education and teaching
Wrong but Right
"Daddy, is she a good student?" The Girl was helping me grade papers (she loves going over multiple choice work -- no really, there's no convincing or arm-twisting necessary), and as she always does, she asked about this student and that student. I glanced at the name.
Is she a good student? How I answer that question would depend on how we define a good student. If we define it as a student who is always hard-working, who is always pleasant to be with, who always gets her work done and always does stellar work, there was no way I could possibly describe the student L was asking about as a "good student." Indeed, by that metric, she is just about everything -- anything -- but. Or at least she was. At the beginning of the year, she was belligerent, often refusing to work, often showing nothing but unreasonable anger about any correction or redirection. She was, in short, a nightmare student. And that means that I was immediately drawn to her, immediately interested in helping her, and immediately frustrated with her more often than not.
But the last few months, she's been changing. Some days, she works. Some days, she's incredibly attentive during whole-class instruction. And then some days, she's back to her old games. But there is progress. And really, if we look at any definition of a good student, progress must be factored into the definition.
"Sometimes, sweetie, sometimes," I said, then added, "Why?"
"Because she got them all right."
Introduction to Journalism
What I would be saying to rising eighth-graders tomorrow about my new journalism class -- if I weren't taking a sick day, that is.
This course will use the basic instructional principle of “Learn to do it by doing it.” That’s not to say there’s no direct instruction, nor is that to say that it’s a free-for-all. And it certainly doesn’t mean it will be an easy course.
This class will be responsible for creating content for the Hughes Academy web site in the form of articles, audio stories, and photographs.
- Most basically and most importantly, you will learn how to find and develop stories as well as how to write and research according to journalism industry standards. (In other words, you will not only learn what the AP stylebook is, but you’ll also have large segments of it memorized from constant reference.)
- In addition, you will learn how to take compelling photographs to accompany your stories. (In other words, you’ll learn how to take your photography skills beyond simple point-and-shoot and selfies and learn all the components that go into taking photos and how to manipulate them for the desired effect.)
- Finally, you’ll learn how to make NPR-style audio stories that incorporate on-site reporting with interesting commentary. (In other words, you’ll learn how to take 15-20 audio clips and put them together into one, strong story.)
Students interested in this class need to be highly self-driven as you will (with prior instruction) be responsible for finding your own stories to research and to write. In addition, most of the assessment will involve self-assessment with self-generated goals and rubrics (also with prior instruction and continual teacher guidance). Finally, students will have to be able to work under tight deadlines and to be the type of student that simply doesn’t give up when obstacles appear. On average, you will write at least one 500-word story per week and create at least one 4-5 minute audio story per quarter. That sounds easier than it is: the real difficulty comes from the incredibly high standards necessitated by the simple fact that all our content will end up on the Hughes web site.
What are the upsides of all this hard work? The first would be the simple pride in the fact that you are doing a job that has traditionally been reserved for adults: you will be the public, digital spokespersons for Hughes Academy, and that’s what I meant by “Learning by doing.” It’s an incredible feeling knowing that what you’re writing is for an interested audience that will make comments and give feedback, much more rewarding than just writing for a teacher. Â You’ll begin creating content for the site during the first class session, and by the time the year is done, you will have an impressive portfolio of published work that you can use for future reference. Additionally, because of the nature of this class, there is a lot of freedom during the class period. During a typical class, some students will be working together on an audio project while other students head out to interview a teacher or an administrator about this or that while still other students are editing others’ work while yet other students go to photograph subjects for their articles. In short, it’s not a “sit down and take notes” class, but it is in fact the ultimate in project-based learning: student driven, student assessed (with help of course), and student published.
It won’t be easy, but it will be fun, and you’ll finish the year with greatly improved writing skills.
Superlative
Every morning, she walks down the hall saying the same thing. Our eighth-grade school counselor's mantra is, "It's going to be a great day!" We teachers all smile at her and nod affirmingly or make a snide comment with a smile -- "Not with this headache" or some similar thought -- and move into our day without giving it another thought. While she does mean it -- she certainly wishes we all have a great day -- it's also become somewhat of a running joke as well. She'll look at what's going on in the hallway, some kind of drama or other, raise her eyebrows, turn to the nearest teach and repeat, "It's going to be a great day."
Some days she's prophetic: some days turn out really well. They have to -- it's the nature of teaching to have the bad but also the good, that which drew idealistic people into the profession to begin with. We all have visions of changing the world, one child at a time, of promoting self-confidence in this student, of helping that student discover latent talent. We know the statistics. We know some of the stories trailing behind our students. And we're there to help. That's the idealistic vision of teaching that we all cling to.
Yet even in the seemingly brightest days, there's a kid who refuses to work, a boy who brings in some baggage from a hallway interaction and disrupts the class, a girl who is still stewing over some injustice, perceived or real, suffered in the previous class. It's good, but it's never perfect. How could it be? It seems for a perfect day, everyone involved in our classroom routines would need to be having perfect days as well, or at least extremely good days.
That's the thought anyway, for such days are so rare that I think we teachers sometimes even forget they exist. The other days seem to crowd out everything else, and at one point or another, we teachers, each and everyone, have found ourselves standing in our classroom, loo out our window, wondering if we need to get out of the profession. We smile at each other in the hallway during these days and say things like, "I feel like today, if I'd just stayed home and bashed my head into the wall for eight hours, I'd have more to show for it."
And then the stars align, the kids smile, and every kid in every class is, to some degree or other, productive. First period, a traditionally tough period for me, slides by without me even realizing the class period is about to end, and the kids, with their pencils scribbling during our Friday writing/workshop session, don't realize it either. Kids who just Monday mounted a virtual mutiny in class. But today, they're writing, conferencing with each other, focused. Working.
Second period comes, and everyone is busy, working on stories for the school web site or creating audio stories, heading out to interview this teacher or get information from that administrator. On the best days, the class feels like a newsroom must, and that's a good thing, for next year, the course will officially be rebranded: "Journalism."
Third period -- a planning period -- arrives, and with it, a call from the principal with a simple question about next year that just brings a smile to my face.
Fourth period, and the kids all work marvelously in groups, piecing together a rather complex argument in a rather long article, collaborating and learning at the same time. This is English I Honors, and I rarely have any issues with them, but some days, they're just more productive than others. Today is such a day.
Fifth period, my most challenging, and everyone is writing, writing, writing. I'm sitting with a student, looking over his work, realizing that, out of seemingly nowhere, this kid's writing has suddenly improved so drastically that it doesn't even look like it could come from the same young man. Once again, I almost don't realize that the class period is about to end, and neither do they.
Sixth period and we have a small epiphany about a passage in Lord of the Flies.
Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law.
It's not a real epiphany, for I'd aligned everything for the kids to "arrive" at that realization. They were set up, but sometimes my setups don't work.
Seventh period -- another planning period -- and I cast a backward glance over my day and realize it's the best day I've had in recent memory. Certainly the best day of this school year. Likely one of the top ten days I've ever had in the classroom: everyone productive, everyone cooperating, everyone working, everyone learning. I sit and analyze what happened that created such perfection. What did I do differently? How can I replicate this? Why don't days like this more occur more frequently?
In the end, I realize once again the obvious: because so many people were involved today in creating such an amazing day, I can't possibly hope to recreate it on my own. It's not what I did, it's what we did. It's not how I can replicate it, but how we can replicate it. It's a frustrating realization because it means that the power is both within me and out of my control. It brings to mind an analogy a colleague once made: teaching is like gardening. We prepare the soil, plant the seeds, we water the garden, and sometimes, we see the fruit, and sometimes we only hope that the seed will germinate at some later point.
But some days, like today, it seems like everything is sprouting.
Writing
The Girl is to write a research-based biographical report about Amelia Earhart. As with all homework, I'm willing (and sometimes insistent) to help her, at least to check her work. But this is a big assignment. We've needed to pace ourselves, so last week, we set up a schedule on Google Calendar to make sure L completed everything in a timely fashion and didn't simply let everything pile up at the end.
She completed the book, she finished the planning, and today, it was time to begin the report.
It's a fine line, though, between helping and doing for the Girl. As a writing teacher, I have experience in guiding students to see the problems with their writing and helping them improve it. But in the back of my mind, I say to myself, "This needs to look like a second-grader wrote it." Should I teach her to transition between ideas within a paragraph? Should I show her how to turn her one-sentence opening, her thesis, into a full paragraph?
I've decided simply to guide her as minimally as possible, then ask her to read the finished product. If she feels it's clumsy, if she comments on the short introductory paragraph, we'll get to work fixing it.
“I Think He Has”
I have a little jar of olive oil mixed with grapefruit seed extract that I keep in a plastic bag in the bottom of a desk draw at school. It was from a long time ago, for an irritating spot of skin on my hand that I didn't want to go see a specialist about. The wise Internet suggested this as a homeopathic remedy.
Today, a young man caught a glimpse of that little bottle when I was pulling something from my desk draw. Or at least I guess he did -- the alternative is that he was rummaging through the drawer when I wasn't looking, something I don't want to imagine he did. At any rate, he went to Ms. W, the eighth-grade administrator and my immediate supervisor, with a concern shortly after that.
"I think Mr. Scott has a little jar of urine in his desk drawer."
Ms. W told me shortly afterwards that it was very hard to keep a straight face with that concerned young man. "I can assure you, Terrence, that that was not what it was, and that there is a logical explanation for what you think you saw."
Oh, but the fun I could have with that misconception tomorrow in class...
Dance The Night Away
Few things remind me of how glad I am to be an adult as well as chaperoning a middle school dance.
Teaching to the Test
I've heard about it from three different sources now: our principal, our department chair, and a colleague. We've all in the English department heard about it, and we're all more than a bit nervous about the new test students will be taking in late April. It's meant to replace a state-created test that measures progress for No Child Left Behind (still haunting us), but it even has the kids running scared. Even the most apathetic students responded the same as the teachers: "Are you kidding?"
The test -- the ACT-Aspire, created by the same company that makes the ACT -- porports to measure students' ability to create an essay, and all the various elements of that process: generating ideas, developing ideas, organizing ideas, and proofreading said ideas. My students, eighth graders, will be be required to write a persuasive/argumentative essay, and they will be judged on four things: the argument, the development, the organization, and the language use. For a perfect score in the argument strand of the rubric, they are to accomplish the following:
The response critically engages with the task, and presents a skillful argument driven by insightful reasons. The response critically addresses implications, complications, and/or counterarguments. There is skillful movement between specific and generalized ideas.
This is all fine and well: I have plenty of students who could write a paper that addresses the implications, complications, and counterarguments in an insightful way. Not a big big deal.
For development, a perfect paper would look like this:
Ideas are effectively explained and supported, with skillful use of reasoning and/or detailed examples. The writer’s claims and specific support are well integrated.
Again, not that big of a deal. Certainly a challenge for some less-accomplished students, but again, this is for the absolute top score.
Organization looks like this:
The response exhibits a skillful organizational strategy. A logical progression of ideas increases the effectiveness of the writer’s argument. Transitions between and within paragraphs strengthen the relationships among ideas.
Good organization is difficult for fourteen-year-olds, and in some ways I'm most worried about this one. Organization takes time, takes thought, and fourteen-year-olds tend to be a bit impulsive. But its a solvable problem.
Finally, there's language use:
The response demonstrates the ability to effectively convey meaning with clarity. Word choice is precise. Sentence structures are varied and clear. Voice and tone are appropriate for the persuasive purpose and are maintained throughout the response. While a few errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics may be present, they do not impede understanding.
For some of my students, I'm not even tackling the voice and tone issue. Not many fourteen-year-olds have a firm understanding of voice even with a lot of direct instruction. A lot of adults don't.
All in all, a decent but challenging rubric. Until you consider one thing I've left out: its a timed test. And the time limit for this? What do the test creators consider a reasonable amount of time for students (and the time is universal for all grades) to create an essay on which so much depends? Two hours? Three? Ninety minutes? How about thirty minutes.
That's right: one half hour to conceive, plan, organize, write, and proof an essay.
"Are they crazy?" we teachers all said almost on cue.
"Are they crazy?" all the students replied.
I have plenty of students for whom this would be a tremendous challenge if give two hours to accomplish, but thirty minutes seems laughable. It sounds as if all the decision-makers in the fine organization that creates the test got high on every possible drug and then decided on the time limit.
"I got it! I've got it" laughs a young executive who's just sniffed three lines of coke, shot up some heroin, taken a few Vicodin, smoked an enormous joint, and done an Irish Car Bomb. "I've got it! Just for the fun of it, just for kicks and giggles," and breaks into fifteen minutes of giggles before continuing, "Let's give them half an hour!"
Howls in the boardroom.
Howls in the classroom.
Not the same howls. Not even close.
I'm not even sure what such a ridiculously short time limit is supposed to accomplish. Raise the stress level of students? Ensure as many short essays that are so bad that they're easily gradable as possible?
I've a feeling when the state results are published, the howls won't just be in the boardroom and the classroom anymore.
“Today Is Going To Be A Great Day”
I have a colleague who inevitably says every morning as she walks down the eighth-grade hallway by my door, "Today's going to be a great day!" Sometimes she's sarcastic, but most of the time, she's very much in earnest. It's an easy enough trick, I suppose, this power of positive thinking, but it then throws you for a loop when the same lady, after saying "Today's going to be a great day" passes by you and says, "Today is going to suck."
One of the many challenges with teaching is that we enter a room in which we have the whole range of thoughts from "Today is going to be a great day!" to "Today is going to suck." Those conflicting expectations result in conflicting behaviors, which results in a conflicted teacher. When is a kid being a pain in the butt just because he feels like being a pain in the butt -- i.e., the natural function of being an eighth-grader -- and when is it the function of something bigger, something direr? The response to those two different motivations is shaded differently.