Is the ship sinking or are we accidentally on a submarine?

There was a moment in the classroom today, I would've sworn I was on a literal sinking ship. Sirens going off. Students slipping on board. I saw failure across more students than I would ever like to see. My students had a quick check in/quiz/formative assessment today (isn't all the different names great?). And majority of my students received lower marks than they ever have.

Because each low score for one student, is a low score for me as well. It felt like a total of 70 failures all on my lap. And, it is on me. And them.

Now, how do you handle this? I am human. And my initial reaction by the time I saw the third class in a row's score was "I quit". Surprise. I didn't quit.

When it feels like the boat is sinking, it is usually because we are too zoomed in on the wrong things. The score. Or the stress a students lays on you. Or the lack of meeting expectations. All at once it can be an information, fire overload.

So, I decided to put out small fires. We offer a FLEX period which is like a study hall/additional teacher support that students can sign up to work with specific teachers or teachers can pull kids to work with.

I pulled some students who I knew needed that additional push to complete the quiz. And it worked. 3 fires out and a door to the submarine closed. More to come.

In teaching, helping all 20-25 students all at once is a challenge. My school does allow for the additional support, but its best utilized in small group settings.

So How am I going to close the rest of my submarine doors so that I stop sinking and start descending?

That is where we currently are. Clearly, I missed the teaching mark on this section. What did I miss? I missed the opportunity a long time ago, actually. The expectation for this quiz was explanation. But. I haven't emphasized how to be articulate in math class much up until this point.

This is a relatively New skill for students. They are used to explaining in ELA or History. not so much math.

I wanted to be angry and upset not only at myself, but at my students. But when I realized where I went wrong in the last 7 months, I oddly felt some ease. It brought me back to the root of everything I stand for: We are teaching students how to learn. Of course they do not know how to articulate what they did in their heads into words on to paper. Not unless they are asked to do it. And do it repeatedly.

This was only their 3rd attempt at it, they aren't going to be perfect. We will hold this conversation in class today. And we will walk through the quiz together to see how we can better explain HOW they knew what to do.

Its practice. That is all it is. Quizzes give us insight into what we are still working on and have not mastered.

The boats not sinking. We just haven't closed up all the doors to our submarine yet.