Since I haven’t really watched any movies this week or seen anything in the news that makes me want to rant, I’m going to write about something that happened in the SIP program this week.
I’ve been working in the Summer Incentive Program at EMU for about three weeks now and all-in-all, it’s been a great experience so far. Generally speaking, the students are really great and I have a lot of fun working with them. But, for the first couple weeks, there was a student named Chris, who was really throwing me and my teaching partner for a loop.
Most of the students in the program have been working really hard and putting a lot of effort into doing their work, even though they are swamped with assignments and challenged by their first college-experience. While many of them struggle with their writing, they have no problem working hard and trying to improve. But, there has been one student that has struggled more than the others.
Chris doesn’t struggle with understanding the work as much as actually putting for the immense effort it takes to complete it. For the first couple weeks, he tried his best to just keep his head down and try to go as unnoticed as possible. Of course, we wouldn’t let him succeed in his efforts. When the students were given their first reading assignment (about five pages) he complained that he couldn’t read that long and it was boring. When he was given his first writing assignment, it was a struggle to get him to even start it. He kept falling back on the same old excuses: “I don’t know what to write.” “I don’t have anything else to say.”
Chris is obviously intelligent. He is more than capable of doing the work… he just wasn’t motivated enough to still do the work even when he was bored by it. It started to become a real problem
Finally, at our weekly staff meeting, we felt that something needed to be done before it was too late. We discussed the issues he was having and talked about possible solutions. While we didn’t come up with anything solid, we at least made everyone aware of the situation.
When we went to class, we were expecting another day of struggles with Chris. But to our surprise, and for reasons unknown to us, he had a really great session. He worked hard. He asked questions. For the first time, he actually seemed engaged with the material. Something lit a spark under him. We weren’t sure if it was going to last, but everyday since then, he has shown the same effort.
Maybe his parents talked him into it. Maybe his friends. We still don’t know what it was, but just as we were beginning to give up on him, he took it upon himself to change right before our eyes. Honestly, it’s been really nice to see and I guess it just goes to prove that as a teacher, you can never really give up on a student no matter how difficult they make things. Even if you’re not the one that inspires them to change, it can come from somewhere else. And in the end, it doesn’t really matter how they get there… as long as they do.
It seems to me that the biggest challenge for freshman is in getting them to realize that they can’t get through college the same way they got through high school. Most of us are motivated to do well in high school not for ourselves, but for our parents. So that we won’t get punished or have to listen to them yell at us. But, that doesn’t work for college. Until you decide that you will succeed for yourself and not for someone else, you can never force yourself to read boring assignments or write papers that don’t interest you. Some can come to that realization quickly, some take longer, and still others may never get there. But it seems, at least for now, that Chris has come to this realization and hopefully it will be the first step he takes towards becoming a successful college student.
