Attention, Compliance, and the Rest of Us

John's response to my last post :

Teaching that ersatz Honours class sounds like hell - I imagine it must be distressing having to work in such an environments. Are those student reactions the kinds of thing they say out loud, or more what you infer they think?

Re: silence in preference to overstimulation - I see this as really compatible with what Warren Mansell is talking about towards the end here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZe9D8u4di0 ... part of his point is that our systems' quest for novelty is unstoppable, but that quest is often better served by directing it to different perspectives on what's already going on in our minds, or on the subtler elements of what's there in our environment. This is what I appreciated in your music list, and in the Mahler book...not a bunch of new music to absorb, but a chance to read or write about/hear in a different way what's already there in my memory or collection.

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I first tried to write a sort of short reply.  Then it grew.  Then I sent it off.  Then I realized that it was substantial enough to be a post... With some light edits.

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I don't want to give the wrong impression, I am on good terms with nearly all of that class nearly every day.  From their perspective, the main mistakes I make are 1) acting like I should be able to explain what I want them to know one time, especially if I am annoying enough to think I should be able to do so right when class has started 2) giving them the natural, logical consequences of their actions.

So something like that handout is working around the fact that I am not able to lecture. No, no kid said any of those things to me. And I even won over two kids that I would not have put in the seven whom I am trying to teach—one on the edge of the "video game meme" category, the other on the edge of the mopey-to-indulge-yourself category. The latter took good notes partly because I handed her headphones so she could listen to music while working (technically a violation of our district policy against using learning devices for any fun whatsoever—okay, technically a violation of the district’s extension of the state law against “cell phones” from bell-to-bell—but I am a bit of a rebel, after all).

So, like 9 kids are somewhere close to the level of content they deserve.

And then later on in the hour I was able to say, "note check. Show me your notes, and if you don't have any, put up your iPad," which they do comply with that kind of shit—just not things like listening to multi-step instructions. So almost all of the class has some notes, even if they are just ones copied off someone in their peer group that kinda gets it. Those kids aren't worse off than they would be otherwise.

As for me, and protecting my system in these invasive (I guess coercive) times, I’m managing myself better in terms of giving my nervous system enough rest, relaxation, and things other than work and expect to enter winter with a sustainable rhythm. Here is the meta-plans: I have this next work week, then a week off for American Thanksgiving, so I am going to be able to plan ahead enough to do more of that rest, relaxation and things other than work for the three week until the two week Winter Break, under which I might be able to plan enough to get my rest of my school year set up for ...  the virtuous cycle I listed.

Keep in mind I don't have much of any time with a feed now...  It just so happens that the real world is informed by people who ARE on feeds, so you get a lot of second-hand feed brain.