stop her if something was going wrong. I usually didn't have to correct her. Instead, I would just say, "I'm not sure I believe that step," and she would stop and think about what she had done and figure out on her own what she had done wrong. There were two non-traditional students in the class who found out what Gallant was doing and asked to participate. Having the other students there helped Gallant by making it clear that she was by no means the only student in the class having difficulty. It was a lot of fun, and really represented more of the way teaching should be done. But what works with three motivated students is very hard to do with 45 sullen, hostile and unresponsive students.
Gallant passed every test of the semester. She worried that her grades were not high enough, and I did my best to allay her anxiety. But no matter how worried she was, she never, ever, ever asked me to boost her grade. She wanted to earn a grade. She wanted the grade to mean something.
In the end, Gallant earned a C. And she was far more ecstatic about that C than any student with an A that I have ever had in my life. That C meant that she had beaten her disabilities, that she had learned the material, and that she had succeeded on her own merits. And that was one of the high points of my teaching career.
I have had a few Gallants since this one. But not many. And my regret with each one is that I couldn't give them a grade far more deserving of their effort, their motivation, and their true improvement in ability. It is for these students, and only for these students, that I bother to remain a teacher.