A deep, deep breath. I just finished a major portion of grading daily work. I hate to admit it, but a lot of it feels to me like busy work. It all can be justified as aiding comprehension, building reading strategies, and so on. But it still feels like busy work to me. I certainly don’t enjoy grading it. Maybe that’s why I think of it as busy work because it is busy work for me.
I have to be honest: grading a reading guide for Night or Fahrenheit 451 just doesn’t interest me the way grading an essay does.
So why don’t I just assign all essays?
It would never work.
Students would catch on to that. Suddenly the essays would become the busy work.
Instead I strive for a balance of assignments.
And to be honest, if I knew students would read and actively engage in the reading and comprehend it, I would be glad not to assign work. But you never know really what a student is going to make of a text.
For example - in Fahrenheit 451 Bradbury writes about Mildred, Montag’s wife, who falls asleep every night with a “wasp” tamped into her ear. The reader can infer that this is an ear bud headphone - only Bradbury was writing this long before such things were invented. I mentioned this to my students in the introduction to the novel. One night Mildred puts in the ‘wasps’ and ends up taking too many sleeping pills and nearly dies.
Yet, what do I get on a reading guide today? I asked students what I thought was a simple low level comprehension question: “What happens to Mildred when Montag comes home from work?”
Two students - who obviously copied (that’s a topic for another blog entry) - wrote “She was attacked by wasps.” I actually laughed out loud when reading that.
I wrote, “What novel are you reading????” in the margin.
Again, when we idealistically talk about putting students in charge of their own learning, what about these types of students? Now it’s not that they’re incapable of inferring the true meaning. Not at all. It’s either - they don’t care about the right answer, they are foolish enough to put that down and not think how improbable it is, or maybe they just did it in a hurry so they could get on to what is really important to them: gossiping and checking their cell phones.
A large potion of the blame lies with me -- I’ve grown too lax on the cell phones. It seems that there is just so damn much to do that it has become trivial to waste time telling kids to put their cell phones away. Most do anyway, but a few always creep them out. Next semester I have to stay on top of this - even if it means feeling like I’m an elementary school teacher. I’m going back to my old policy of an automatic quiz whenever one rings or if I see someone talking or texting. If I we take a quiz, the next time I see one, I confiscate it. Or they are ejected to the associate principal’s office.
Now on to the copying issue. Since I don’t put my full effort into correcting daily work, I don’t expect them to always put their full effort into it, so I’ve become lax on students having very similar answers. I mean, after all, some of the questions are so basic, it is often hard not to have the same answers. But whenever I see a student blatantly copying a guide because they are behind and need to get it in, I’m just going to grab it and chuck it. I am also going to wait until the last possible moment to return reading guides. That way I don’t return ten and then the next day get another ten copied off the original ones.
I am also going to use a folder system to collect assignments. Right now I just have a wire mesh thing on my desk where students place their work. If I don’t get to it right away, a student could turn something in at the end of the hour when it was due at the beginning. That’s not fair to those who actually did it on time. Next semester, I’ll have a folder for each class. When an assignment is due, I’ll walk around and place it in there and then put it away. So anything that is placed on my desk, I know they are late and worth partial credit.
I didn’t do this at the beginning of the year because it seemed like a waste. I liked to think students would do their work and then turn it in as they walk in. Yeah right. So I’ll spend several minutes each day collecting their work. It might even shame a few into doing more work if they have to turn empty handed to me without their work done. I already tend to start class visiting with students. I might as well visit with them while I collect their work.
I can just imagine those non-teacher readers out there glossing over these insignificant things here. I don’t blame you. But I’ve learned after a decade here that if you don’t stay on top of these little things, they build up and multiply. By the end of the quarter, their combined force takes away from your energy and the focus of the class.
I guess I’ll let you know at the end of the year if this worked or not. I’m sure, though, that other problems will present themselves or students will find loopholes in these new tactics. It is what it is and that’s how it got that way. Right?
*****
One highlight from yesterday was when a former student, Mark, who now goes to St. Johns, stopped by right after lunch. We were only able to visit for maybe ten minutes, but it was nice to see him again.
I don’t think Mark every had a B in high school. He headed to St. Johns for pre med, but he found that quite difficult. He couldn’t hack the complex science classes. He’s thinking about psychology now.
He told me that he was getting his firs C. He admitted that high school didn’t prepare him at all for St. Johns.
I offered him my theory - I asked him to recall the Brit Lit class he took from me - in it I had a certain portion, albeit a small portion, who really struggled and who shouldn’t have been in the class (by that I mean they just weren’t interested in learning anything. They had to take the class though in order to graduate, which was the only reason they were there - not to learn about Brit Lit), there was a very large middle section of students who struggled but did fine, and finally, there was a portion, again a small portion, of students who breezed through the class. Mark was part of the latter portion.
I explained that I had to spend the bulk of my time aiming at the lower and middle portions. This meant that I couldn’t push the upper level in a way that would better prepare them for college. Now I’ll go on record and say that I put students in that class through the ringer. I know it’s on par with our local college’s Brit Lit class. But is it on par with UND’s? St. Johns? Concordia’s? No.
But such is life. I enjoy - well, usually - all the portions of my classes. That is just one drawback to American education.
In the staff room, we had a good conversation on this. One faculty member brought up the possibility of educating our students like most European nations, where students know what they are going to be at an early age and are educated toward that field. I believe the same system holds sway in China, except a certainly smaller portion of the population is educated. Yes, it’s effective. My God, look at their test scores. But - and several of us raised this point - what happens if you don’t know by sixth grade what you want to be? Can you live with someone else making that choice?
I chimed in that I heard a podcast featuring Duke’s Richard H. Brodhead speaking about “What are Universities Good For?” In it, he states how he travels the world analyzing different education systems. While China is a marvel of focus and accomplishment, he states that they are, believe it or not, envious of the American education system because we are so flexible and well rounded.
Maybe there is a way to find a happy medium between these two sides. I don’t know. I do know that I wish I could push my students harder. I wish they didn’t have all that outside crap going on in their lives. I wish they would value their education (another colleague mentioned how she brought her class to UMC where they talked with a professor from India who recounted how he had to walk 7 miles to elementary school. Finally, when he made it to high school, he was able to move to town and didn’t have to walk. He also talked about all he had to do in India just to get an education, which led him here. The students didn’t believe him. How could someone have it so bad? How could someone overcome that? Simple - they knew the power of education. And that’s lost on many kids today. It was lost on me until college).
If we can get kids to value education (and that’s a big IF), then I think most of our problems will go away.
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