Gladly Would I Teach

via www.latimes.com

Because of the weak economy, the 2009-2010 school year will be difficult for everyone. In the school system where I teach in Georgia, the Board of Education cut teacher salaries by 2% and deducted one day from our contracts. While we certainly were not happy about the salary cut, most of us accepted it as graciously as possible since we knew the system was doing everything possible to keep from laying off teachers. Then we found that class-size limits would be relaxed allowing student enrollment in high school academic classes to go as high as 32.

Sometimes we just don’t know how good we have it. Our large classes pale in comparison to the California schools highlighted in this article.

John Collier, when I’m grading my tests tomorrow and fighting the urge to feel sorry for myself for the 84 AP students I have in three classes, I’m going to remember the 48 students you have in EACH AP class,

and I’ll shut-up and say a prayer for YOU!

Clarkdale Elementary School was submerged in the recent flooding.
Clarkdale students and their teachers will be sent to two different
schools where they will remain until Cobb County decides what to do
about the damaged building. If you would like to help these students,
their families, and the teachers of Clarkdale, please see the attached
file. Sadly, many Clarkdale students must endure the pain of losing
their house and their school. They need our help. Thanks!

Download Clarkdale Contributions

A couple of days ago I explained why I think timed writings
are so important for students, and I promised to explain later how I grade
timed writings quickly. I certainly do not believe that my way of grading is
the fastest or the best method, but it’s the way I have found most productive
for me. I attended a conference a couple of years ago where the speaker
insisted that he had not written anything on a student paper for years; he only
assigns a grade. That approach apparently works for him, but it wouldn’t work
for my students or for me. I know an outstanding teacher who spends hours over
the course of several days grading a stack of papers because she marks every
error the students make. It works for her, but that approach would not work for
me. We all have our own methods for grading, and over time we take a few ideas
from others and blend them with our own ideas to create our own effective
grading procedure.

My main objectives when I grade timed writings are to grade
the papers quickly so I can return them the following day, to provide enough
information so students can improve in their writing, and, sometimes above all
else, to maintain my sanity. The approach I’m outlining is only my grading
procedure for timed writings. I teach on a block schedule (90 minutes daily,
one semester only) and have 3 classes of AP English Language students (total of
84 students). As I mentioned in a previous post, I require students to complete
a timed writing every Monday. The information below is specific to timed
writings required for AP English. Next week I’ll post ideas for grading timed
writings for courses other than AP.

Here's how I grade.

1. I teach students how I will grade
   timed writings.
   I spend a full hour after the first timed writing early in the semester explaining
   how readers grade essays on the AP test in May and how the AP 1-9 rubric
   works. I then explain how I will use the rubric and benchmark papers in
   class and how I will mark their papers (information below). This step is
   crucial. If I teach this part successfully, I will have few grading
   problems or grading disputes all semester. I also emphasize that I can
   only spend approximately 2 minutes per paper; therefore, students won't
   get many comments.

2. After students finish timed writings,
   I require them to grade themselves and reflect on their papers immediately.
   At the end of timed writings, I have students turn their papers over and
   give themselves a score of 1-9 on the back of the essay. This is hard for
   them the first half of the semester, but they get much better with practice.
   I also have them write me a note to tell me how they think they did on the
   assignment and specifically what they want me to comment on or what
   questions they want me to answer when I grade their papers.

3. I grade the papers.

   1) I put a check mark in the
   margins next to cogent points that students advance, good use of examples,
   superior vocabulary, excellent use of rhetorical devices and strategies,
   etc. Good papers have lots of check marks.

   2) I circle or underline distracting grammatical or mechanical errors. I
   don't correct anything, nor do I mark all errors since the papers are rough
   drafts. I always mark comma splices, run-ons, and fragments because I
   consider these errors so egregious that I fear overlooking them may lead
   to revocation of my teaching certificate.

   3) I write very short comments in margins:  “off topic,” “love this,”
   “you lost me,” or I put a question mark in the margin.

   4) I put a score of 1-9 (according to the rubric) at the top of the page
   and write very brief suggestions which I actually abbreviate as the
   semester goes on:  “Need More Analysis,” “Need Examples,” “Work on
   Vocabulary,” “Read prompt carefully,” etc. I would love to write “BS” for
   “Be Specific,” but I rarely have the nerve.

   5) After assigning a grade, I flip
   the paper over and make a brief comment or answer the questions that students
   pose on the back of the paper. As the semester continues, students become
   remarkably adept at assigning their own grades. Halfway through the semester,
   most students will score themselves within one point of the score I assign. If
   there is a large variance in our scores, I know I need to offer a couple of
   sentences to explain why the score isn’t higher or lower. Often students will
   simply write questions such as: “I worked harder on my introduction. Did it
   work?” “I used only two examples. Is that enough or should I have gone into more
   detail, or do I need to include more examples.” “I was lost on this assignment.
   I just started writing something because time was running out.” If students
   feel comfortable in the class and comfortable with me as a grader, they will be
   painfully honest in their self-assessment. In fact, when I respond to student
   comments on the back of the timed writings, I often feel my role changes. When
   I grade the paper, I’m the English teacher assessing their performance. On the
   back of the paper, however, I’m the cheerleader encouraging them to keep
   writing and improving.

   6) As I grade papers, I compile a
   list of problems that many students have in common and/or points I want to emphasize. I also compile a
   list of what students did well. I will use these lists when I discuss the timed
   writings the following day.

   7) I put a star in the top left-hand
   corner of exemplary papers that I would like students to read aloud.

4. I review papers in class the following
   day.
   We look at the prompt together before we discuss the papers. I then review
   the College Board scoring reports with students so they will understand
   what the readers were looking for. We read aloud one or two papers. At the
   beginning of the semester, I usually read one or two exemplary sample
   papers provided by College Board, but by the middle of the semester, I
   allow students in the class who received stars on their papers to read
   their own papers to the class. Afterward, students discuss what they could
   do next time to make their papers better. I also use this time to review
   two to three common problems that I saw in the papers.

Organization

Since I have three 90-minute AP classes, I review the
College Board grading criteria and sample papers during first period while my
students are writing. I then grade first period papers during second period and
grade second period papers during 3rd period. I usually have 26-30 students in
each class and can grade a class set of papers in about one hour. By grading during
class, I usually only have to work an additional 1-2 hours after school or
before school the following day, but that is just on Mondays when I assign
timed writings.

One of the greatest benefits of grading timed writings
quickly and returning them the following day is that I have the grading down to
a routine and can grade the papers quickly without fraying my nerves, carrying
around a stack of un-graded papers for days, or getting bored with the
assignment or the papers. My grading method may not be the fastest or the best
method, but it’s the best approach I have been able to devise after decades of
teaching and thousands upon thousands of essays to grade.

Despite our best plans, unexpected things happen in schools.  Yesterday was one of those days. Last year in
September Georgians worried about the severe effects of the drought, and we
heard rumors that the governor was considering closing the schools because of
insufficient water – just rumors.

The Georgia drought, however, is over. Over the past few
days, suburban Atlanta received record amounts of rain, in some areas as much
as 15-18 inches. (John Clay provided the top two photos of the flood in Kennesaw.)

When I arrived at school at 6:15 yesterday morning, the sky
was spitting rain with sporadic bursts of lightening.  While I had heard reports that Paulding and
Douglass, two adjacent counties, had closed their schools because of flooding,
I had no idea that the situation in Cobb was also perilous. Since I live 70
miles north of where I teach, I assumed that the Kennesaw neighborhood where I teach had received only about an inch of rain as I had experienced at my house
in Ellijay.

At 8:00 AM when my first period class normally starts filing
in, only one or two students appeared, and the halls were empty. At 8:25, the
official start of the school day, only 5-6 students were present and school officials
advised teachers not to take roll until 8:45 and later extended that time to
the end of the period when most students had trickled into the building. The
final student entered my classroom around 9:45 and informed us that he had
wrecked his car when he hydroplaned and shot off the road. Luckily he was fine.

By second period the rain was falling so quickly that we
were distracted by the flooding in the parking lot and the waterfall cascading
down the steps overlooking the area where the band practices. Second period was
extended because the rain was so heavy that it was impossible for students to
change classes outside, and one of the halls leading into the cafeteria was
flooding. The bathrooms on the English hall on the second floor of the building
had to be closed because so much water had flooded the sewers that the water
was coming back up through the commodes. (I didn’t understand that part and
felt no need to investigate!)

We changed to third period around noon and then received
word that Cobb County was releasing middle schools early in hopes of getting
all students home as quickly as possible. When school ended, we all faced long
commutes as county officials closed over one hundred roads in Cobb County because
of high water or flooding,

Although my day was long and eventful, I remained dry and in
no danger unlike teachers at another school down the road. Clarkdale
Elementary, a school in the southern section of Cobb County, encountered rising
flood waters and had to evacuate students to another school. I cannot fathom
how much stress those teachers must have endured as they waded their small
children through rising flood waters to awaiting busses. Teachers train for
fire drills, tornado drills, and even lock-down drills, but I don’t remember
ever receiving any information about flood drills since our schools are not in
flood plains.

Late yesterday afternoon Cobb County announced that schools
would be closed on Tuesday because of flooding and closed roads.

It is heartbreaking to look at the photos and videos of flooding
in metropolitan Atlanta and read the accounts of people who died in the storms and
those whose homes are now flooded.  It is
also frightening to think of how much worse our problems could have been
yesterday, particularly in Austell where flood waters have now almost totally submerged
Clarkdale Elementary School.

I will say a special
prayer for Clarkdale teachers and their students.

via www.schoolinfosystem.org

"Reading is the path to knowledge and writing is the way to make knowledge one's own. If we continue to ignore them as we do now, it will not be good for our economy, or for any of the "useful and agreeable arts of life" for our students."

Thank you, Will Fitzhugh! I wish more citizens insisted on
improvements in the teaching of reading and writing in schools. We do our
students a great disservice when we give them only assignments that require
them to reflect on what they have read or to write essays only about themselves.
How will we engage in productive debates about important issues facing our
country in the future if we have not taught our students to stretch their minds
with challenging reading and writing coursework?  Because of the Internet, we are deluged with
information daily, information that is only valuable if we can read critically
to separate the valuable from the trivial and the rational from the deceptive.

For years I have designated Mondays as timed-writing days.
Since I teach all AP English Language and Composition classes now, the
assignment is always an essay from a previously administered College Board AP
English Language test. Sometimes the essays require students to analyze a
passage and sometimes a concept or an argument the author creates. Other
assignments provide background on a problem or concept and entail analyzing
both sides of an issue before writing an essay in which they take a stand on
the issue. Newer timed-writing prompts provide a problem or concept along with
6-7 short sources and require students to write a mini-research paper in which
they synthesize the available sources as they create their own arguments. Depending
on the type of assignment, students have 40 or 55 minutes to read the assigned
material and write their essays.

 Many English teachers complain about timed writings and
consider them insignificant assignments that AP teachers must include in order
to prepare students for the AP test. Teachers grumble, “Outside of English
classrooms, when will students ever have to complete timed writings?”

 I disagree!

 Regardless of whether I am teaching AP English or British
Literature or even a ninth-grade course, I always include timed writings as
part of the required assignments for the class. While it is true that
practicing timed writings helps students on AP exams, they do much more than
that.

 Timed
writings help students improve reading and analytical skills because the
assignment forces them to rely solely on the text and their own abilities.
They cannot consult the teacher, other students, other texts, or even the
beloved Internet.

• Timed
  writings, if assigned frequently and discussed afterward in class, help
  build students’ confidence in writing. Many students struggle in the
  beginning with timed writings, but over time they improve markedly and,
  most importantly, they detect their improvement. This improvement in turn spurs
  them to keep trying. Students who struggle to write one paragraph of
  gibberish at the beginning of a semester may be able to write two powerful
  pages by the end of the semester.

• Timed
  writings build reading rate. Few assignments in school actually require
  students to read and analyze faster. Simply by completing timed writings
  each week, students become faster readers and become much better at
  understanding how an author crafts an essay.

• After repeated
  practice with timed writings, most students learn to complete all types of
  writing assignments faster. While some people consider this an unimportant
  skill, I disagree. Imagine how much easier future writing assignments
  inside and outside of class will be for students who are able to compose
  effective essays quickly. Imagine how students’ stress levels will
  decrease when they know they are able to compose essays, daily
  assignments,  research papers, and
  other writing assignments faster than their peers. Why do we spend so
  little time in school helping students to become faster in reading and
  writing?

• Practice
  with timed writings teaches students that they can become effective
  writers. All it takes is determination, hard work, and the ability to
  accept criticism and implement changes while learning new reading and
  writing techniques.

My students groan on Mondays when I tell them to clear their
desks and prepare to complete a timed writing.

 
As they groan, I always tell them they will thank me one
day.

 
I just hope I’m still alive when that day comes.

(In a few days, I’ll post my procedure for grading timed
writings quickly.)

About an hour before school started on Friday morning, an
excellent, hard-working teacher I have known for years walked into my classroom
to discuss her frustration with so many duties and responsibilities teachers have
to complete this year.  After enumerating
a list of her current frustrations and her exasperation that teachers are
continuously asked to do more each year, she uttered the oft heard mantra of
teachers: “Why can’t they just let me teach?”

Lesson plans, lunch duty, department meetings, morning duty,
duplicating materials, repairing jammed copy machines, bathroom duty, afternoon
duty, advisement, contacting parents, updating teacher blogs, tutoring, parent
conferences, faculty meetings, supervising extra-curricular activities, staff
development, teacher observation of other teachers, preparing students for
standardized tests, administering standardized tests, making sure students have
returned locator cards, free and reduced lunch forms, and receipt of handbook
forms, helping students select courses for next semester, monitoring student
grades, contacting parents when students miss school too often, supervising detention,
submitting grades for report cards. . . .

In the sixth week of the new school year, teacher
frustration is growing.

Why can’t we just
teach?

Teacher frustration over duties and responsibilities not
directly related to teaching students is not new. Many young teachers and
teachers-to-be of my generation received their first taste of teaching bureaucracy
from Bel Kaufman’s Up the Down Staircase, a popular 1960s book and movie. We read
or watched the movie and cheered for young Sylvia Barrett who worked so hard
and cared so much for students while the onerous duties and challenges of the
job wore her down and made her consider leaving the teaching profession.

In a recent interview with Nancy Schnog, Bel Kaufman, now 98, reflects on her
New York City teaching career of the 1930s to the 1960s. Remembering her
frustration as a teacher, she stated that she wanted to tell parents, "Look,
we are good teachers. We're inspired and inspiring teachers. Schools don't let
us teach!" How many good teachers today can identify with Kaufman’s statement?  Kaufman also insists that good teachers are
not effective because of their ability to complete paperwork appropriately,
attend the best staff development courses, or perform extra duties in a timely
fashion. Instead, she emphasizes the importance of establishing good
relationships with students:

"That's what
reaches them. Caring enough. Caring.”

Sometimes when we are drowning in extra duties,
responsibilities, and paperwork, we just need to force ourselves to close our
classroom doors and focus on what is important: STUDENTS. 

Everything else can wait!

According to the National
Center for Education
Statistics, almost half of all new teachers leave the teaching profession
during the first five years of their careers. If America is to keep a vibrant,
positive, and competent teaching force, we have to uncover ways to help new
teachers. It is far too easy today to look at the huge problems in education
and enumerate all of the reasons we will never solve poverty, student apathy,
insufficient resources, and a litany of problems that plague our schools.
Teachers with very little experience, however, aren’t worrying about monumental
problems like these as much as they are simply trying to figure out what to do
in their own classrooms tomorrow morning. 
Helping new teachers means providing direct aid today, not alleviating
long-term social problems a decade from now.

When I first started teaching, I was overwhelmed with work
seven days a week. With more experience, I could grade papers and plan lessons
much faster, but I still had to work on weekends. One of the best pieces of
advice another teacher ever gave me was a very simple concept that absolutely rejuvenated
me. I call it Friday Planning. A wise teacher emphasized the importance of
weekend relaxation, a concept that too many teachers think is impossible when
they grab stacks of papers to grade as they leave their classrooms on Friday
afternoons.  Friday Planning, however,
emphasizes that teachers should never leave their classrooms on Friday afternoon
until they have planned everything for the following week and until they have
duplicated the handouts and found the supplies that they will need for Monday.
In other words, teachers cannot leave their classroom on Friday afternoon until
they have everything organized on their desks and ready for them to begin
teaching on Monday morning. Once they have everything organized, Friday
planning requires them to do three things:

1.      
Lock the classroom door.

2.      
Take no school work home with them.

3.      
Spend the weekend relaxing without worrying
about school.

When I first heard of Friday Planning years ago, I was
extremely skeptical because I knew I would fall so far behind if I didn’t grade
papers over the weekend. It probably took close to an entire school year to get
used to Friday Planning, but it totally changed me as a teacher. My weekends
today are actually relaxing, and I don’t worry about everything that I have to
do on Monday because I know everything is on my desk and ready to go. When I
return to school on Monday, I am well rested, happy, and ready for a good week.
During the school week, I work diligently to grade papers and plan ahead
because I know I want to wrap up everything by Friday.

Friday Planning isn’t always feasible, particularly on those
weeks when I collect research papers. Whenever possible, however, I stick to my
Friday Planning schedule.  Before I leave
my classroom on this gorgeous Friday afternoon, I’ll print my lesson plans for
next week, duplicate all the handouts, prepare all of the supplies I will need
for Monday, and I’ll lock my classroom door.

One of the best lessons we can teach new teachers is how to
organize their time so they can dedicate their weekends for family, friends,
and relaxation.

via www.theamericanscholar.org

"Studying English taught us how to write and think better, and to make articulate many of the inchoate impulses and confusions of our post-adolescent minds. We began to see, as we had not before, how such books could shape and refine our thinking. We began to understand why generations of people coming before us had kept them in libraries and bookstores and in classes such as ours. There was, we got to know, a tradition, a historical culture, that had been assembled around these books. Shakespeare had indeed made a difference—to people before us, now to us, and forever to the language of English-speaking people."

Amen!

I was skimming my Facebook newsfeed last night and found a conscientious parent who was worried because she had just found out that her fourth-grade son
had homework, and she didn’t know anything about the assignment. A few minutes
after her post, one of her friends posted a website link where she could find
the homework assignment that her son had forgotten.

My mother never would have done that.  She was always helpful and supportive, but in
my childhood home, my homework was considered my homework, not my mother’s. She
frequently answered a question or showed me how to complete a problem, but then
she would push the paper back in front of me, pat me on the back, and say, “Okay,
now you finish it.” And, I would.

Mrs. Harris, my fourth-grade teacher, was the scariest
teacher my tiny ten-year-old soul had ever encountered. I can still see her
standing in front of the classroom and scowling, always scowling, scowling in
that know-it-all teacher way that made us all feel guilty for sins we had yet
to commit, scowling in that way that told us that one misstep by any one of us
would end the recess chances for all of us.  Fourth grade was not fun.

For one thirty-minute period each day I escaped the
oppression of Mrs. Harris’ classroom to attend a separate reading class with
older students and a different teacher. 
I don’t remember the teacher’s name; in fact, I don’t remember anything
about the teacher or the other students. Since  the other students were older, I suspect I was
in an accelerated class, but since I grew up in the dark ages when teachers were
more concerned with curtailing pride than building self-esteem, I was never
told the class was accelerated, and for all I know I may have been surrounded
by juvenile delinquents. We just accepted what we were told in those days.

To be perfectly honest, I can only remember one day in the
class, one day that left an indelible mark in my memory: the day I left my
homework at home.  As the teacher marched
up and down the aisles collecting homework assignments from each student, I
held my reading book upside down and shook it in hopes that my misplaced paper
might drop out.  Nothing!  Tears welled in my eyes when I told my teacher,
a teacher whose name I don’t even remember, that I had left it at home. Her
reply was simple: “Detention after school tomorrow.”  Along with a few other miscreants, the
following day I spent 30 minutes in silence sitting in a desk in my reading
classroom after school. At the end of detention, the teacher told us that we
would return to that same classroom for detention every time we neglected to submit
our homework.

I remember feeling humiliated. I remember feeling ashamed,
and I remember trying my hardest to keep from crying both in class the day I
couldn’t find my homework and the following day in detention. Shame!  Now that’s a word we don’t hear much anymore.
I was ashamed, truly ashamed because I had completed my homework, and I should
have had it in my notebook, but probably in my rush to run outside and play
after finishing my homework, I had pushed it aside and forgotten it.

Shame.

Today many people would find fault with the teacher and her
lack of compassion. They would analyze each of her actions and question why she
didn’t ask me to explain why I didn’t have my homework. They would suggest that
a caring teacher should have given me a second chance. They would chastise her
for breaking a child’s spirit. Today, no one would defend this teacher.

Shame.

 Yes, I would have
felt better if this no-name teacher had put her arms around me and comforted me
when I didn’t have my homework, but, despite my apprehension and fear, this
experience taught me to be responsible and diligent, two traits that have
served me well in the decades since I stepped outside that quiet detention
room. To the best of my knowledge, I never again neglected to complete or
submit my homework on time, not in elementary school, not in high school, and
not in college. Sometimes valuable lessons are not pleasant.

Recently, I became sick at my stomach while reading a book
about college admissions: What Colleges
Don’t Tell You: 272 Secrets for Getting Your Kid into the Top Schools by
Elizabeth Wissner-Gross. The author details specific strategies that parents
can use to increase their children’s chances for entering an Ivy League school.
She encourages parents to complete homework with their high school children and
to make it fun, to stay up late with their children to work on assignments, to “keep
track of all upcoming homework assignments, tests, quizzes, and projects – know
the deadlines and how far along your child is in preparing,” to “compliment,
affirm, and occasionally reward your child for good studying and hard work” (55).
I had to put the book down. 

What does the future hold for students who are never allowed
to make mistakes and suffer the consequences? 

My homework was my homework, not my mother’s.