Chalkdust in My Coffee

Resentment of AR, and The Perils of Honesty

All of the students in my school complete mandatory outside reading as part of their English classes. They read books from a list provided by their teacher, and then take Accelerated Reader quizzes on a computer in the Writing Center to "verify" that they've read them. 

Personally (and professionally), I HATE this system. The students are limited to reading books that we have bought quizzes for, and the quizzes themselves ask very random questions that barely reflect the reading experience. Most of the kids think it's a joke, and therefore a large number of them blow it off. I find it infuriating, but the district paid a lot for it so I have to use it. 

I have, however, found my own ways to tweak it: first, rather than having my kids read eight books a year, I only have them read four (quality, not quantity). Then, instead of just taking practically pointless quizzes, I have them do literature circles, multi-genre projects, or other activities to (1) motivate them to actually READ the book and THINK about the book, and (2) give them a chance to actually show what they got out of it. Forget a perfunctory scan through a novel, I want them to sink their intellectual teeth into it. 

Additionally, I have become known around the school as the teacher who is willing (within reason) to read and make a quiz & an assignment for almost any book a kid wants to read but is not on The List. This allows them to read a wider variety of books, and allows me to keep up with what my kids are reading. It takes time, yes, but the rapport it fosters with my kids is well worth it. 

However, earlier this week I had to draw the line. And in doing so, I think I crossed a line by being a little too honest. Blame tiredness, blame the winter blahs. A senior of mine who I know pretty well (I also had her as a sophomore) asked if I would read the book Dear John so she could do it for her next Outside Reading assignment. I told her that I regretted I would be unable to do so. 

"Why not, Ms. Em?" she asked. 

"Honestly?" I said loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. "Maybe it's just where I am in life, but reading a Nicholas Sparks novel right now would probably make me vomit. Repeatedly. Sorry, just being honest." 

Oops.  Did I mention she's related to a Board member? There goes my reputation as a teacher who will do just about anything to encourage my kids to be literate citizens of the world. 

But really... I probably WOULD vomit. 

Going to "collage"!

As my seniors' first writing assignment of the year, we're working on producing the most stellar college application essays the world has ever known. And I'm being stingy with the grading -- I am setting the bar in the stratosphere for these kids. No senioritis allowed in my room until April. Period. 

And now comes the part where I remember that I set the bar so high because I realize while a handful of kids will reach darn near any expectations I set for them, the average kid will shoot for about 80% and achieve about 70%. I do my best to work those kids through their writing assignments stressing improvement, and praise them for the good parts as much as I correct the lousy parts. That said, I have a few kids who I am REALLY going to have to work with this year to reach their goals. 

For instance, the one who used the word "collage" instead of "college" throughout his essay, and the two students who made the same mistake once in their essays.

Oh boy. Lots of work to do this year. 

Eight Septembers have passed, and with them eight graduating classes.

Something occurred to me today as I was sitting at the infinite stoplight,* deciding how to handle the significance of This Day. Some years I make a big deal out of It, centering all class material around it. Some years I do my best to ignore It. Usually I offer the kids the opportunity to read/write/discuss about something related to It for the first or last fifteen minutes of class, and just let It be afterwards. But here's what struck me as hauntingly profound at 6:00 AM as I sat cradled in my bucket seat, left foot engaging the clutch and right hand fondling the shifter in anticipation of the eventual green light: 

There are only a few years' worth of students left who will remember It. To all others for the rest of my career, It will be a piece of history that exists in books and news clips and was ALWAYS a part of life -- much like Pearl Harbor or JFK's assassination were to me during my childhood.

And after that thought, I felt a strong duty to preserve the memory in the students who have it. For the past several years I have resented It, angry not so much that it happened but more that so many bad things have come about as a result of it (see the Doonsbury cartoon about "9/11" being the answer for everything). This resentment has been reflected in the light and detached way in which I handle It in my classroom. 

But today I felt this strong connection to my students through our ability to share memories of Where We Were; a connection I will no longer have with my students in a few years. I was nearing college graduation when It happened. My current seniors were in fourth grade and my current sophomores were in second grade. They were not old enough to understand what was happening, but they were old enough that they remember it much like I "remember" the Challenger explosion or Princess Di's wedding. 

I suspect that this is something that happens to teachers as we age. Maybe my high school teachers felt light years away from me because I was born into a completely different world than they knew. I have done a great deal of thinking over the past two years or so about what teaching will be like when I no longer have the privilege of seeming almost like an older sister to my students -- the perception that I am younger than most of their other teachers, and therefore have more in common with them. I have tried my best to ensure that I do not center my teaching practices around my students' immediate connection to me due to my age -- but I have never stopped to think that sometimes I relate to them in a reciprocal way. We remember many of the same things. 

When the light finally did turn green, I did not realize it for a few seconds. I glanced in my rearview mirror, amazed that no one was honking or gesturing at me for my delay in accelerating maniacally to the next light. As a matter of fact, there was no one behind me at all... and then I remembered that it was, after all, 6:00 AM and most people in my new neighborhood awake at this hour are still hitting their snooze bars or sloughing off dead skin cells in the shower. It felt very appropriate that I seemed alone on the road in my new neighborhood. It mirrored how I feel there in the first place, and in my chronological placement in the nether-regions somewhere between my students and my older colleagues. 

My infinite stoplight meditation set the tone for the day. As I taught each of my classes, tutored students in the Writing Lab, and met with newspaper staffers I was comforted and grateful that they, too, remember. As my sophomores discussed language in the novel Alas, Babylon, I could not help but point out the similarity of our "9/11" label to the story's "The Day" label. I barely had to explain it, and they got the connection.

 I swallowed hard, reminding myself that in the near future students will walk into my room unaware that those numbers didn't always bear such weight. 

* The "infinite stoplight" is my term of endearment for the five-minute stoplight I sometimes catch between home and work. 

Followup on the President's Speech, and LUCKY STUDENTS!

The speech today, as an event at least, was anti-climactic. I watched it in my classroom alone, despite many students showing interest in bringing their lunches to my room to watch. I think that was the main problem -- the speech's timing straddled two of our three lunch periods, so no matter what it would have been truncated for the students whose teachers DID have it on. Oh well. I will show it to students at some point before the week is over. I was impressed by President Obama's message, and think kids received it well. 

And now on to the second part of this post's title: Lucky Students. My dear dear friend who I think of as a little sister started her very first teaching job today! Her students are lucky to have her. Maybe I will sucker her into guest posting now and then... :) 

President Obama's Speech to Students

President Obama's speech to students is now posted online for everyone to read. 

I have had QUITE a bit to say about this event over the past few days, but have been way too angry to write about it. I cannot believe some schools are actually refusing to air it because parents have called and complained. We have had a few parents call, but luckily our principal has simply told them that no one will be FORCED to watch it and students whose parents object to them watching it may leave the room if they wish. Unfortunately I do not have a class at the time it's scheduled, but I will have it on anyway as a matter of principle. 

People are absolutely nuts. Nuts, I tell you. 

I'll report on how it goes at school tomorrow. It's SUCH a good opportunity for dialogue. Other teachers, I'd love to hear how your schools handle it (though it's a shame it's something that people see needing to be "handled" in the first place...).  

Two days down, 178 to go...

Sunday night, 7:30 PM. I've spent half of the day reading essays I assigned to my honors students over the summer, fixing lesson plans to fit into all of the second-week-of-school changes in the schedule that we never find out until the last minute (so much for the month of precise, day-by-day lesson plans I carefully crafted over the summer for all three of my preps...), and doing that terrible thing I do to myself way too often: overcompensating for my insecurities. 

I have read, re-read, and re-re read all of the novels and plays I teach. I spend a great deal of time reading secondary literature ABOUT the literature I teach. I am a grammar nerd who actually enjoys reading about language studies. But somehow I am always worried that I am going to blank out in class,a colleague will challenge (again) what or how I teach, or a student is going to know something I don't -- a handful of times I have had a kid try to correct me about something that I manage to legitimately talk my way out of, but then I feel that that shadow of doubt (not the healthy "question everything" doubt, but rather the unhealthy "is this adult who is supposed to guide me completely unprepared to do so?" doubt) has been cast over the entire class. 

As a broad example, I frequently point out to my students that language is an ever-evolving animal that is not set in stone; that descriptive grammar is as academically sound to study as is prescriptive grammar. However, the other teachers in my small department unanimously agree that they should have ONE set of grammar rules that is ALWAYS followed meticulously.  I prefer to extend to my students a series of theories about proper English and explain to them that as long as they understand the importance of audience and purpose it is fine for them to switch in and out of different voices and styles throughout their writing ventures. I just feel that it (s) gives them a much more dynamic understanding and command of grammar, and (b) facilitates much more sophisticated and versatile writing STYLES amongst my students. 

The majority of my kids catch onto this and thrive in my classes, but there is always a handful of skeptics who think I am being wishy-washy for telling them that it's ok, for instance, if they choose to use a Harvard comma sometimes and not other times, as long as they are consistent throughout a single piece of writing... and that there are times when -gasp- it's perfectly fine to end a sentence with a preposition (so long as it is not an extraneous one). 

There you have it: the mush inside my brain. I hope that someday I will be able to just brush off the glowering looks of a few specific colleagues as I pass them in the hall, and ignore the you're-nuts-lady looks I get from that select group of students who fancy themselves superior grammarians for having memorized my department's approved list of grammar rules in their previous English classes. But for now my years of study and expertise are being trumped my the little voice in me that needs to vent about STILL not always being taken seriously, six years into this gig.