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There are four words that get under my skin more than any other in education. “I don’t get it.” Not because I don’t want to help the students who truly don’t understand a concept, but because those four little nasty words are spewed from the mouths of students everyday, in every class, the moment I give instructions on what we’ll be doing in class.
Example:
Me: ”Please take out a sheet of paper and copy down the quote from the board.”
Students: “Wait, like, the whole quote?”
Me: “Yes, the whole quote. Copy down the whole quote.”
Students: “I don’t have any paper.”
Me: “OK, after you find a piece of paper and copy down the whole quote, interpret the quote. This means that you’ll be putting the quote into your own words and figuring out the deeper meaning of the quote.”
Students: “I don’t get it.”
Me: “So, put the quote from the board into your own words. Make it easier to understand.”
Students: “I don’t get it. The quote from the board? Or are we supposed to make up a quote?”
Me (with much less patience): “Yes, the quote from the board, which you were supposed to copy down on your paper. You need to interpret it.”
Students: “Oh, OK.”
Students, after 1 minute of writing and swarming my desks with their papers: “Is this first sentence OK? How do you spell important? Am I doing it right so far? I don’t get it. What is this quote about?”
These “I don’t get it” words get to me, because I’ve been noticing more and more that students are having such difficulty thinking independently and they so badly want their hands held through every step of every lesson. They do get it, I know they do.
I just don’t get it, I guess.
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