Time to Flip Out

by Tara Seale
Dan Bruno, who also publishes on the High School Matters blog, wrote a post about flipped classrooms in December.  Although I didn't explore this instructional method at the time (re-doing two National Board entries, taking a graduate class, teaching 90 AP Lang students, and trying to be a mom and wife - as teachers - you, best of all, understand why I didn't get around to it:) I recently found the time to explore the flipped classroom concept, and Tech & Learning has a great post explaining the positive effects of flipped classrooms.
Simply, a flipped classroom is one in which students watch a video lecture at home and complete classroom activities, or what would normally be considered homework, in class. This set up allows teachers to act as both a lecturer and a facilitator.  I watched the Flipping the Classroom Tech & Learning video, and one comment made by a student really stuck with me.
He said that he didn't have to stop the whole class if he didn't understand.  He could pause the video and re-watch what he didn't get the first time.  We all know that we have students who will not raise their hand, and unfortunately, they miss out on important information.
A teacher comment in the video also stuck with me.  When students come to class ready to complete classroom activities, the teacher is not the only one helping students.  Students who watched the video and easily understood the lesson serve as peer tutors.  Students who have additional questions can ask not only the teacher but also a classmate, and the students who understood the lesson reinforce the concepts of the lesson as they assist other students.

If you did not read Dan's post, he provides a basic outline to organize flipped instruction in an English classroom.  I encourage you to read Flipping Out.

Several websites support teachers implementing the flipped classroom model:

1. Sign up for the online community The Flipped Class Network
2. TechSmith has printable tutorials
3. Best of all, TEDTalks has signed on to support teachers in facilitating a flipped classroom.  Check out TED's Beta TED-Ed site.  Read the press release here: TED-Ed Launches Groundbreaking Website with New Tools for Customized Learning.

Okay?

According to the ever-venerable Wikipedia, “okay” is a word “denoting approval, assent, or acknowledgment.” I think I need to post that definition where I can see it prominently. I often use “okay” for acknowledgment; my students hear approval, and between those two uses stretches a field of misunderstanding.

Here’s how the scenario usually goes down:

“Ms. K?”

“Yes?”

“I’m not going to be here for the test tomorrow because I have to pick up my uncle’s second cousin from the airport because my grandmother has diabetes, and my father’s car is in the shop and I have to be at work on time or I’ll lose all the fingers on my left hand.” *Details have been changed to protect identities, but please note that the convoluted and urgent nature of the student scenario has been retained.

“Okay.”

“Great, bye!”

Weeks later after grades have been posted.

”Ms. K?”

“Yes?”

“I have a zero for that test I missed and when I told you I was going to miss it, you said it was fine.”

“I’m sure I never said it was fine. You need to make up that test.”

“You said it was okay! I would have made it up weeks ago when I still knew that story if I’d known it wasn’t okay! Why did you say it was okay?”

“Uh. Hmm.”

Note to self: eradicate “okay” from teaching language. I need a new verbal filler for that scenario. It’s not “okay” with me that the student will be absent, but these aren’t scenarios where I’m being asked for permission. I’m being informed of a decision. Nodding seems like approval, too. I feel rude not saying anything. What else would signify acknowledgment without approval? “Gotcha.” “Sounds complicated.” “I see.” Yes, maybe “I see.” Or maybe, “See me when you get back.” Leave the ball clearly in the student’s corner…I may need to snap a rubber band on my wrist for a while to change this habit…

co-posted on Between Classes: Living a Balanced Life as a Quality Teacher

Note to Self (Yet Again): Teach don’t Tell

I think “teach don’t tell” might have been one of the first pedagogical concepts I truly learned. But for some reason, I forget this lesson regularly. It happens when students have particular problems, when they catch me off the cuff, or when my mind is pursuing another line of thought. Why is telling sometimes my default setting?

I recently caught myself mid-telling. A student committed copy/paste plagiarism in a last paragraph of an essay despite viewing a Turnitin.com report that clearly caught the problem before the paper needed to be submitted to me. I discovered it on a Sunday night as I checked the reports for plagiarism. I sent the student an email that pointed out the problem and asked what the student thought when seeing the match on the report. The student emailed me that after looking at the report twice, the student hadn’t noticed any matches. (Right there, in the bright color—see?) The student assured me that had the match been noticed, the student would have been sure to “mix the words up a bit.” Not quite a substitute for full documentation. Sigh. Bite of chocolate.

I wanted to tell the student that all the lessons we’ve done on plagiarism and how to read a Turnitin.com report should have prevented this problem. I wanted to tell the student that I did my job; I covered this content in a student-centered, interactive way, thanks very much. I wanted to tell the student that the learning process breakdown most likely happened on the student’s end—forgetting to scroll down and read the whole report, working too late to read carefully, giving in too easily to the challenges of developing a point and resorting to copy/paste to round out a paragraph. Another bite of chocolate.

Bolstered by sugar, I remembered to teach, and I instead asked the student to do these things:

1) Go back and review the excellent answers the you gave on the plagiarism quiz, including:

Even if the information you use is commonly known, if you borrow the exact wording from a source to explain that information, you'll need to use quotation marks and to credit the source. Your answer: True

2) With that fresh information, go back to review the Turnitin.com report again.

3) Write down observations and realizations as you look at your report and then share them with me.

The student did it. The student owned the problem and told me if the mistake meant failing the class, then the student understood. Hooray! My news that the essay would need to be done on a new topic came as a relief instead of a great big hammer. Put chocolate away.

When I tell instead of teach, students tell me something right back, usually some version of, “You’re a crazy English teacher lady and you’re wrong about me.” Telling versus telling means nobody listens. Remembering to teach instead of tell bears much better learning fruit.

I think I sometimes tell despite knowing better because some student mistakes strike me as an accusation that I wasn’t clear, that I didn’t do my job well. When I’m not feeling defensive, I realize that’s stupid of me. I think I tell more often when I’m tired or overwhelmed or when the learning process gets sluggish. In the end, I think it’s my humanity butting up against their humanity, and it’s bound to happen now and again. Maybe I’ll just tell myself to relax…where’s that chocolate?

co-posted on Between Classes: Living a Balanced Life as a Quality Teacher

What I Don't Know for Sure

Recently, I had an experience where a student clearly appeared to have cheated. Turnitin.com showed that the student’s essay matched a classmate’s essay by 47%. The classmate and the student in question had been in the same peer review group, and the classmate’s draft contained the material first.

My body reacts to such discoveries. I get hot. I bite the inside of my cheeks. My mind swirls with a mix of emotion: shock, disgust, embarrassment, and anger. My gut wants to lash out at such a student, to explain at length how such a blatant act of stealing violates our writing community and insults me as an instructor. Then the worry and guilt sets in: What kind of class have I created where a student feels such desperation when confused? Why didn’t the student see me as more accessible, whatever the challenges with the assignment might have been?

Over the years, I’ve learned to let these reactions wash over me. I entitle myself to that experience, but I don’t act upon it. When I confront a student about such a situation, I limit myself to reporting events, explaining implications, and opening a discourse. Here’s what I wrote to this particular student:

Student X, your Turnitin.com report shows that significant portions of your essay match Student Y’s essay. In your group thread for peer review of Essay One, these passages are original to Y’s draft, not your draft. It appears you lifted chunks of Y’s essay and represented them as your own in this essay.

Please explain.

Ms. K

Whew! It takes lots of restraint to write a relatively inert response like that, but over the years, I’ve learned how little I know in these situations. I’ve drawn conclusions, acted accordingly, and ended up with egg on my own face. By granting students a bit more rope, I can gather more information before committing to a course of action. I do this process because I’ve benefited from it in the past, but this time, I truly thought my narrative for the data was indisputable.

Not for the first time, I was wrong. The student explained what happened, and while the student clearly used bad judgment, the person hadn’t been guilty of all the things I’d imagined. Even though I thought my note asking for an explanation should earn me a nomination for sainthood, the student started by telling me that my note created feelings of “bafflement and humiliation.” I actually think both those reactions are called for, so I’m okay with that, (alright, maybe not "humiliation...") but the student’s response made me very happy that I’d refrained from responding to the paper with the vitriol I’d felt.

So in the end, my accumulating experience teaches me how little I know for sure. Students, with their variable human nature, create new and unique ways of mangling text each semester!

co-posted on Between Classes: Living a Balanced Life as a Quality Teacher

The Sweet Spot

Sometimes when I fry a grilled cheese sandwich, I rush it. I toss in the sandwich even though the pan isn’t quite hot enough; I try to flip it before the cheese has started to melt, and the sandwich falls askew. But sometimes, sometimes, I flip it at exactly the right moment, and a perfectly caramelized gorgeous brown sandwich winks at me, a touch of cheddar peeking out between the slices of bread.

Sometimes when I teach writing, I struggle to help students revise. I proclaim a thesis statement too broad or supporting details too thin without the student really understanding my point; I try to explain what needs to happen with a student’s essay, but I end up frustrated with my own words. But sometimes, sometimes, I say exactly the right things, and an original, specific, viable argument dawns over students as they wave me away to the next person, jotting down their ideas to make them real.

Ah, the sweet spot. Today, I hit the sweet spot with helping my students write. I fell into a zone where I talked to students about their thesis statements, and they heard me. I don’t mean obedience; I get obedience. My students like me, and I like them. If I say, “Rewrite it,” they rewrite it. They just don’t always improve it. The fault often rests with me. I say things like: “That’s too broad. Be more specific. It needs to be more complex. Or subtle. Or sophisticated.” These are the ways I talk to myself about my own writing, and when my students’ writing needs help with content, with breadth of idea, I often lapse into this private language which fails to communicate to my students. They sense my sincerity and trust my desire to help them. They nod. They agree. And then they write pretty much the same stuff with the modifiers switched around.

Sometimes, though, I find the sweet spot. For years, I’ve used the NPR “This I Believe” essay for a class assignment. To begin, I send students to the website, ask them to find the directions and summarize them in their own words. Then they search through the hundreds of sample essays, find a favorite, and identify its topic, thesis and supporting details. I then play them some of my favorites, like “I Believe There is No Such Thing as Too Much Barbeque” and “I Believe in Being Cool to the Pizza Dude.” Then they write their own thesis statements. Inevitably, some students come in with things like “I believe in unconditional love” or “I believe in friendship” or “I believe in being proud of my heritage.” While these are all fine sentiments, nascent writers can struggle to develop such huge concepts well.

I walked around class, checking in book work and reading thesis statements as students worked on a grammar exercise. When I hit a thesis statement in need of revision, my sweet spot led me through variations of the following discussion:

“Have you always been proud of your heritage or is this something you’ve grown into?”

“Oh, I’ve always felt this way.”

“Do you know other people who share your heritage who aren’t as proud as you are?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Okay, so what happened in your life that made you proud of your heritage? Did someone do or say something that gave you what other people didn’t get?”

“I guess my aunts did.”

“Really? What kind of stuff would your aunts do?”

“Get together and talk, mostly.”

“Really? What did they talk about?”

“I don’t know. Nothing really. Being proud, maybe…”

“Oh, great! What would they say about being proud?”

“Gosh. I know they said stuff, but now I can’t think of anything. I don’t know.”

When I am not in the sweet spot, I literally start to sweat at this point. When I’m talking with students about their writing and they get nervous and uncomfortable instead of bubbly with ideas, I fight the desire to scream at my own inadequacies as a writing instructor. In my first years of teaching (or now if I’m really off my game), I would (gulp), suggest/dictate a thesis at this point. (Low success rate with that technique, by the way.) However, because this day I found the magical sweet spot, I did not lose faith, and I asked another question:

“Did your aunts do, or say, or give you anything that made you proud?” (In the interest of full disclosure, I will confess that I fished here for something like, “They gave me a good example of __________. I did not anticipate what the student’s answer would actually be.)

“You know, they gave me an African-American doll. I have friends who only ever had Caucasian dolls. I mean, white dolls are fine, I had those, too, but…”

“So you think it was good you had a doll that looked like you?”

“Yes! I really do…I think I believe every girl should have a doll that looks like her…”

So we turned “I believe in being proud of my heritage” into “I believe every girl should have a doll that looks like she does” in about two minutes. I’m not saying that thesis statement will change the world, but it sure as heck will lead to a more personal and specific essay from this young writer. Also, she got so excited! She felt full of ideas at this point, which was fun to see. I rushed home to record this formula: When did you start feeling this belief? + What incident happened to you that made you realize you felt this way? + No, really, what happened? + Come on, I’m sure something happened! = a more specific thesis. It may work again, or it may have just been the sweet spot. Time will tell.

I don’t always find this sweet spot. It can be elusive. It might be influenced by my brain chemistry or the lunar cycle. I love it when I find it though, so I celebrated with a grilled cheese sandwich, and I hit the sweet spot there, too. May every teacher have a sweet spot day every now and then.

co-posted on Between Classes: Living a Balanced Life as a Quality Teacher

A Parent's Big Questions about Education, Part 2

This week concludes my response to a concerned parent, Nanci, who emailed me some questions she has about her children’s schools. Nanci wrote that she wanted to hear what teachers thought of her concerns, so please don’t be shy about contributing thoughts and comments.

In a situation where an administration receives feedback from numerous parents that a new teacher is proceeding with poor teaching, frequently changing deadlines and rubrics, and harmful grading policies, WHY does the administration not assign a supervisor to micro-manage and closely remediate the teacher for the balance of the year?

The school may have assigned a mentor, but in my experience, no one is available to take on another teacher’s work load to the level of micromanagement and remediation. (If a teacher gets fired, that would free up some money to pay someone else to do the job.) Let’s say another English teacher got assigned to me. That English teacher already has a full class load of her own. How is she supposed to really improve my teaching while handling her own course load? Schools don’t usually have teachers with little to do. If that teacher tries to help me, she’s going to do it in half hour bursts after school or during lunch. The problems you describe, like changing deadlines and grading policies, have to do with organization and experience. It is very difficult to really help someone with a month long unit plan while teaching and grading five class sections of your own. Schools have not made the financial commitment to pay for that kind of support for new teachers. I currently teach and live in Central Florida, where the arts keep getting cut and class sizes continue to increase. These administrators’ budget constraints do not allow for a teaching position without a class load to support new teachers. The system in place is old, and it does not respond adequately to the time it takes teachers to learn to meet the needs of 21^st century teaching.

Why do schools NOT have a standardized grading policy? Wouldn't it make sense to universally say that tests are 40% of a high-schooler's grade and that 40% must contain at least 5 tests?

As an English teacher, I give very few tests, so I would rail against such a policy myself. I think school systems are often too big to make such sweeping policies. In my experience, the county system restricted how much of a percentage homework could be and wrote a specific curriculum for each course. In English, the curriculum determined how many major essays needed to be completed each semester. In our department, we standardized how much of the grade each of those essays should be. After the essay grades and the homework grades had been determined, the rest of the average was left to the teachers’ discretion. So for example, a new teacher would be told, “This semester you need to do Essay A and Essay B, and they each should be 20% of the grade. Homework can’t be more than 10%.” The other 50% could be divided up as the teacher saw fit. I’ve actually never had a “test” category at all. I have “Quizzes,” and they usually make up about 10%. I guess if a school told me to have 40% tests, I’d have to call an essay a test. I don’t know for the life of me how I’d come up with five in a semester…

Here’s the thing: I know I’m a good teacher, and that’s not who parents are worried about with grade questions. However, education cannot make rules for the lowest common denominator, or it will lose people like me. Discretion to customize my teaching is very important to me. I’m comfortable with parameters, like curriculum requirements or a grade cap on homework, but if teaching comes in a can, I may not want to do it. I now love the part new teachers struggle with—the planning, the customization, the organizing. Somewhere there are adult people who had me my first year of teaching, and I wish I could go back and teach them again with what I know now. The medical profession has a very long training and residency program; education does not. It doesn’t expect that much training, and it certainly doesn’t pay enough to support it, so sadly for our first students, many of us teachers learn on the job. Learning how to manage a fair and effective class average can be part of that learning curve, and if new teachers had more support, system-wide grade standardizations wouldn’t be necessary. Nanci, your questions go to the heart of the matter. In today’s more challenging classroom climate, are Americans willing to pay for more prepared, more qualified teachers or not?

co-posted on Between Classes: Living a Balanced Life as a Quality Teacher

A Parent's Big Questions about Education, Part 1

Recently, a concerned parent, Nanci, emailed me some questions she has about her children’s schools. She wants a teacher’s perspective before she pursues her concerns; I’ve addressed the first of her questions here rather than simply emailing her back because I certainly can’t speak for all of education or all teachers. Feel free to chime in!

Why is teaching the one profession where a brand new person is put in charge of 100+ people with little to no assimilation training and -- more importantly -- little top-down evaluation?

I don’t think many other professions put as little money towards their new people as education. The career of teaching has grown more challenging over the past fifteen to twenty years, and the management structure for supporting—or assimilating—new teachers has not changed adequately to meet the new challenges. Student teaching is the primary training, and for a long time, that six month to one year long, unpaid internship seemed sufficient. (In fact, the student teacher pays the college for the experience.) I’m not familiar with a program that pays teachers without designating them a full teaching load. School budgets just don’t seem structured for that kind of investment in workforce. Many districts are responding to the current recession by cutting the arts and increasing class sizes, so a program that paid new teachers modestly while they mastered their craft would probably be the first to go anyway.

After student teaching and graduation, most new teachers are paired with a mentor once they begin teaching. These mentors, for the most part, are fellow teachers with a full teaching load. I’ve seen programs where mentors receive no additional pay and no reduced teaching load for this role; I’ve also seen programs where mentors have three to five new teachers and receive a $500 stipend for the year. Some schools may provide substitute money so that a mentor can take a day from his or her own classes to observe a new teacher, but how much support a mentor provides will vary greatly by the individual. Also, if the new teacher is a coach or has other extra-curricular responsibilities (as many untenured teachers do), he or she may not be available after school for help. Few mentors want a phone call at 9 p.m. (when many of us planned our lessons that first year) when the mentors aren’t receiving a reduced teaching load or financial compensation for the task. Scheduling conflicts can stagnate many mentor relationships.

In addition to mentors, most schools, because of No Child Left Behind requirements, have school or district-wide training for new teachers after school or on in-service days. I’ve seen good mentors and bad mentors. I’ve seen hiring years where so many new teachers start in one year that even the good mentors have very little time left to offer. School budgets and structure have not responded to the fact that student teaching does not prepare people to the extent it may have at one time. This organizational problem creates a high rate of new teacher turnover, which wears out dedicated mentors, too! One strategy for a parent concerned about a struggling new teacher may be to go to the principal and ask who is supporting this new teacher. By saying, “Gosh, I think Mr. or Ms. So-and-So really needs some more support from what I’m seeing with my child. Who is his/her mentor?” This approach suggests that administration needs to support new teachers, and the concerned parents can seek to contribute questions and issues through that support program. If there isn’t a support program for that new teacher, parents might start to demand that one be put in place…

Most schools utilize lots of top-down evaluation on new teachers. In one school district I worked, I was formally observed every six weeks and informally observed on a weekly basis. My department chair signed my lesson plan book every two weeks for the first year. In education, the problem isn’t the observation and evaluation of new teachers; the problem is that there isn’t really a structure in place to do more than record the problem. Qualified teachers, especially in math or science, aren’t waiting to be called in mid-year to replace a struggling new teacher. If a new teacher has big problems, I can guarantee that the department chair and the front office know about it. It becomes a triage situation, including documentation of the problem and a record of mentoring (see above). Most schools just try to get the new teacher through that first year. However, this strategy does little to help students who have that teacher for that year. If the teacher gets fired for bad teaching in say, February, who will pick up those classes, especially if state testing happens in the spring? Schools cannot afford to have a substitute who may not be a certified teacher preparing students for a state exam.

I realize, Nanci, that I haven’t been very hopeful here. Essentially, I think education needs to restructure its relationship with new teachers, which will take money and community dedication. I can’t say I see that on the horizon, either. In the meantime, we teachers try to help each other as best we can in passing time between classes.

co-posted on Between Classes: Living a Balanced Life as a Quality Teacher

"Teacher, What's my Grade?"

Ten years ago, this question played a normal part of my teaching life. Occasionally, I printed out grades (names obscured by a code, of course) and taped them to the door, so students could see where they stood. A few kids might keep track of their grades in the back of their notebooks, but essentially, if they wanted to know the real numbers, they had to ask me.

As we rolled into the twenty-first century, however, school districts and technology made some changes. For about the past five years, I’ve been logging student grades into a Learning Management System that makes those grades available through the Internet. If the assessment isn’t an essay, I often have the grade posted by the end of the day; it just helps me keep track if I don’t let entering the grades pile up. Students’ averages are calculated by the minute, for them to stare at and for their parents to critique.

So now when a student strolls into class and says, “What’s my grade?” my chest clutches a little, and I hear, “I’ve got a bone to pick with you.” Unlike the old days, this student has access to all his or her grades. The question has come to mean, “What the hell are you doing to my grade?” Getting defensive isn’t helpful. I try to remember that despite the consumer/product nature of LMS grading systems, it is just a tool, and I am still the teacher. I try to smile and say, “Why, let’s look at it together, okay?” I know that this is Stage 1)—the stage where the student and I look at the potential problem. Stage 2) brings in the cavalry, and that can be exhausting…

Most of the time, the student has turned in make-up work that I have not graded and entered yet. LMS grading systems obscure the fact that I, a human being, am doing the grading and entering the data. Its instantaneous automation creates a false sense of “real time” for students. If they turn something in at 2 p.m., they expect to see it on the grading system by 6 p.m. While I do accept late work, I don’t usually grade it right away. Once students are sure I have their late work, they usually leave our meeting satisfied.

Sometimes, the problem rests with user error. Some students may be able to access their grades, but they don’t really understand how to read an incomplete course average, which can also be assuaged with two or three minutes of help from me. It is true that every so often, “What’s my grade?” leads to a testy confrontation, but really, that happened when I taped grades to the door, too. Something about the LMS grading system makes me feel more vulnerable. I guess because I used to decide when grades would receive the most scrutiny. I didn’t tape the grades up unless all the make-up work was entered or before I’d nagged students to make up missing tests. Now the grades are available for scrutiny 100% of the time. I’m organized—I’m smart—I can handle it! However, I am sorry that “What’s my grade?” now makes my back stiffen…

co-posted on Between Classes: Living a Balanced Life as a Quality Teacher

Recovering from My Mistake

I raised my voice to a student yesterday. It wasn’t worth it. She’s been absent for more than a month, and she called me with a list of reasons and things she felt I’d done wrong, and after listening to her, I started to speak. And she kept talking. And talking. I started with a sharp, “Excuse me” that escalated to a shrill (okay, I shouted) “EXCUSE ME! LET ME SPEAK!” She followed up with a rousing, repeating refrain of “WHO’RE YOU YELLING AT? WHO’RE YOU YELLING AT?” and explained vehemently how she expected to be treated by her teachers, and alas, it did not include yelling. Neither one of us hung up, and we talked our way back to reasonable, and she apologized for misunderstanding a few things, and we have a meeting scheduled to address her needs, but man, I’ve been sick over the yelling match. It has cost me so much more than I gained.

Why did I yell? I yelled because, in that moment, I clung to the mythology that as her instructor, she should show me respect and not speak over me when it is my turn to speak. Ha ha ha. Maybe that’s true some places, but I’ve made a decision to teach students who don’t come from an educational tradition, and the notion that teachers inherently get respect is foreign. It is earn-respect-as-you-go around here, and I know that. I signed up for that. It’s just when she kept talking over me, I forgot, and I just wanted my rank to assure me my turn. Yelling gained me nothing and lost me ground with this student. Also, should I have further problems with this student, she can always say to my department chair and my dean that I yelled at her, and it will be true. Yikes.

So now that I’ve smoothed things over with the student, it is time to forgive myself. I’ve spent a lot of the last fifteen hours since the incident replaying the event and seeing if I can justify my behavior. I really can’t. I think it was a human moment, and I am entitled to be human, but it wasn’t a shining teacher moment, no matter how I look at it in various lights. I’m relieved I didn’t curse or name call. Sheesh. When I lose myself to frustration like this, I realize I need to spend more time trying to be happy in my personal life, doing things I enjoy. I draw upon the energy that enjoyment gives me when I’m in difficult communications, and obviously, my reserve is a little too dry. I try to read lovely articles about teaching like this one, and remember that I’m not teaching everyone; some kids love school and reading. Going for a run helps. At a former school, I used to run with a fellow teacher, and we joked about getting t-shirts that read “Pound Pavement not Students.” Confessing to fellow teachers has always helped me, too. I’ve always been surrounded by the kind of peers who support me when I’ve made a mistake like this one, who reassure me they’ve had bad moments, too. Knowing that teachers I admire have stepped off the patience wagon helps me to let it go.

I always spend a little time when this happens wishing I could be more intimidating; I don’t think this student would have talked over just any teacher. I have an accessible affect that can be misunderstood as easy to bully, I suppose. However, I doubt I can conjure up a new affect now. So self acceptance is part of this post-mistake process for me, too…Sometimes I’m not a teacher, but a person waiting for her turn to share her side, and I, too, want to feel heard. I know from experience that silence would have worked better than yelling, but I made things right with the student, and now I will forgive myself for my moment, brush myself off, and work at keeping my love of teaching at the forefront of my mind.

co-posted on Between Classes: Living a Balanced Life as a Quality Teacher

How Should We Court Parents?

I’d love to tell you that I first read about Damian Frye during my careful daily reading of the New York Times or through my conscientious attention to my NCTE newsletter. However, I first met his story on the parenting site Babble.com when I read Madeline Holler’s “Hey, Teacher, Leave those Kids’ (Parents) Alone.” According to Tina Kelley in “Spreading Homework Out so even Parents have Some,” Frye teaches ninth grade in Essex County, NJ and asks parents to do things like “read and comment on a Franz Kafka story, Section 1 of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and a speech given by Robert Kennedy in 1968.” Good stuff, eh? Here’s the kicker: “If the parents do not comply, Mr. Frye tells them, their child’s grade may suffer — a threat on which he has made good only once in the three years he has been making such assignments.”

He goes on to explain “that all the students’ parents had computer access and that only two had told him that they were not fluent in English; one posts on the blog anyway, one sends her responses to him privately, by e-mail. Another parent phones responses in to him. Tony Lopez, a corporate lawyer who posted a lengthy reaction to the Kennedy speech…said he was actually glad to do the weekly homework.” At this point, I’ve read Holler’s annoyed blog, Frye’s enthusiastic testimony, and a hundred or so of the comments posted to the New York Times article, and I’m still not sure what I think…

NCTE’s own Carol Jago praised elements of Frye’s assignments but also “cautioned against penalizing students for something that their parents cannot or refuse to do.” As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I purposely teach discouraged learners, so I’ve taught a higher proportion of kids whose parents might not be a resource. Computer and Internet access for parents, in fact computer literacy for parents, could not be assumed where I taught high school. I also taught in districts where instituting a policy that showcased one child’s socioeconomic differences against another’s was frowned upon. One county-mandated unit I taught required students to interview a family member, and even that benign requirement got dicey; some students ended up interviewing a close adult relationship within the school instead because of stories too sad and varied to record here. It upset those students for other kids to know they didn’t have a close relative…I’ve never taught honors, but some people commenting on the New York Times’ thread laughingly predict the competitive nature of parents coming to fisticuffs on Frye’s blog since “the parents probably write the students’ essays anyway.”

Suffice it to say, I cannot emulate Frye’s assignment in my classroom because I don’t think it would work for the kids I teach. However, I’m struck by his innovation; I haven’t spent much time thinking about how to involve my students’ parents in their learning. My relationship with parents has been more like teammates as we work their children’s I.E.P. plans into the mainstream classroom or (thankfully—less frequently) it’s been…um…I’ll confess…defensive on my part. The state I taught in required four years of only one subject—English—so the grades students earned in my class garnered lots of parental attention that sometimes devolved into bullying the teacher. (Gulp. It only happened once, but I’m not sure I’ve experienced many things as stressful as looking up into my doorway and seeing an angry parent in her coat, arms folded, expecting to meet with me unannounced because of a message I’d left about her child’s performance…) So, anyway, the idea of courting parents has not occurred to me. I thought about parent involvement with the kids who worked the literary magazine I sponsored; heck, they gave their resources often to our penniless endeavor, but it is a new idea for me to consider crafting assignments so that parents can have “intellectual conversation with teenagers who are normally less than communicative.” I hadn’t considered that part of my job as I drafted a unit. So now I’m wondering, is it part of my job?

When I really think about it, I like the idea that my assignments would enhance dinner table conversation for my students and their families. I often wrote the goal, “Students will foster an appreciation of literature” on the board after “Students will cooperate in groups” and “Students will punctuate full sentences correctly.” While I’m not comfortable with Frye’s policy of grading students in part by their parents’ performance, I will really think about inviting parents into the process, of using my lessons as a neutral gathering ground for parents and children to meet, because I believe that is part of the power of reading and discussing literature. I believe it has a curative power—why not let my students witness that in their own lives?

The discussions I’ve encountered online debate whether or not Frye should do as he does. I’d love to hear what my fellow English teachers think they could do instead…How can we take what works about his concept and adapt it to our own circumstances?

co-posted on Between Classes: Living a Balanced Life as a Quality Teacher