I Exposed a Major Flaw in My Teaching This Week

This week I discovered that one of my students learned incorrect science due to me joking around in class.  I’ve been in the classroom for 4 years now and haven’t ever seen this happen, but it hit me like a ton of bricks when it did.

Last semester my partner and I were teaching what a parasite and a host were.  We are in a team teach class and both of us like to play off of each other to keep the class engaged and exciting.  At some point my partner had mentioned “Your parents probably think you guys are parasites because your survival is dependent on them.”  It was a lighthearted moment and we all had a laugh about it.

Fast forward to yesterday when I was working one on one with a student helping her with her vocabulary for our upcoming state science test.  I asked her what a parasite was and she told me that it ‘lives off of a host”.   That definition was sufficient to me, but I wanted her to provide me an example of a parasite-host relationship.  With a straight face she said “a parent and a child”.  I didn’t make the connection at first but when I asked her to elaborate she said, “That’s what you guys told us last semester…that children were parasites and their parents were hosts.”  YIKES!!  I then probed some more and asked her to give me another example.  She responded, “a mom rabbit and her babies.”  OH NO!   She had taken our joke and had built her knowledge around it.

Luckily I was able to fix the situation for her, but I was really taken back by the realization that every last word that you say can have an impact on a students learning.  I’ve heard Todd Whitaker mention that there is no place for sarcasm in the classroom (even though he’s about as sarcastic as they come).  I can see exactly what he means now.  I feel like many of my student-teacher relationships are built upon my somewhat laid back classroom and the injection of humor whenever possible.  I want kids to enjoy being in my class and laughing is a big part of that.  I’ll definitely be more aware of it in the future.  I’m chalking this one up as growth through failure.