Five Happy Thoughts

Boy, what a week.  It began with, literally, hundreds of essays to grade; having lost so many days from the beginning of the year, I had no choice but to push everything to the last day possible (and even asked for an extension so I could finish marking them over the weekend and still get a little sleep.)  A deep breath and then we launched right into the second quarter: new lesson plans, new texts, new questions.

I laid down the law about absences and trips out of the classroom, both of which students have more control over than they’d like to admit.  (One student asked me first thing if she could use the bathroom; I asked her to wait. Once I’d outlined the new policy limiting everyone to four trips per quarter, it turned out she didn’t have to go after all.)  Discussing these things is awfully tedious for everyone, but when they’re not addressed, loads of tiny interruptions add up to a vaguely chaotic feeling in the classroom, and ultimately it distracts everyone from our real goal: teaching and learning about English and life.

But there were so many bits of happiness sprinkled throughout all this drudgery.  Here are the highlights:

• ONE father called to thank me for tutoring his daughter, who has several rather severe learning disabilities. We’d been studying techniques for test-taking on the SAT, and when her newest scores came in, the guidance counselors were simply shocked she had done so well.  She was accepted to her school of choice within a day, where she’ll be able to play field hockey (her sport of choice) and get an education with the supports she needs.  “I have two more kids,” he said at the end of the conversation, “so you’ll be hearing from me soon.”
• TWO former students flew at me for hugs and gushing greetings.  “Mrs. LOWE!  How ARE you?  I haven’t seen you in so long!”  A third thanked me for all my help preparing her for the SAT; it was even more of a gift to see how much she’d matured in the intervening years, from an awkward and slightly-sullen teenager into a glowing, self-possessed young woman.
• THREE students who were struggling took the time to complete an extra-credit assignment (seeing a play and comparing it with the written work we’d studied in class.)  They enjoyed the experience and their grades rose along with their confidence.  
• FOUR pianists are progressing by leaps and bounds because they get to work together.  It’s amazing to see how much more they learn from each other than from me.
• FIVE minutes after the bell rang, I dashed into class (my first tardiness of the year; I was blindsided by a schedule change and sabotaged by an uncooperative copier.)  When I entered the classroom, breathless and on edge, every student was sitting in her desk with her book open.  “Oh, hello, Mrs. Lowe,” one called out.  “We’ve just been discussing what we think of Hester Prynne.”

So, you see, it wasn’t all bad.  It rarely is.

Part Parent

“… and what about this last section?” I ask.  

“It’s Writing.  Sentence Improvement.”

“So how will you do these?”

“Read the sentence first to see if anything sounds off.  Then trim it — cross out interrupters, prepositional phrases and modifiers.  Eliminate the wrong answers.  Guess if I have to.

“How many will you do?”

“At least half, but they go easy to hard, so if I need to I’ll skip the last ones.”

“Very good.”  I close the book.  “I think you’re ready.”

“Thank you,” she says, and she means it. “This helped, like, so much.”

I walk her out to the living room, say goodbye to her dad.  “I’ll miss seeing you — ” I say, and mean it just as much.

“I know; me, too,” she laughs.

“I’m proud of you,” I finish.  “I know you’re going to do a great job.  Let me know how it goes.”

“We’ll call you with the results,” her dad says, as they close the door.  “Thanks again.”

I wave, turn on the porch light, lock the deadbolt behind them.  

That fluttery feeling — out in the real world, what will happen? Will she meet her goals?  Did I do my job?

This must be what it’s like, interrupts my subconscious.  Being a parent.

Be Prepared

AP Exams are over.  I didn’t administer any myself, but boy, did I see the ripples: students missing class to study, showing up with that hollow, distracted look about them, asking for prayer and showing they needed it.

On one of the first days, I asked a student how her exam had gone.  “It was fine,” she said smilingly.  “My teacher prepared us really well.”  Toward the end of the exam period, I asked a different student about a different test.  “It was awful,” she said.  “My teacher didn’t prepare us at all.”

As someone who took a lot of AP exams herself, I was surprised to see how closely these students linked their teachers’ efforts to their successes and / or failures.  I remember studying a LOT on my own during these classes, and some teachers were certainly better instructors than others, but when I aced the exams (History, for instance) I tended to pat myself on the back, and when I left feeling defeated (Chemistry, which it’s a miracle I passed at all) I assumed it was because I hadn’t put enough time into preparing for it.

I’m not sure whether this is a generational gap (more consumerism) or just a personality difference, but it made me wonder, especially since I’m in the final throes of preparing my own students to take the SAT in two weeks.  I am torn between anger and despair, some mornings, when I ask a question none of them can answer: am I going crazy?  Have I not explained this multiple times before?  Are they just not interested, not aware, not engaged?  Or am I simply not doing a good enough job preparing them?

This time of the year is really the worst.  It’s all about the bottom line: when are the quizzes, and can I take them later if I have a really good excuse?  How much homework do we have, and are you planning to check whether we did it?  What, exactly, do we have to know for the exam, and what can we forget forever?

And for my part, I’m wondering where I went wrong in teaching them to be better students, curious people and informed citizens – and whether I did anything right at all.

Calm in the Midst of Chaos

The strangest thing happened last week.

It was a really awful day.  Rainy and cold.  The mulch shivered under inadequate tarp protection, icy puddles pooling on the surface, breaking and sliding down to the asphalt.  So much for our designs on a day in the garden.

At school, too, plans fell by the wayside.  My nefarious ambitions rivaled King George's; I concocted schemes for a Staple Tax, a Printer Tax and an Anonymity Tax as students scurried around with almost-finished assignments and valuable class time slipped away.  Not everyone got to present their projects.  Meanwhile, I struggled to defeat the worst feeling of all -- the feeling of Not Being Heard.  Colleagues and students alike seemed bent on talking over and cutting under my ideas.

I arrived home just in time to meet a student who was coming over for tutoring.  Still, I remained grumpy.  This was the icing rosebud atop the cupcake of my inconvenience.  The last thing I wanted to do after a day like that was teach.

But here's the strange thing.  Almost instantly, I felt the tension of the day slip off my back as I eased seamlessly into the role.  With one student, I could be patient, smile at her insecurities and encourage her strengths.  She didn't bring a pencil, but it was no problem -- honestly -- to walk into the kitchen and select a nice, sharp one, the same kelly green as her headband.  It seemed an easy, enjoyable job: making Geometry a little clearer to one person for one hour.  She left empowered and charged up, her target SAT score one step closer.  And I left with more peace and centeredness than I had found all day.  In the hubbub of red tape and record-keeping, it was a great relief to finally be able to focus on pure, simple instruction.

My dear friend Michiko's words came to mind then: "I am very close to my teaching.  What I mean is that I do it as easily as I breathe. I have come to realize that I am most relaxed when I am teaching . . . I have become it and it has become me."

It is.  I have.  I am grateful.

The Pentavirate

If you’re at all prone to conspiracy theory, avoid reading this interview with John Popham, an educator and former standardized-test writer, in which he gives some awfully sobering facts about standardized tests:

A nationally standardized achievement test is given in about an hour. In about an hour, you can't test all that much, so you have to sample from larger domains of knowledge and skills. And what you end up with sometimes does not match at all well with what's being taught in school or what's supposed to be taught in school. Some studies suggest that fully 75 percent of what is on a test is not even supposed to be covered in a particular school. Clearly, it's unfair to judge the quality of schooling based on a test that's largely covering things that ought not be taught.

[Later]

If one compares the content of textbooks used in mathematics with standardized achievement tests in mathematics, you will frequently find that fully half of the content in the test is not addressed in those textbooks.

So the tests aren't assessing retention of the facts and concepts we teach in class?  What are they intended to do, then?

You want to have a very substantial spread of scores. And one of the best ways to do that is to have questions that are answered correctly by about 50 percent of the kids; 50 percent get it right, 50 percent get it wrong. You don't want items in there that are answered by large numbers of youngsters: 80 percent, 90 percent. Unfortunately, those items typically cover the content the teachers thought important enough to stress.

So the more significant the content, the more the teacher bangs at it, the better the kids do. And as soon as the kids do very well in that item, 80 percent, 90 percent getting it right, the item will be removed from the test. ... So you miss items covering the most important things that teachers teach. ...

The rest of the interview is just as troubling: he mentions, among other things, that the cheapest test-scoring option (multiple choice) is the most frequently used, even though more expensive options (written and performance-based responses) are far better at measuring the nuances of a student's knowledge. Overall, the piece does give an ominous feeling of behind-the-scenes collaboration, the kind designed to make educators and policy-writers look good at the expense of struggling students.

The only encouragement came from Popham's own opinions about how to write tests.  Here, the interviewer asked him how he would go about creating a fair assessment:

I'd go to a specialist and I'd say, "Isolate the things that you want children to be able to do and put them in three piles: the absolutely essential, the highly desirable and the desirable." And having done that, then I get those two piles away and just go with the absolutely essential. And then I would say, "Now rank them from top to bottom; the most important, the next most important," and so on.

And then I would have the assessment people come in and say, "These four can be assessed in the time we have available, and can be assessed in such a way that teachers will know how to promote children's mastery of them."

Advice worth taking for any teacher who writes a test.  I like that: separate the essential from the desirable, and figure out how to assess knowledge.  Sounds simple enough, but I'm guessing it will take a lifetime to even come close.

Why Writing Matters

When my principal sent me this article and asked for my comments, I knew it was major: I can't remember her ever doing that before.  So I read carefully.

At first glance, author Trip Gabriel seems merely bitter about the weight of the personal essay in college admissions decisions:

It was a theme I was to hear many, many times in more than a dozen campus visits. The personal essay, they all said, growing soft and fuzzy, is the one element where a student’s own voice can be heard through the fog of quantitative data.

[Later:]

Is this really fair? Certainly some students will succeed in writing wonderful essays. But mostly this will be because of natural talent or dubious outside help.

This isn't surprising, considering he has a very personal stake in this issue: twins who are set to attend college next year.  ("There wasn’t a vacation day in the next eight months that one of us didn’t spend on a college campus, somewhere.")

Nevertheless, it started to rankle me when he implied that the essay shouldn't be more important than teacher recommendations and extracurricular activities, and should come nowhere near the sacred four digits of the SAT score.

Look: most important are good grades in a tough program.  No one disputes that.  And standardized test scores do help to validate a student's performance and make a "first round" of cuts; together, these two elements help ensure that a student, if admitted, will feel comfortable in classes and on campus, neither too intellectual nor too oafish for the general population.

But that's not enough when students are applying to seven and eight colleges each.  The number of applicants is sky-high, and their credentials artificially inflated, since even the brightest students apply to four or five "safety schools."  Gabriel admits this freely through interviews with admissions counselors.  So what should a college do when presented with a glut of highly-qualified applicants?

a) Rely on a half-page letter dashed off by a teacher or coach who likes the student and can say some positive things about her.

b) Look at the number of self-reported hours a student has spent in debate, track, SADD and / or the school newspaper.

c) Listen to the student's own voice to get a feel for who she is and whether she would be a good fit for the school.

To me, it's crystal-clear that the first two choices, while they should be considered, come nowhere near as close as the third to the student herself.  In fact, I think the personal statement (I dislike the term "application essay" because of the mentality in which it places most students, even the creatively-minded ones) is preferable to the old tradition of an interview: students have a chance to reflect on the question, seek the advice of friends and family, and craft something that is self-aware, analytical and critically sound.

Sure, some will be more mature than others, but the immature ones can shine just as brightly.  And regardless of career choice, the ability to speak intelligently and positively about yourself to others is one worth taking some time to hone.  Unless, of course, you plan to become an ascetic.

Teaching the Teachers

Our young, forward-thinking vice-principal, in pursuit of higher test scores for the whole school, arranged for me to present some basic test-taking strategies to all of the departments in the next couple of weeks.

Thursday I had my first presentation to the English, History and Fine Arts departments.  As always, I was not a bit nervous until the moment I stood in front of everyone and said, "Okay, we're going to get started . . . " Then some butterflies for a minute or two, until I relaxed into my knowledge of the topic and was able to think and speak with clear articulation.

It was interesting, how much that roomful of teachers behaved like students.  Very few of them volunteered answers, though they must have had some idea of what to say.  Many eyed me with suspicion as I talked about strategies that seemed (and are) counter-intuitive to strategies we teach them for school.  More than one dozed off.

But there were a few who nodded encouragingly, asked insightful transition questions, and thanked me for helping them to see the test in a new light.  The next day, when one teacher stopped me in the hall to tell me how much she'd enjoyed the presentation, I told her how much her cheerful attention had meant to me.  "Well," she smiled.  "I'm a good student.  I've had some practice."

SAT Resources to Spare

In case anyone has friends or family taking the SAT this spring, here's two great resources for preparation:

Work: I found this list of SAT  while preparing for a faculty meeting at which I presented some basic strategies.  (More on that tomorrow.)  Not all of the links work, but there are so many that you're sure to find several you like.

Play: Freerice is one of the most addictive sites around for English nerds like me.  You're asked vocabulary questions which increase in difficulty, and for each correct answer 10 grains of rice are donated to the needy through the UN World Food Programme.  Yes, it would be simpler to just write a check, but aren't you curious about whether you can get all the way to Level 60?

Malaprops, Malaprops

Student: So this part is supposed to be softer?

Me: Well, the dynamics say to decrescendo, but try to think about the structure of the piece.  You know, where do you see the melody going?  At this level of playing, the artist is expected to make his or her own contraband to the music.

Student: <confused stare>

Me: Contribution. What did I just say?

Student: I think you said contraband.

Me: What is wrong with me this week?  I can't remember the right word to save my life!  Yesterday I told my class to use the profit of elimination on the SAT.  Profit of elimination?  That sounds like a hitman's cut.

Mom: Well, at least you don't constantly confuse metrosexual with transsexual.

Me: <horrified stare>

Mom: Yeah.  Especially when you're talking to a man about his satchel, and you meant it as a compliment.

Me: You win.

Our Circle of Influence

Signing up for this semester’s grad class, “Teacher Research and Inquiry,” and hoping it isn’t half as dull as it sounds, I realized there were two sections on the same evening taught by different professors.  I sent a brief e-mail to my friends from school, asking for recommendations: “We all know that the teacher can be the difference between a great semester and a miserable one.”

I wondered idly how many of my students would place me in the second category.  In a way, I’m glad I don’t know; in general, the only ones who come back are those appreciate all the work you've put in and want to thank you for it.  I read this Times article recently with a lump in my throat, hoping that someday I might be worthy of that kind of devotion (but please, not a Facebook group):

In the weeks before the death last month of Jerry Sheik, a retired band teacher from Intermediate School 70 in Chelsea, his wife, Judith Kalina, said he was overwhelmed by the praise written on a Facebook page created in his honor, “Sheik’s Freaks Reunite: A Celebration for Jerry Sheik.”

The page has 135 members, mostly students from the 1970s who played in the stage band Mr. Sheik conducted. They have posted old band photos and recalled their rendition of “Oye Como Va.”

One former student, Melissa Sgroi, wrote, “There are few people that you look back on in your life and know they left an indelible mark. Thank you Jerry Sheik for being one of those people.”

Another of Mr. Sheik’s students, Ned Otter, said, “Jerry was the first one to put a sax in my hand.” Mr. Otter went on to play saxophone professionally, touring with Dizzy Gillespie. He is one of nine overseers of the Sheik’s Freaks page.

“He played a critical role in my life,” Mr. Otter added.

It's funny, but although teaching is often referred to as a selfless profession, ultimately, what we're doing -- filling young minds with our thoughts and ideas -- is pretty egotistical.  I tell myself that if I can convince just one student per semester of the evils of misused en-dashes, there will be more of me to go around -- I can retire someday and not worry about that stuff, since I'll have an army on the prowl for punctuation errors.  My Journalism students can rattle off several dozen of the public offices, so they know of the significance of Robert Byrd's passing and John Paul Stevens' retirement.  And when I've studied for the SAT with you, by golly, you know that test backwards and forwards, though you've lost respect for it after finding out just how much of it is pure psychology -- tricking you into answering with faulty logic.  Ultimately, I can't tell whether I'm doing this for them or for me.