Today I earned my money. I've been grading essays nonstop. I'm dizzy. I deviated from my syllabus in Brit Lit - instead of plowing on to the Restoration Period - I decided to linger a bit longer in the Renaissance. We read two scenes from Marlowe's' "Dr. Faustus" and then I gave the class a creative assignment to work for the rest of the block on. They could choose to illustrate one of the scenes or an image. They could make a movie poster for the play. They could write about another book or movie that deals with the same themes or ideas as the play. The could even write a three page creative short story about a deal with the devil. They seemed to like it. But my real intention had nothing to do with pedagogical value. I needed extra time to read essays. And that I did.
Composition II brought more reading and essays. I hardly budged from my desk as students finished their 'how to' essays and I read their personal essays from earlier this week.
Then College Comp came in and I hardly budged again. They are finishing their comparison and contrast papers (comparing and contrasting the film "Training Day" to Hawthorne's classic "Young Goodman Brown"). So I was swamped as I read my way through them, offering suggestions on analysis and citation as I went.
Then on top of that, I've been reading essays written for scholarships and other academic endeavors.
I'm all worn out. But now it's my turn to write and let others read. That's the good stuff.
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Last night a colleague and I finished (well, maybe finished) our involvement in the RU Ready project. Looking back at the 22 students of mine who participated, zero were deemed college ready. I had only one who had more marks on the college ready side than the not college ready side (seven to five). I had 10 students whose essays were unanimously deemed not college ready. I had another six whose essays were deemed not college ready by the score of 1-11.
This doesn't surprise me. First, the classes were not gifted. I think, honestly, that the bulk of those students will not be college ready. I think they will be happy to enter the workforce right out of school. Or if they do go on to college, it won't last long for them and they'll be back in the workforce within a year or two. That's just life.
I have several others (I didn't just have 22 kids in my two Comp classes from second quarter. I just had 22 kids who were diligent enough to get their permission slips in) who will go on to college and have to work very hard to make it through. But they will. And they will do just fine in their careers.
But an interesting point was raised in our final discussions - that of evaluating student writing. The question came up - "Who are we to tell kids they are not college ready?" And that's a legitimate point. I'm living proof. I scored low on the Praxis writing component. And I graduated college with a 3.81 GPA. I had a 4.0 GPA in grad school. My thesis was highly recognized. Yet, I did horribly on the Praxis writing test. What does that tell you? Testing can't account for work ethic and desire.
So who were we to tell these kids that they aren't college ready. Well, as one professor acknowledged, they are SOPHOMORES! They aren't college ready. So my question (though I didn't voice it) was, then what they hell did we do all of this for? I'm not sure we solved that one.
As far as I'm concerned, the test was close to meaningless. A very small number of kids will seriously look back at their essays and the evaluations and derive any meaning from it. Most have already thrown the results and their essays away and have forgotten the whole thing. So my question still is, what the hell did we do all of this for?
A professor from the East Grand Forks campus did make a good point on the other side of the argument, kids have to hear criticism some time. He said it's like going to the doctor and being told you have to lose weight or die. What gives the doctor that right? Only the fact that she's studied medicine her whole life. Well, who gives us the right to tell students about their writing? The same people who have spent their lives in school and teaching writing.
It was interesting listening to others' take on the whole process. Many of the college teachers involved left feeling happy with their college writers. "I was so glad that our students don't make those mistakes" was a common comment. Another teacher was shocked at how many of the students really lacked any focus. She said many had no introductions or theses.
I bristled at that of course. For it was at college that I was taught to have a thesis and introduction and three supporting paragraphs and a tidy little conclusion - well, you can see where I'm headed with that. So when it came time to voice my ideas I said something like, "When evaluating many of these I was shocked at the formula so many used. That might come out of my deep seated hatred for the five paragraph theme (and there were several chuckles at that) or recipe writing. But I found myself reading many neatly organized themes that didn't say anything interesting. On the other hand, I read several essays full of voice, passion, and interesting ideas. I found myself torn. I hated the formulaic writing and was pulling against them when I scored them. And I loved the voiceful writing and was pulling for it when I scored them. And I'm not sure that was a good thing."
But I did leave feeling that I could take 90% of these writers and really work with them and improve their work. But I still feel a little fuzzy about the whole college ready and not college ready business. Are we ranking them as if they currently write up to a freshman level? Are we ranking them as if they are on track to (three years down the road) write up to a proficient freshman level? Or something else? I'm still unsure.
To compound all of that, several college instructors even admitted that there would be several college freshman - or teachers for that matter - who would struggle with the prompt. So what the hell does that mean?
I'm pretty sure that I'm done with the project though. No longer will sophomores have a composition course. Since the state has moved the BST writing test to the 9th grade so that is where our composition class will move too.
After seeing the results of this program (and I can't remember the percent of how many sophomores total passed but it was something like 10%), I feel better about how we decided to change our class structure here.
As it stood, freshmen and sophomores were required to take a semester of English. Then as juniors and seniors they had to choose from these classes (mostly nine week courses) - speech, Am Lit, Brit Lit or Applied, Tech Writing or Comp II, AP, and a few other electives (if they were offered). What was scary about this approach is that a student could take Am Lit, Brit Lit, and Comp II as a junior. Then all they have for English courses as a senior would be speech. They would totally miss out on any writing class. Now that didn't happen a lot, but I still know of quite a few seniors who at least went a full semester their senior year without any kind of writing class or English class even.
Now freshmen will have a full semester of English along with one quarter of composition. Sophomores will have another semester of English. Juniors will have a semester of American Lit/Comp II. Seniors will have a semester of Brit Lit/Comp II. So we will have more opportunities to work with them as writers than we did in the past. Because, as a Comp II teacher for several years now, I shudder to think about some of the juniors who took my class and were horrible writers. By the time they left Comp II, they had improved, but then they wouldn't have another Comp class their senior year.
I know what you outside readers are thinking, what kind of schedule is that? But then again, you don't know much about this school and how it operates. Sometimes it's like being in a bad horror movie. When you watch one, you find yourself saying, "Now come on! No one would actually do that (say have the group of campers in the woods split up and go off in different directions so they can be easily slaughtered by the killer/monster)!" So outsiders would say, "Now come on! No one would let the students get away with that! Or no one would let a kid wear that or say that to a teacher or act that way or do that to school property." But it happens. I'm teaching in the Amityville Horror on Friday the 13th located right down Elm Street. That'll test your 80s horror trivia!
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I'm outta here. It's beautiful and I need to run tonight. So far since I've seriously worked on losing weight (about five weeks), I've run 72 miles and lost a total of 21 pounds. Another 10 or so to go and I'll be happy.
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