Cogenerative Dialogue

I attended a professional development about 4 months ago about establishing a cogenerative dialogue to get to know students better. This basically a fancy term for getting to know your students outside the classroom.

Today Saturday lab went straight to shit, I couldn't get into the lab prep room and couldn't keep 22 students occupied long enough to get the key from the custodial staff so the lab itself was postponed to a further date.

Afterwards, I told students if they wanted to stick around I would buy them breakfast or a slice of pizza somewhere so I got 4 students to tag along to get some food at a nearby shopping center.

They weren't making pizzas just yet but I got them bagels. We sat around talking about random issues at school and just getting to know some of these kids a bit better.

I asked them about reading, who like to read and what they read. We talked about what they wanted to do with their lives and where they wanted to go to school. We talked about how effective their parents are at punishing them and how they feel about certain teachers and administrators. We talked about the gangs in the school and about their individual progress in their classes.

It surprises me how responsive they are when they're in small groups and when they're not getting yelled at. That was basically their number one complaint about school and the science department as a whole is that we demand so much from them and it gets annoying when they miss an assignment that we basically track them down all the time. But they understand that it our job to make sure they are thoroughly getting things done.

What also shocked me was their home environments. I asked how they treat their parents on average and they don't believe that they are spoiled. They have a twisted definition of being spoiled. They feel that getting spoiled means getting luxurious items, not necessarily getting what you want all the time.

I then asked them if they have ever done anything to make their parents happy, like a random act of kindness. One student couldn't think of a time or has never done anything. And I asked him, how would your mother react if at random you got her some flowers or if you made them breakfast or something nice that they don't have to ask you to do. I guess I made him feel a little guilty but they need a little perspective.

After we knew it, it was 11:30.