Resisting Lip Service

I don’t like lip service. If I endorse something verbally, I try to follow through on it personally. It’s a process, to be sure, but as I stumble through this life, I try to be authentic (even when I’m authentically wrong!). We start a new semester every January, and I get new classes of students. Some students are new to me and some students I’ve had before. I believe that each student deserves a clean slate on the first day of class. I do. Truly. However, when my class roster greets me with the names of students who failed my class in December, I sometimes struggle to follow through on my clean slate ideology.

Giving a clean slate in January seems more difficult than giving a clean slate in August. In August when I see a familiar name on my roster, I think, “Well, maybe so-and-so’s done some growing up over the summer.” But in three weeks? How much personal growth and maturity can happen in three weeks? It just takes more prayer and meditation to conjure up that attitude in January.

This week, a young student whose name brought a quick flashback of frustrating moments to mind I’ve taught before came half an hour late to the first class, greeting me with a big grin. I smiled, gave the student the assignment the class sat working on, and kept teaching. During a quiet moment a few minutes later, the student walked up to me and said, “You’re going to kill me. I don’t have any paper.” I smiled with rue and recollection and handed over paper.

Ideologically, I don’t want to be the teacher who laughs and shakes her head and says snottily, “Of course you don’t have paper.” I didn’t do that. Yet. It’s difficult to write about this because I’d love to say that all my years of experience have made me immune to this kind of human pettiness. This student creates a teaching challenge because the ability to learn sits intact and beautiful within this young mind, awaiting the arrival of the willingness to learn. If some other teacher had this student this January, I would say, “That student is a good kid who deserves a fresh start.” Why is it so difficult to provide that fresh start myself? Being late and forgetting paper are small infractions when the slate is clean, but it didn’t feel that way when it happened with this familiar student… Where can I flush my build-up of frustration and disappointment with this student, so we can both begin again?

To follow through on really giving a fresh start to students even when I know better, I have to stick to some good habits. I need to get enough sleep. In my opinion, snotty teaching is fueled by fatigue. I need to eat well. I need to schedule in family and leisure time, because when I feel like “I have no life,” I get frustrated more easily in my classroom. I need to continue my policy of non-engagement when teachers complain about students together. Do I ever complain about students? Sure! Obviously, I’ll even write about it extensively and post it on the Internet, but I try to refer to students without names or identifying characteristics. My colleagues and I often teach the same students, and I don’t want to taint either the teacher’s or the student’s future experiences. If someone wants to complain about a student by name, I walk away or change the subject. It fosters an ugly kind of teaching fungus I don’t want to breathe.

When the tired, discouraged, and jaded voice about a student rants from within my own head, however, I struggle. I do. I am. I poured a lot of energy and hope into this kid last time. Even though I know grades are students’ responsibility, I feel rejected by this person because my class did not star in the student’s universe, and I’m still licking those wounds. (Whenever I have an ugly teaching feeling, it almost always roots itself in narcissism. Ugh.) I need to put the sign back in my center drawer that says, “IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU, KATE!” and look at the student with fresh eyes. It’s a new day, right? The student could have paper tomorrow, right?

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

Using Resources as a Way of Life

Recently, I’ve been trained in a curriculum review process that uses a rubric to assess content as part of a cooperative peer learning opportunity. Everything about the process is fairly standard, but as I worked my way through the rubric, one point caught my attention. It asked if the course content ensured students understood the services provided by the school itself that could assist students in reaching their educational goals. Hmm. Do my courses do that for my own students?

In the past, I’ve taught classes where the guidance department came in and did a short orientation of its services, and I’ve had entry-level classes I’ve taken on a tour of the library facility. However, in the majority of the courses I currently teach, those orientations and tours occurred over a year ago. One of the things I enjoy about teaching is the small bubble I build with my students for an hour or so each class period; lots of the resources my students need, I provide or direct them to within the walls we share. As I reflected upon this rubric question, I realized I don’t teach my students to access the resources that surround them in our school community by themselves. What if they think they might need to be tested for a learning issue? What if they really need a part time job to keep coming to school? What if they have a problem with someone on the bus that just won’t go away? What if they want to research something privately, without my help? As maturing adults, shouldn’t they know how to access these resources independently?

I find this omission of mine especially ironic because during the research essay process, I teach about finding and evaluating useful resources. (Ahem.) Would it be so difficult to point out that not all resources come via the library database? That some of the resources students might need could be found right where we stand?

Since my years as a Pollyanna are behind me, I know part of why I don’t routinely send my students to other parts of my institution. Dead ends, busy lines, or miscommunication between school professionals and my students have led to tales of woe as well as me ditching lesson plans reliant upon survey questions for Career Services or the Testing Center. How can I emphasize school resources to my students without sending vacant foot traffic that creates busywork for my peers? What’s a meaningful way to fulfill that rubric question?

It’s something I’m thinking about as I prepare lessons this semester. My first idea goes to the Web. I think I might ask students to brainstorm some student issues that impede educational goals as part of a “Let’s get off to a great start!” initiative. After we record the issues on the board, we could try to identify what parts of our school could help with each of those problems. I’ll assign one of the issues to each student and send students to the school website to see if they can find the answer or a contact person for the problem they’ve been assigned. This process would be a micro-version of a research process. I also like the idea of modeling research and activation of resources as a way of life. I’ll be interested to see if this process seems meaningful…

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

Seriously, There's More?

After grading and returning the research essays, I am always stunned to find I need one more short unit before the holiday break. It reminds me of how everyone wants to eat again on the weekend after Thanksgiving. Really? But didn’t the meal I spent weeks planning, preparing, and cleaning up for buy me some free time? What’s the lesson plan equivalent of ordering pizza?

My students greet a new assignment at this point with genuine shock: “But we just finished the research project!” I would joke with them and tell them I got special permission to not meet for classes the last week because they worked so hard, but I’m confident half of them would be out the door before I could stop them. I’m especially fond of my note taking unit at this point in the semester because it requires concrete skills and classroom focus. Also, it doesn’t create lots of complicated grading for me because after finishing the research process, I, too, feel like my IQ has been diminished.

However, sometimes I want a pre-vacation unit with a little more pizzazz. This year, I’m adapting an activity from Discovering Arguments, edited by Dean Memering and William Palmer which uses the Pulitzer Prize website. Students select an award-winning photograph or political cartoon about which they feel strongly. (They pick by the year menu at the top, scroll down for images, and then select the “Works” tab to actually see images.) I ask them to explain what the artist is using the image to convey and what choices the artist made to emphasize that message. Sometimes I’ve done a mini-lesson with some photographs before we begin, showing examples of the use of light and dark, perspective, framing, etc. Students write a few paragraphs about how the artist’s choices reinforce the message he or she wants to communicate via the piece, complete with the MLA Works Cited entry for the image off the website.

That’s the core assignment, but I’ve used a couple iterations. I like the basic assignment because it uses “an image as text.” Essentially, students must explain elements about the image similarly to how they’ll be expected to discuss literature next semester. I’ve put students in teams for this assignment, and then had each team present their image and conclusions to the class in presentations. Students could also hang small posters of their pieces, complete with the image and then complete a “gallery walk,” going around and filling out a questionnaire on the images, with questions like “Which image did you find most powerful? Why?” “Which image could serve in an ad campaign? Describe what message it would reinforce.” I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ve considered asking students to build their product on a web page and add a soundtrack with lyrics they think accentuates the artist’s message. Then the “gallery walk” element could be completed by a web tour…

I like this unit because it’s different, it’s multi-media, and it incorporates the socialization that is inevitable at this point in the semester. Students genuinely want to share the images they discover off the site, and we end up having lots of “teachable moments” about the historical, medical, or political stories being told in the images. I like the energy it fosters as we ride out the last days…

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

Prophylactic Grading

Over the years, I’ve learned to use grading to prevent bad writing instead of using it to record the grievances dealt by bad writing. Ever since I started teaching, I have believed in writing as a process, especially with a big project such as a research essay. It took me years, however, to realize that I should stretch my grading energy and investment across that process, too. In the early years, I gave students a folder with a checklist, and I gave them points for finishing each step, but I thought my time for detailed grading came at the end, on the final essay product. I would pour energy into marking those final essays with margin notes and thought-provoking questions. I then spent too much time feeling frustrated and hurt that my students didn’t even seem to read those markings, let alone reflect upon them.

By choice, I teach writing to people who have yet to identify themselves as writers. Many of my students write because writing has been assigned. Therefore, my grading comments best serve students when they come during their process. Mentor teachers taught me this technique, and I think after spending the better part of two decades grading, I may be polishing a system that is working. I think I finally get that if students cannot use my feedback to improve their grade, they don’t spend much time processing it. It may sound silly, but it helps my own enthusiasm to know my grading feedback can be “part of the solution” instead of just a record of the problem.

Here’s a run-down of the assignments throughout the research essay process that I grade:

· a potential topic discussion thread, complete with a potential source

o At this point, students reply to each other’s ideas. I make comments if potential topics seem like a dead end, but mostly I just keep track that this assignment has been completed.

· a finalized proposed topic, complete with an initial source

o I provide individualized responses to each student, approving each topic.

· an Annotated Bibliography

o I grade this assignment closely; I mark MLA mistakes and provide directed guidance for correcting errors. I evaluate the quality of the sources, ensure that some balance is represented, and encourage students to look for additional information where necessary.

· an essay proposal, stating why people should care about the issue and what problems the student anticipates with the essay

o I read these and respond to students about the problems they identify. Mostly, this assignment asks questions that get students thinking more deeply about the essay they plan to write.

· a thesis statement

o I grade this assignment closely; many students write this thesis statement several times. I want to be sure each student has a strong argument in third person voice; sometimes students are slipping into writing a report instead of a persuasive argument, and I’m usually able to determine that problem (and fix it!) at this stage. Once students have actually written an entire report, they are much more reluctant to revise it!

· a loose outline, which identifies a specific audience, the opposing point of view, and main points

o I read these and respond to problems. Mostly, I make the grading equivalent of reassuring noises: “Looks interesting!” “I can tell you’re really starting to think here!” Yadda Yadda. This assignment falls in the category of activities that help students think.

· a rough draft and the peer review of another person’s draft

o I don’t line edit rough drafts. I scan each of them, looking for flagrant problems: the wrong voice, tragic MLA format, too few sources, lack of quotation integration…If I see a big problem, I write notes back to the student. Most often, I look at all the drafts and create a “Checklist before the Final Draft” document, identifying all the various problems I saw throughout the drafts, which I distribute and go over with students. Students provide each other feedback about arguments at this stage. (With various degrees of success…I’m still working on the perfect peer review process…)

· the final essay

o I use a grading chart at this point, including a personal note to students about their argument. Do I mark lines throughout the essay? Yes, sometimes. I’ll write a question in the body of the essay or circle problematic prose. But I really try to restrain myself and save my energy for writing a more detailed personal note at the end…

Does all this effort improve students’ products as well as their process? I think so. To be completely honest, I think how well a student writes a research essay depends most upon how much research writing experience he or she has before the assignment, an element I don’t get to control. Mostly, I think investing more of my grading energy on the process (rather than saving it all for that final essay) helps students replicate the process in other classes, which is one of my goals—a teach a man to fish kind of thing. It also puts my energy more in parallel with students’ energy. They care about the essay before the end. Putting more detailed feedback into the process allows students to immediately apply my feedback, too. The entire effort has more momentum, more meaning. Here comes the stack now, so I’ll see how well it worked this time…

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

The Calm before the Storm

This year, I decided to give my students the full Thanksgiving vacation to finish up their research essays, which gives me the long weekend without “the stack.” I’ve made a number of changes to this assignment this semester, and I checked over all the resulting drafts yesterday. I’m proud to say—drum roll, please—the drafts did not leave me nauseous and depressed! Most significantly, I changed the topic of the assignment this semester. In the past, I’ve asked students to pick an ethical dilemma related to a field they might want to pursue. Generally, students wrote about medical and media issues. After some summer rumination, I made the topic “a problem facing public education today.” Students have chosen to write on a wide range of education issues, and it looks like they just have more of their own ideas on these topics. The drafts appeared to be less packed with block quotations to meet the page minimum. Okay, okay, so I haven’t actually read through their arguments carefully yet. Okay, okay, so no Turnitin.com reports yet reveal places where they lifted liberally from their sources. This holiday weekend, I’m emotionally banking some optimism before collecting the pile. Reality will arrive soon enough, right?

I know that once I start grading the stack, my enthusiasm for creating big changes to the assignment will be snuffed out by exhaustion and perhaps a nagging melancholy that even a perfect assignment would not reach everybody. So! Before that begins, I’ve been catching up on some professional reading. I really enjoyed Lorna Collier’s “The ‘C’s of Change:’ Students—and Teachers—Learn 21^st Century Skills” from NCTE’s November 2008 Council Chronicle. According to Collier, the “C’s of Change” “include creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, self-control, and comprehension.” The article discusses different aspects of that list, but I found some commentary on social networking especially interesting: “Students still need teachers to show them how to navigate the digital age, how to mine the information overload for meaning, and how to make wise connections through social networks.”

In my research essay assignment, I feel like I accomplish the first two items in that list. However, I have not asked students to use their Facebook or blogging skills “to make wise connections.” The concept appeals to me. What if I asked students to use a social networking connection as one of the resources for their research essay? I imagine they could email a principal or participate in an education blog or find whomever they find on My Space. I’d have to come up with a series of vetting questions for them to use to determine if the source could be trusted, but I’m willing to bet I’ll be shocked with what they can find. Judging from how often students try to text in class, they’ve really honed this skill—why not harvest that skill for academic goals?

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

In My Head, It’s the Holidays Already…

In my family, we celebrate Christmas. When I was growing up, my mother had a strict rule about no Christmas songs, decorations, or the like before Thanksgiving; I still respect that rule. However, now that I’m both a parent and a teacher, I have to plan for the holiday before December is upon me.

My first year of teaching, our principal came on the PA system to scold teachers en masse and in front of our students for taking leave in December. “Teachers, please do not take personal leave in December!” he boomed. “We cannot find substitutes during this time. Besides, why would people about to get two weeks off need time off now?” (Suffice it to say, we were not managed well.) Even though at the time of that announcement I still flew home to my parents’ house for Christmas, and I certainly, as a twenty-three year old untenured teacher, had not used any personal leave, his query about why teachers would need leave ahead of the holidays made me shake my head. Obviously, he wasn’t the one responsible for the holiday magic in his house.

I currently work in a school calendar where my semester grades are due before Christmas. I will get research essays and final projects just after Thanksgiving, and by the time I lift my head, it will be December 20^th. Even when I worked within calendars that ended in January, I tried to clear my desk of grading before the break. Big projects couldn’t withstand the two weeks of stasis, so I had a similar pre-holiday grading crunch. Besides the grading crunch, December brings with it numerous social gatherings, and they all seem to be two weeks earlier than years ago. Weekends will be full of fun that won’t include planning or shopping.

So that’s why you’ll find me humming along to Johnny Mathis’ “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” in these weeks just after Halloween and before Thanksgiving. (The song is only in my head; I don’t actually start playing the CD’s until after Thanksgiving, Mom, I promise!) I’m happily drafting holiday menus for the company gracious enough to join us, and my son and I have a few craft projects underway. Sometimes I feel part of the Christmas sprawl that advertisers have thrust upon us, but mostly, I feel anticipation. Teaching may be part of why I can’t spend December preparing for the holidays, but teaching also has taught me how to plan ahead, so I can do both.

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

Seeing My "Hole" in Holistic

So I’ve learned tons of stuff after organizing a cross-institutional grading session between our county high schools, our local community college, and our nearest four year university; we’re still sorting through the data, and I think most of what I’ve learned informs what we should have done constructing the exercise. I’ll report when we’ve figured enough out to share sensible insights.

In the meantime, the actual experience of grading against the SAT rubric with teachers from different “walks of teaching life” left me rather breathless. I sat with a community college ESOL teacher, a four year state college adjunct, and within ear shot of the chair of the community college English department. Suffice it to say, the norming process exists because teachers vary greatly.

Norming effectively takes a long time, and I know it can get done properly. Essentially, the norming process requires each teacher to set aside his or her personal biases to share a standard of quality as measured by the rubric. In my English department, we norm for the state writing test (a very basic, minimal writing assessment), but we don’t norm with each other for on-level student writing. We have a rubric for on-level student writing, written who knows when by whomever, and we all use it variably.

Now since no test needed assessment, actual norming between teachers wasn’t even a goal. Instead, we used that paradigm to sit down together with the SAT rubric and look at essays written by community college students, written on the first day of Comp English 101, to study how differently we grade. As the choir I preach to knows, the idea of rubric grading is to grade “holistically,” with no single attribute truly outweighing any of the others. Yeah. Right. Sure. Of course. It can be a painful process.

Here’s my overall conclusion: Grading holistically isn’t easy because our teaching experiences create biases in the ways we grade. The more a teacher works with students struggling with grammar, the less likely that teacher is to deem grammar errors as “interfering with an essay’s meaning.” If a teacher spends her day mostly with AP or advanced English majors, she will see fewer fragments and less subject/verb agreement errors. It’s the nature of the tracking beast. For teachers who work with writers who do make those errors frequently, it’s like being accustomed to the dialect of a beloved multi-lingual friend—after a while, it’s hard to even notice the accent because the ear adjusts.

According to insights gleaned during our grading experiment, some teachers who mostly teach higher level writers also gave more credit for “figurative language,” especially if the essay used strong standard English, which I more often considered “tangential bologna.” Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my share of poetic language in an argument, but I don’t prefer a list of similes to a list of supportive examples clearly illustrating a sub-point of a thesis. For me, similes work best when used as part of the argument rather than instead of the argument; whereas, some of my fellow teachers who work with more filtered students, while agreeing that the similes in the writing sample took the place of the argument, felt that the use of visual imagery deserved recognition.

My own bias for a strong argument creates my struggle with remembering that a rubric list of attributes is not hierarchical; most rubrics start with a description of the argument and end with a description of the mechanics. I tend to think the argument counts more than the use of the comma anyway, so that list order reinforces this bias in my brain. I can shake that when I norm for state test grading, but in general in my classes, I recognize that I weigh the argument more than the punctuation. Some of my peers confessed their total abhorrence for shifting voice—half a discussion about “everyone” and half a discussion about “I.” I sheepishly hoped I even notice such a voice shift since the absence of pervasive second person makes me so giddy with joy, I suspect I fail to see beyond it.

What does any of this mean? Honestly, we’re still sorting that out. We all sat down together to see how everyone grades a paper, and we’ve statistically verified our different points of view. The next step requires data analysis and discussion; since almost everyone has end of semester grading coming in, I’m not exactly sure when we’ll draw our conclusions. Personally, the experience makes me glad I don’t have to grade holistically all the time. It makes sense for big exams, like SAT and AP, but without a norming session, I struggle to shake how accustomed I am to seeing “definitely” spelled “defiantly” (Yes, it used to bother me, but after thousands of exposures, I’m like a grammar cockroach…). Without a norming session, I retain my preference for a strong, logical response to the prompt peppered with comma splices as opposed to a punctuation-perfect song and dance. I’d argue we all put a “hole” somewhere in holistic, and I’d like to believe that identifying my bias and reflecting upon it will improve the way I grade.

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