What are you going to do to meet the needs of your special education students?
Last year, I had way more special education students than I do this year. This year, the only special education students I have come with 504s more than IEPs. One student, for example, struggles with ADHD and needs to be able to get up and walk around. Another student has high anxiety and therefore needs to be able to have a note-card for any quiz or test I give not out of an intention to use it or a crutch, but as a backup in case the test anxiety gets so overwhelming that he needs an escape plan. Another student struggles with social anxiety and because pep-talks in the mirror help, she needs to be able to go to the bathroom if she feels overwhelmed. I am happy to meet each one of these needs. So far, not one single student has needed to take these tasks up to help in class, but it's really important that they have them available in case they need them.
Interestingly, I have a student who is on the spectrum, but her parents refuse to acknowledge her need. I guess it's not that surprising, because I've seen this before at another school. I can see where the parents hesitate to help her out of a preoccupation with stigma. While there is no 504 or IEP for this student, I have adopted my own kind of IEP --not to the point of altering curriculum, but at least in altering my own interaction with her to best meet her needs. For example, she is someone who will always need more time for questions, so I adjust for more question time. Because I learned early on in teaching that different kinds of learners need directions given in different ways, I may give the same set of directions in different phrases, but I always connect with her after class to make sure she understood the assignment in one way or another. She doesn't do well with any abstract thinking, so whenever I give a prompt for bellwork that is more creative, I stop by her desk to make sure she understands directions.
Most of what she struggles with are things that are outside of the curriculum. She struggles with eye contact, though she's getting better. When she's aggravated by a subject, she tends to growl and snap at teachers, so sometimes I have to remind her to speak respectfully. If she struggles with finding something, she expects me to do the work for her, and I imagine she has had parents and teachers who have --for her entire upbringing-- identified that she struggles so it's just easier to do it for her. I'm trying to break that expectation by leading her through steps of logical reasoning, allowing her to find the information herself without my spoon-feeding her because it's the easiest option right now. I think that's probably the biggest struggle because she wants to be instantly gratified (don't they all?), but I'm trying to show her that it is within her power to seek out answers to her own questions and therefore to show her she has more choice and agency than others have allowed her to think. Isn't that what teaching is all about?
Monday, October 24, 2016
Webinar 4 Blog Post: [In Joey Voice] How You Doin'?
We're standing outside of Waffles 'n' More, my friend gives me a hug, we exchange the obligatory "how are you"s, and then she asks, "How was this week at school?"
My response: "I had some really awesome moments, and I had moments of living hell. So, I guess it averaged out to okay?"
This week's blog prompt is the following: How are you feeling emotionally, physically? Do you feel that you're getting through to your most difficult students? What strategies are working? What strategies are not? What are your next steps with student engagement in your classroom?
I could focus on the parts that made my week a living hell --but I won't. We've all dealt with them: students who have to come to grips with the fact that it's October and they're failing. In the k-12 world, we have a special monster: the parents who have to come to grips with their child failing. Unfortunately, though parents have high-school-aged students, they often can't fix their student's problems as easy as they once did. Talking to the teacher can be a temporary fix, maybe for one assignment, but the overall problem is that their student is making a series of bad choices, and high school is the eve of the college and career world. Are those bad choices going to mean success for your child outside of this classroom? Nope. Sorry. I'm not going to sugar-coat it for you. I'm not going to sugar-coat it for your student. We might be moving toward a world of "safe zones" but the straight up truth is that some kids aren't ready for the world --and, yes, sometimes I bear the brunt of being that news. Whatever. No one became an English teacher because they wanted to be the most popular kid in the class.
I don't want to chat about that in this blog post. We see enough of that as it is --at both the high school and college level. What I do want to talk about is the overwhelming exhaustion of making class great for your kids. Last Tuesday, I had a new one for my repertoire: I rapped "Alexander Hamilton" for my Junior English class, and in case you've been living under a rock for the last 11 months, it's from Hamilton: The Musical, a Broadway Tony-winner (they won 11 Tony's recently?) where Lin-Manuel Miranda argues that our first Treasurer of the Secretary embodies all of the essential elements of a hip-hop lifestyle. I know. It's conceptual. And it's amazing.
Mine was not a Tony-winning performance. Here, check it out: https://youtu.be/uiz8xDnJXVI
So how am I feeling physically? Um, let's try exhausted. It takes a lot to be able to rap at that pace and at that volume for a room full of kids, let alone the stress of anticipation, let alone stage fright, let alone the excitement of the starved theater kid, let alone all of the other work for all of my other classes I put in on top of it. I've been singing this song at the top of my lungs in drives from point A to point B for months hoping that it would be amazing. Guess what: the first time I performed this for 4th hour (not filmed), it was horrendous. There's a kind of defeat that goes into anticipation failing (which I might add resembled my failing breath control halfway through the song. Whatever.). But there's also a kind of "whatever" energy that goes into this performance in 5th hour. After all, it can only be better.
So how am I feeling emotionally? Pretty amazing --because all of those other questions about reaching students? Yeah. I did that. This year's juniors are of a particular brand of apathetic, a particular brand of quiet, a particular brand of withdrawn. To make things worse, each Junior English class has 30 kids in it, which means while I have one half of the room spellbound, the other half isn't paying attention and class is therefore a juggling act of which half I'm engaging.
But this --I got them with this. The kids that couldn't connect to me before do now. The kids that were apathetic before pay attention now. I don't think mine is their favorite class (or even that they have a favorite class), but at least now when they sit down, I have their attention. Maybe it's temporary, maybe I'll only have their attention for the next few days as long as they wonder when I'll pop out with a rap again, but that's okay. I have a few days to strike while the iron's hot, to talk about the Age of Enlightenment like it's important --because it is, because it is something they can relate to whether they know it or not, because individualism is important and their voice is important.
So am I tired? Yep, but welcome to the life of a teacher. I can handle it, and if it takes rapping for the kids to get their attention, I'm down. It won't be great, but who says it has to be? They could see that I was real with them, and that I was authentic in wanting to connect with them. I did it. Isn't that enough?
Part of my week were a living hell. You'll never make some people happy. But there are some weeks when you will make people happy, and it's okay to revel in that moment. And because I'm feeling the hip-hop vibe, boom.
My response: "I had some really awesome moments, and I had moments of living hell. So, I guess it averaged out to okay?"
This week's blog prompt is the following: How are you feeling emotionally, physically? Do you feel that you're getting through to your most difficult students? What strategies are working? What strategies are not? What are your next steps with student engagement in your classroom?
I could focus on the parts that made my week a living hell --but I won't. We've all dealt with them: students who have to come to grips with the fact that it's October and they're failing. In the k-12 world, we have a special monster: the parents who have to come to grips with their child failing. Unfortunately, though parents have high-school-aged students, they often can't fix their student's problems as easy as they once did. Talking to the teacher can be a temporary fix, maybe for one assignment, but the overall problem is that their student is making a series of bad choices, and high school is the eve of the college and career world. Are those bad choices going to mean success for your child outside of this classroom? Nope. Sorry. I'm not going to sugar-coat it for you. I'm not going to sugar-coat it for your student. We might be moving toward a world of "safe zones" but the straight up truth is that some kids aren't ready for the world --and, yes, sometimes I bear the brunt of being that news. Whatever. No one became an English teacher because they wanted to be the most popular kid in the class.
I don't want to chat about that in this blog post. We see enough of that as it is --at both the high school and college level. What I do want to talk about is the overwhelming exhaustion of making class great for your kids. Last Tuesday, I had a new one for my repertoire: I rapped "Alexander Hamilton" for my Junior English class, and in case you've been living under a rock for the last 11 months, it's from Hamilton: The Musical, a Broadway Tony-winner (they won 11 Tony's recently?) where Lin-Manuel Miranda argues that our first Treasurer of the Secretary embodies all of the essential elements of a hip-hop lifestyle. I know. It's conceptual. And it's amazing.
Mine was not a Tony-winning performance. Here, check it out: https://youtu.be/uiz8xDnJXVI
So how am I feeling physically? Um, let's try exhausted. It takes a lot to be able to rap at that pace and at that volume for a room full of kids, let alone the stress of anticipation, let alone stage fright, let alone the excitement of the starved theater kid, let alone all of the other work for all of my other classes I put in on top of it. I've been singing this song at the top of my lungs in drives from point A to point B for months hoping that it would be amazing. Guess what: the first time I performed this for 4th hour (not filmed), it was horrendous. There's a kind of defeat that goes into anticipation failing (which I might add resembled my failing breath control halfway through the song. Whatever.). But there's also a kind of "whatever" energy that goes into this performance in 5th hour. After all, it can only be better.
So how am I feeling emotionally? Pretty amazing --because all of those other questions about reaching students? Yeah. I did that. This year's juniors are of a particular brand of apathetic, a particular brand of quiet, a particular brand of withdrawn. To make things worse, each Junior English class has 30 kids in it, which means while I have one half of the room spellbound, the other half isn't paying attention and class is therefore a juggling act of which half I'm engaging.
But this --I got them with this. The kids that couldn't connect to me before do now. The kids that were apathetic before pay attention now. I don't think mine is their favorite class (or even that they have a favorite class), but at least now when they sit down, I have their attention. Maybe it's temporary, maybe I'll only have their attention for the next few days as long as they wonder when I'll pop out with a rap again, but that's okay. I have a few days to strike while the iron's hot, to talk about the Age of Enlightenment like it's important --because it is, because it is something they can relate to whether they know it or not, because individualism is important and their voice is important.
So am I tired? Yep, but welcome to the life of a teacher. I can handle it, and if it takes rapping for the kids to get their attention, I'm down. It won't be great, but who says it has to be? They could see that I was real with them, and that I was authentic in wanting to connect with them. I did it. Isn't that enough?
Part of my week were a living hell. You'll never make some people happy. But there are some weeks when you will make people happy, and it's okay to revel in that moment. And because I'm feeling the hip-hop vibe, boom.
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Can Apps Help with Teaching?
For an assignment for the teacher program at Rio Salado, I went to EducationWorld.com and hunted around for articles about classroom management. I read a few articles of sage advice --mostly those that were comprised of common sense or those offering advice I already knew-- but I was mentally hung up with an article titled, "Five Incredible Apps for Classroom Organization". If you'd like to view it, you can follow the link here: http://www.educationworld.com/five-incredible-apps-classroom-organization
This concept is fascinating to me. Most of them offer tools for helping take attendance, a proactive to-do list of things to prep for regarding upcoming lesson plans, a retroactive to-do list of assignments that need to be graded, databases to keep track of behavior problems, gradebooks, etc., and the paid versions of these offer you the ability to print these documents, to give them to parents or to keep. These apps are full of bells and whistles, one more thing for the teacher to learn and adjust to.
I'm wondering if my school is unique in that I have most of these tools available to me already. I do know that my school is unique in that it issues Surface Pro 3 tablets with Windows 10 to all of the teachers (and if you happen to lose your stylus in the airport on your way home from summer vacation, it's up to you to replace it. I mean, that's never happened). My classroom is one of the few classrooms that has a desktop computer left in it, too, meaning that I can choose to take attendance on Schoolmaster either on my tablet or on the desktop. I can choose to keep my Schoolmaster gradebook either through the tablet or through the desktop. I can choose to access Moodle either on my tablet or my desktop, and by the way, Moodle offers students the ability to submit their essays and assignments digitally with a timestamp if they turn in their work late. Once I download all of those essays onto my tablet, I can read them each in OneNote, thus leaving comments on the draft with the aforementioned stylus just like I would hand-write on an essay. To get the essays back to the students, I upload everything back onto Moodle as a feedback comment file to the file they submitted.
This is just the technology that I utilize on a regular basis --because, let's be honest here, that's about all the new technology learning I can handle in this busy season of life. Because all of this work on Moodle isn't the only work: for the two Dual Enrollment courses I teach (ENG101/ENG102) and the college novel writing course I teach, I use Canvas as the Learning Management System with different systems for file uploads. And, yes, Canvas has its own bells and whistles, including Panopto recordings for recording audio and visual lectures (which I do in the Springs when my college courses are online only), there is something called TurnItIn! that scans essays for plagiarism, and there's an ability I haven't utilized yet regarding auto graders. In fact, I went to a 8-hour-long professional development last week that focused quite a bit of time on auto graders and about how I really should be using them at the high school (with the college's technology) because auto graders are what the PSATs and SATs and ACTs and AZMerit's all use to grade those essays. Additionally, more and more colleges use auto graders for college entrance essays, using something like these algorithms to judge syntax, word choice, sentence length, sentence variety, and determinations of poor grammar, spelling, and punctuation. If my kids are going to be held to these standards once they get into college, isn't my job to get them ready for that? So how do I manage to find time to test out the auto grader when I'm teaching full-time at the high school, part-time at the college, and when I'm going to school in what feels like full time what with the technological problems I experience there?
I suppose this is the conundrum for which there is no answer: how is it that teachers can find more time to be human? And isn't that what these apps are selling us --the idea of having more time? (Note the absence of the word "promise" as no one can promise that --just present an idea.) Any app or program with bells and whistles promises more time only "after you get used to it", the ever-present disclaimer that the learning curve will present a time-sucker of its own.
For instance, since the teachers and students alike have been issued tablets at my school with Windows 10 (though the student tablets aren't as nice as our Surface Pro 3s), the sophomore English teacher requires all students to turn in their written assignments through OneNote. She says in one notebook, there is a tab for each name and as each student works on his/her work, the work automatically shows up. From there, she can grade directly onto OneNote, and the file is updated on their device in their OneNote. Would this save me time? Hell, yes. This weeds out all of the time spent downloading and uploading (which when you have close to 115 students is quite a chunk of time on its own), but this also presents time-suckers in other ways. The sophomores complain it takes them so long to get OneNote set up. They don't like it and can never get their bewitched machine to work as it should. I find, then, that the time-sucking is spent in getting everyone settled and then in excuses. I haven't compromised for two reasons: 1) Colleges don't use OneNote. They do as I do in downloading and uploading, and I would rather get them used to a simple, college-like policy. 2) If I'm going to have a time-sucker, I would rather it was in downloading and uploading rather than in whining. Maybe that makes me a whimp. No. No, it doesn't: I'm the no late work, no extra credit teacher, so I already hear whining. That doesn't make me a whimp: that makes me sick of excuses and I'm happy to eliminate one more possibility of hearing them.
It's amazing to me that on teacher evaluations (ones I've seen from the three different high schools and colleges I've worked at) teachers are still evaluated on their use of technology. How could we not use it? At the very least, if I did nothing else I would have to take attendance on the computer. But there really aren't protected places for Luddites anymore. My predecessor in Dual Enrollment required everything to be turned in by paper and then made plenty of the obligatory jokes about killing trees. Who has the back to carry all of that? (I don't.) Who wants the risk of spilling coffee (or, heaven forbid, wine) on student essays? (I've never spilled wine on essays before. Hah.) But more than that, is there any value in these romanticized notions of teaching English when almost every single college uses Blackboard or Canvas and requires students to turn in assignments digitally?
We live in a new world, which means lots of bright, flashy, distracting tools for teachers. We have to be careful about which time-suckers we select, and we have to be okay with abandoning these features if they don't suit us entirely as our needs demand. After all, if they don't, there will be another one right along that claims to meet our needs.
In closing, I wonder if apps really can help us manage a classroom. There's something about the chemistry of a class --those specific bodies in those specific chairs for a set amount of time-- and no app can tell us how to manage them. Apps are great, but they're not all they're promised to be.
This concept is fascinating to me. Most of them offer tools for helping take attendance, a proactive to-do list of things to prep for regarding upcoming lesson plans, a retroactive to-do list of assignments that need to be graded, databases to keep track of behavior problems, gradebooks, etc., and the paid versions of these offer you the ability to print these documents, to give them to parents or to keep. These apps are full of bells and whistles, one more thing for the teacher to learn and adjust to.
I'm wondering if my school is unique in that I have most of these tools available to me already. I do know that my school is unique in that it issues Surface Pro 3 tablets with Windows 10 to all of the teachers (and if you happen to lose your stylus in the airport on your way home from summer vacation, it's up to you to replace it. I mean, that's never happened). My classroom is one of the few classrooms that has a desktop computer left in it, too, meaning that I can choose to take attendance on Schoolmaster either on my tablet or on the desktop. I can choose to keep my Schoolmaster gradebook either through the tablet or through the desktop. I can choose to access Moodle either on my tablet or my desktop, and by the way, Moodle offers students the ability to submit their essays and assignments digitally with a timestamp if they turn in their work late. Once I download all of those essays onto my tablet, I can read them each in OneNote, thus leaving comments on the draft with the aforementioned stylus just like I would hand-write on an essay. To get the essays back to the students, I upload everything back onto Moodle as a feedback comment file to the file they submitted.
This is just the technology that I utilize on a regular basis --because, let's be honest here, that's about all the new technology learning I can handle in this busy season of life. Because all of this work on Moodle isn't the only work: for the two Dual Enrollment courses I teach (ENG101/ENG102) and the college novel writing course I teach, I use Canvas as the Learning Management System with different systems for file uploads. And, yes, Canvas has its own bells and whistles, including Panopto recordings for recording audio and visual lectures (which I do in the Springs when my college courses are online only), there is something called TurnItIn! that scans essays for plagiarism, and there's an ability I haven't utilized yet regarding auto graders. In fact, I went to a 8-hour-long professional development last week that focused quite a bit of time on auto graders and about how I really should be using them at the high school (with the college's technology) because auto graders are what the PSATs and SATs and ACTs and AZMerit's all use to grade those essays. Additionally, more and more colleges use auto graders for college entrance essays, using something like these algorithms to judge syntax, word choice, sentence length, sentence variety, and determinations of poor grammar, spelling, and punctuation. If my kids are going to be held to these standards once they get into college, isn't my job to get them ready for that? So how do I manage to find time to test out the auto grader when I'm teaching full-time at the high school, part-time at the college, and when I'm going to school in what feels like full time what with the technological problems I experience there?
I suppose this is the conundrum for which there is no answer: how is it that teachers can find more time to be human? And isn't that what these apps are selling us --the idea of having more time? (Note the absence of the word "promise" as no one can promise that --just present an idea.) Any app or program with bells and whistles promises more time only "after you get used to it", the ever-present disclaimer that the learning curve will present a time-sucker of its own.
For instance, since the teachers and students alike have been issued tablets at my school with Windows 10 (though the student tablets aren't as nice as our Surface Pro 3s), the sophomore English teacher requires all students to turn in their written assignments through OneNote. She says in one notebook, there is a tab for each name and as each student works on his/her work, the work automatically shows up. From there, she can grade directly onto OneNote, and the file is updated on their device in their OneNote. Would this save me time? Hell, yes. This weeds out all of the time spent downloading and uploading (which when you have close to 115 students is quite a chunk of time on its own), but this also presents time-suckers in other ways. The sophomores complain it takes them so long to get OneNote set up. They don't like it and can never get their bewitched machine to work as it should. I find, then, that the time-sucking is spent in getting everyone settled and then in excuses. I haven't compromised for two reasons: 1) Colleges don't use OneNote. They do as I do in downloading and uploading, and I would rather get them used to a simple, college-like policy. 2) If I'm going to have a time-sucker, I would rather it was in downloading and uploading rather than in whining. Maybe that makes me a whimp. No. No, it doesn't: I'm the no late work, no extra credit teacher, so I already hear whining. That doesn't make me a whimp: that makes me sick of excuses and I'm happy to eliminate one more possibility of hearing them.
It's amazing to me that on teacher evaluations (ones I've seen from the three different high schools and colleges I've worked at) teachers are still evaluated on their use of technology. How could we not use it? At the very least, if I did nothing else I would have to take attendance on the computer. But there really aren't protected places for Luddites anymore. My predecessor in Dual Enrollment required everything to be turned in by paper and then made plenty of the obligatory jokes about killing trees. Who has the back to carry all of that? (I don't.) Who wants the risk of spilling coffee (or, heaven forbid, wine) on student essays? (I've never spilled wine on essays before. Hah.) But more than that, is there any value in these romanticized notions of teaching English when almost every single college uses Blackboard or Canvas and requires students to turn in assignments digitally?
We live in a new world, which means lots of bright, flashy, distracting tools for teachers. We have to be careful about which time-suckers we select, and we have to be okay with abandoning these features if they don't suit us entirely as our needs demand. After all, if they don't, there will be another one right along that claims to meet our needs.
In closing, I wonder if apps really can help us manage a classroom. There's something about the chemistry of a class --those specific bodies in those specific chairs for a set amount of time-- and no app can tell us how to manage them. Apps are great, but they're not all they're promised to be.
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Week 4 post for 9x9x25
Eating Ben&Jerry's on the couch on the pug is the only thing I'm good for right now.
It's Fall Break. I know, I know: most of you don't want to even hear about it. But if it makes you feel better, I only get time off of TCP --not YC-- so I'm still working at one of my two jobs, and I'm still grading for the one, so it's really only a quarter time off. Yeah, I know: waah, waah. But I'd still like to get as much time off as my YC peers during Winter Break. And Summer Break. So you have it easier than you think you do... ;)
What is it about breaks that make us feel so recharged? This morning, I finished reading The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan, I finished re-reading Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster for my novel writing class last night, I've graded an entire class of ENG101/Dual Enrollment essays today, and tomorrow will complete the other class. I'll also be grading my Junior English's Scarlet Letter debates this week. On Monday I had an eye appointment, today I had a vet appointment for the pug, and I have a doctor appointment/check-up on Thursday. Today I finished filming a digital workshop for Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) which starts in just a few weeks. Other things on the To Do list involve buying and hanging stained glass window film for my classroom (the South-facing windows blind my students in the Winter), and buying succulent soil so I can transplant a few of the succulents on my front porch stifled by vegetable potting soil (my bad). Tomorrow, I'll probably go to the gym and have the luxury of working out for as long as I feel like. This doesn't happen as often as I like (and then we wonder why teachers gain weight progressively through their career). I get to meet a friend for dinner on Thursday night.
Welcome to a life of teaching: time off isn't really time off. Time off is, instead, time to get caught up, time to feel normal, time to do the things that I don't have time for in seasons when I teach as much as ten hours in one day (sometimes more). People treat teachers like breaks are just a chance to go to California and sleep on the beach. People treat teachers like we're just staying up until 2am every night binge-watching Netflix like we're not doing anything else. Nope: breaks instead allow us to get caught up a little bit so that we can attempt to be normal people.
What is it like to work only 40 hours a week, to pay your mortgage comfortably, to leave work at work, and to enjoy a vacation without thinking of work a single time? I have no idea. That's okay: that's not this life. Right now this life is about Ben&Jerry's on the couch with the pug and that is good enough for me.
It's Fall Break. I know, I know: most of you don't want to even hear about it. But if it makes you feel better, I only get time off of TCP --not YC-- so I'm still working at one of my two jobs, and I'm still grading for the one, so it's really only a quarter time off. Yeah, I know: waah, waah. But I'd still like to get as much time off as my YC peers during Winter Break. And Summer Break. So you have it easier than you think you do... ;)
What is it about breaks that make us feel so recharged? This morning, I finished reading The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan, I finished re-reading Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster for my novel writing class last night, I've graded an entire class of ENG101/Dual Enrollment essays today, and tomorrow will complete the other class. I'll also be grading my Junior English's Scarlet Letter debates this week. On Monday I had an eye appointment, today I had a vet appointment for the pug, and I have a doctor appointment/check-up on Thursday. Today I finished filming a digital workshop for Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) which starts in just a few weeks. Other things on the To Do list involve buying and hanging stained glass window film for my classroom (the South-facing windows blind my students in the Winter), and buying succulent soil so I can transplant a few of the succulents on my front porch stifled by vegetable potting soil (my bad). Tomorrow, I'll probably go to the gym and have the luxury of working out for as long as I feel like. This doesn't happen as often as I like (and then we wonder why teachers gain weight progressively through their career). I get to meet a friend for dinner on Thursday night.
Welcome to a life of teaching: time off isn't really time off. Time off is, instead, time to get caught up, time to feel normal, time to do the things that I don't have time for in seasons when I teach as much as ten hours in one day (sometimes more). People treat teachers like breaks are just a chance to go to California and sleep on the beach. People treat teachers like we're just staying up until 2am every night binge-watching Netflix like we're not doing anything else. Nope: breaks instead allow us to get caught up a little bit so that we can attempt to be normal people.
What is it like to work only 40 hours a week, to pay your mortgage comfortably, to leave work at work, and to enjoy a vacation without thinking of work a single time? I have no idea. That's okay: that's not this life. Right now this life is about Ben&Jerry's on the couch with the pug and that is good enough for me.
Monday, October 3, 2016
9X9X25: Week Three
This last weekend, I read 10 stories at almost 20 pages each. Starting today, my top priority is to read the 36 essays that are 3-5 pages, the ones that were due last week that I haven't had a chance to grade yet. Incoming as we speak, I have 12 short story critiques at a minimum of 1 page each. One of my beloved colleagues stopped me in the hall last Spring and said, "Kristen, is it too late in your career to chance your discipline?" She followed it with a laugh, one of those laughs that soften the truth, one of those laughs that speak the unspoken: English teachers read a hell of a lot.
To be fair, it's not like I didn't know teaching English and creative writing would be like this. Even as a student --and we all know that students complain about a workload that is a fraction of our own-- I struggled to fit in creative writing homework, and reading for my lit classes, and essays, and plot summaries, and whatever other host of writing assignments expected of us. I knew (as many students do not) that if this was the workload for me, each instructor's work was multiplied by occupied seats. It would be unfair if I went into my educational career completely broadsided. Humanities classes have a ton of student work to read. Period.
But isn't it valuable work? Didn't a younger me appreciate it when teachers left laborious feedback in the margins? Didn't a younger me feel gypped when I got an essay back with a number with no feedback --even if the number was a high one?
At the same time, I recognize that not all students are me. Certainly there is a group of students who hate English or creative writing courses, students who don't think Humanities classes pass the "so what" test, students who are just clicking time and warming seats until they get out of my class. These students are people who look at a number in the gradebook (not even a number handwritten at the top of their essay) who have zero interest in reading my feedback, and therefore I've just wasted the fifteen or twenty minutes it took to grade that essay. I find this is the soul-killing part of teaching English: I've just invested my weekend into trying to help you cultivate ideas and to enrich your identity of humanity, but my feedback will go on unread. The other soul-killing part of teaching English relates to essays who write to a page count or a word count. Don't they know we can figure out they've unbroken all of their contractions to milk the 3-page minimum requirement? Don't they know we were students once, too, that at some point we also have experimented with increasing the font size on all the periods to increase the page count?
When I first started teaching, a colleague gave me some sage advice: "You should never be working harder than your students." Maybe that's the answer here: your students are going to college, not you. Your students should be investing outside time in your class and getting something out of the content, not only you. You've been to college. You've gotten your degree. Don't earn your students' degrees.
Do I have an answer for English and creative writing teachers killing themselves with grading? No. Because even though I whine about how much time it takes me to read through hundreds of pages in a weekend, I can't not do my job. We are professionals. We're teachers because we don't half-heartedly do our work. If we were half-hearted employees, we would have gone into a more lucrative field that paid more for less work.You work hard: you know what I'm talking about.
So while I don't have an answer for you, this is what I have instead: Fight the good fight, my friends. When you sit by yourself over the weekend pushing away family and friends, ignoring invitations to go on the art walk or to meet someone for dinner, it's really easy to feel isolated in this job. Don't feel isolated. We're in the trenches here with you. While it's cliched to say you make more of a difference than you know, it's still true. I suppose it wouldn't be a cliche if it wasn't.
To be fair, it's not like I didn't know teaching English and creative writing would be like this. Even as a student --and we all know that students complain about a workload that is a fraction of our own-- I struggled to fit in creative writing homework, and reading for my lit classes, and essays, and plot summaries, and whatever other host of writing assignments expected of us. I knew (as many students do not) that if this was the workload for me, each instructor's work was multiplied by occupied seats. It would be unfair if I went into my educational career completely broadsided. Humanities classes have a ton of student work to read. Period.
But isn't it valuable work? Didn't a younger me appreciate it when teachers left laborious feedback in the margins? Didn't a younger me feel gypped when I got an essay back with a number with no feedback --even if the number was a high one?
At the same time, I recognize that not all students are me. Certainly there is a group of students who hate English or creative writing courses, students who don't think Humanities classes pass the "so what" test, students who are just clicking time and warming seats until they get out of my class. These students are people who look at a number in the gradebook (not even a number handwritten at the top of their essay) who have zero interest in reading my feedback, and therefore I've just wasted the fifteen or twenty minutes it took to grade that essay. I find this is the soul-killing part of teaching English: I've just invested my weekend into trying to help you cultivate ideas and to enrich your identity of humanity, but my feedback will go on unread. The other soul-killing part of teaching English relates to essays who write to a page count or a word count. Don't they know we can figure out they've unbroken all of their contractions to milk the 3-page minimum requirement? Don't they know we were students once, too, that at some point we also have experimented with increasing the font size on all the periods to increase the page count?
When I first started teaching, a colleague gave me some sage advice: "You should never be working harder than your students." Maybe that's the answer here: your students are going to college, not you. Your students should be investing outside time in your class and getting something out of the content, not only you. You've been to college. You've gotten your degree. Don't earn your students' degrees.
Do I have an answer for English and creative writing teachers killing themselves with grading? No. Because even though I whine about how much time it takes me to read through hundreds of pages in a weekend, I can't not do my job. We are professionals. We're teachers because we don't half-heartedly do our work. If we were half-hearted employees, we would have gone into a more lucrative field that paid more for less work.You work hard: you know what I'm talking about.
So while I don't have an answer for you, this is what I have instead: Fight the good fight, my friends. When you sit by yourself over the weekend pushing away family and friends, ignoring invitations to go on the art walk or to meet someone for dinner, it's really easy to feel isolated in this job. Don't feel isolated. We're in the trenches here with you. While it's cliched to say you make more of a difference than you know, it's still true. I suppose it wouldn't be a cliche if it wasn't.
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