Failure with purpose- Week 3

Safety is not always the most exciting subject to learn or teach. The students have been troopers the whole week doing safety review and taking safety quizzes. However, yesterday the students finally hit a wall, and did not want to do their work. All the students wanted to do was talk instead of working on the assignment that needed to be completed. The class has always liked to talk. Yesterday, it was worse!

I am not sure if I handled the talking the right way, but it felt right. As the students continued to talk and not complete their work I was unsure how to handle it. I already asked them to work quietly and individually twice. The third time I took a different approach. I told the students, "Since, I hear so much talking I am assuming you all must know this information?" The students all stared at me with blank faces. I then proceeded to say, "Since, we already know everything I want everyone to turn to page 46 and complete the self-evaluation. This evaluation will count as your third safety quiz." The students continued to stare at me and not move. I told them "I am not kidding. Number your pages 1-20. Once, you are done numbering your page then you may get started on answering the questions."At that moment I was laughing inside because these kids had never seen me do something like that before!

What the students did not know was that there was a purpose for making them take a quiz that they were unprepared for. When most the students were halfway through the quiz I told them to stop taking the quiz. I asked my students, "How many of you are struggling taking this quiz?" The whole class raised their hands. I then asked, "Does anyone understand why this quiz is so hard for all of you?" No one wanted to answer me. I proceed to answer my own question. "The reason this is so hard for all you is because you are not prepared. And you are not prepared because instead of doing individual work, you chose to talk. In this class we have a lot of projects. Your time management determines if you get those projects done. If you choose to use your time talking then you will not get your projects done and you will not pass the course. That means that you are responsible for this class. . . You may get back to work now." 

I am not counting the quiz towards the students grades, but they did get their quizzes and scores back. I believe that it would be unfair to count the quiz because the students did not know the material and the average was a 65%. Today, the students did not talk, and got introduced to project one. Failing with a purpose.