Gladly Would I Teach

Despite having had the seasonal flu shot and the H1N1 flu shot and doing my best to stay away from sick students, I contracted a bad cold a couple of weeks ago. Unlike most colds that go away after three or four days, this cold apparently loved living in my body and stayed around to torment me for 10 very long and miserable days.

I took a day off from school when I was really ill and then returned to work the next day. In the span of a couple of hours, I felt just as bad as I had the previous day. But, like so many teachers who keep reporting to school despite their illnesses, I kept on working. Finally, I awoke one morning and determined that there was no way I could drive myself to work and called for a substitute.

Normally it isn’t difficult to create a lesson plan that students can complete without me, but I had three students scheduled for speeches in each class. Since delivering speeches makes some students really nervous, I knew it might cause problems if they had to reschedule their speeches after they had already worried and prepared for the speeches. Unfortunately, however, there was nothing I could do. I had to cancel the speeches.

As I climbed back into bed, my thoughts drifted to that tiny little video camera asleep in my top desk drawer.  Perfect!  I sent an email to my department chair and asked him to obtain the camera and have a student videotape the speeches.

It worked!

Now, instead of grading speeches as students deliver them, this weekend I am staring into my computer screen and viewing and grading speeches. I actually graded one speech today as I went to the park and stared into the very tiny camera screen as I ate lunch.

I love technology!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

Regardless of how long I teach, I will never understand when students plagiarize papers. While grading a wonderful set of This I Believe papers (see yesterday’s post), I started reading a paper that puzzled me. Since I require students to submit papers to Turnitin.com, a plagiarism detection site, I took a closer look at the student’s paper.

According to Turnitin.com, the paper contained over 20% of matching text from information that appears elsewhere on the Internet. I then checked a book about the student’s topic and found even more sentences that he apparently copied.

In most cases, this would anger me, but today I am just sad. The student is a nice young man and not a student I would normally think would cheat on a paper. I want to believe he would not cheat or copy part of a paper. I just don’t want to believe it.

Did he not realize that he couldn’t copy sentences from another source? I would like to think it’s a mistake, but no student could make it all the way to AP English without knowing about plagiarism.

Did he simply forget to enclose copied material in quotation marks? Again, that would be hard to believe for a seventeen-year-old student in an honors English class.

I gave the student a zero on the assignment, explained the problem, and asked him to see me individually. I’ll return the paper tomorrow.

Just when I was so sad over the idea that a student would plagiarize part of a paper, I picked up another student’s paper about her belief.

America needs to return to the days where people followed through on their promises and tried their hardest, no matter what the circumstances. Once upon a time, cheating was a serious offense, mistakes were acknowledged and rectified, and handshakes were the equivalent of a legal contract. Once upon a time, there were not unlimited opportunities to try again. Once upon a time, people had to work hard to succeed because there were no handouts. These are the values that America needs to return to. This personal responsibility is an important part of society that has been recently lost. This must be found again as America recovers from its recession. This I believe.

At the beginning of the semester, I always tell students how much cheating disappoints me. I emphasize that I can still have respect for students who make a horrible grade but who do not resort to cheating. I then emphasize that I can have little respect for students who take the easy way out and cheat.

I so hope the student can give me an explanation for what happened – some explanation that does not include copying.

If not, I hope he will admit his mistake and apologize. We all make mistakes.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

One of my favorite writing assignments is National Public Radio’s (NPR) This I Believe. Based on a radio series that started several decades ago, students write a 500-word essay that expresses ONE of their beliefs. The best papers illustrate beliefs with stories and lots of examples.

Some of the student essays are funny, and some are poignant. Almost all of them are thoughtful. Although some students charge through the assignment quickly and whip out something with little analysis or thought, most students have a hard time narrowing their beliefs to only one concept they wish to express.

I spent all morning grading their papers, and this batch of papers is probably the best group of papers I have ever read for the This I Believe assignment.

What do teenagers believe?  Teenagers’ optimism always rejuvenates me. Here is the list of beliefs from this semester’s students. The NPR format asks writers to name their belief, usually starting or ending the topic with “This I Believe.”

If you would like to use the NPR’s This I Believe assignment, please see the NPR website:

This I Believe

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

Yesterday, I drove 6 hours in order to see my niece’s baby girl. Since I couldn’t figure out a way to drive and grade papers simultaneously, much to the relief of other motorists, today I am facing a huge stack of papers that I must grade by tomorrow.

How many other professions end the week with a stack of work that they must complete over the weekend during their free time?

Writing, like reading, is taught best by allowing students to practice their skills as often as possible. For example, teachers who want students to become better readers must assign more reading and then find time to discuss the reading with the class or with individual students.

The same process is true with writing. To help students, we must require lots of writing, encourage students to write, and then provide feedback. There’s the rub!  When students write, particularly older high school students, teachers must then spend hours and hours reading and responding to their papers. Is it any wonder that teachers require few writing assignments?

So, here I sit in my home study. I will be sitting her all day grading papers and wishing I could have found a way to grade part of them as I drove all over Georgia  yesterday.

For those of you who think I wrote this post just so I could interject a photo of Sophie Catherine at 18 days, I plead guilty!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

It’s New Year’s, and I suppose its time to disclose my teacher resolutions for the year.

• I have such a hard time keeping my mouth shut during class discussions, and I know I would be a better teacher if I allowed students to participate more as I participate less.  Hence, I resolve to use the World Cafe approach to discussions at least once every other week. (I’ve written about this method several times. For more information, type “World Cafe discussion” in the search box on the right.)

• For years I have heard teachers, parents, and students declare that red ink is upsetting to students.  I have never really believed there was much validity behind this claim, but just in case these people are right, I’m going to switch to another color this year. I’m giving up my favorite red Flairs and grading in green ink. Will green ink really make a difference? I am inclined to think it will make little difference or I would have changed long ago, but I’m going to give it a try.

• I have  always scoffed at the idea that English teachers need to teach visual literacy. Who needs any special talent or skill to understand a photo, cartoon, or video? Several incidents recently, however, persuaded me that some of my students might benefit from more discussion of visuals. This year I’m going to include more opportunities for students to study and discuss visuals, particularly photos and editorial cartoons.

• Finally, although I generally do a good job of recognizing and thanking good students, this year I resolve to write at least three notes per week to students, parents, or former students.

That’s it!  Four resolutions.

Teaching resolutions are so much easier than personal resolutions.

At least teaching resolutions don’t revolve around losing weight!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

Yesterday I started thinking of the things I need to accomplish before returning to school after Christmas. Thankfully, I have very little that I must get done, and it struck me how things have changed through the years.

Many years ago when I taught on a quarter system, it was common practice for teachers to require students to turn in research papers before Christmas so we would have the break to get them graded.

What were we thinking?

In those days we used to budget our vacation time by tabulating how many papers we had to grade daily in order to finish them on time. It was a thankless job because when we returned the papers the first day back from Christmas vacation, we then had to suffer student complaints about grades and return angry parent phone calls.

This morning I remembered a particularly interesting time of collecting research papers many years ago. My eighth graders had to give me their research papers on the final day before Christmas vacation. As I remember, the papers had to be 7-8 typed pages. In those days, I used to have a small, colorful Snoopy trash can I used to collect papers. As I walked around the classroom all day, students placed their papers into the can.

As happens in many schools, the day before the break included lots of fun, laughter, and food, and we were all exhausted at the end of the day. I supervised students and waved good-bye as the buses pulled out of the parking lot.

When I returned to my classroom later that afternoon, I discovered that my colorful Snoopy garbage can was EMPTY.

I ran through the halls and discovered that the custodians had moved through the halls quickly in order to empty the trash because they wanted to begin their vacations as quickly as the rest of us. The garbage from my hall had already been dumped in the dumpster at the back of the building.

Another teacher and I opened the dumpster, saw all of the garbage interspersed with half-eaten holiday treats and paper streaked with holiday punch.

“Do you really want to pull out all of this garbage and rescue those research papers?” she asked.

“What would you do?” I replied.

“I would close the dumpster and forget the papers.”

And, I did.

I had a lovely holiday that year, and when January rolled around and I told the students what happened, they laughed, and I never had one complaint from a student or parent. Since this was back in the dark ages when students actually typed their papers on typewriters, students did not have back-up copies that they could submit, and it would have been cruel to make students go back and rewrite the papers.

It was a quiet, stress-free, happy holiday!

Of course, I never again used a trash can to collect student papers!

It’s final exam time, that exciting but overwhelming time of the semester when there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything graded.

Just for the record, the pencil graphic is misleading. Oh, that all of my final exam could be machine scored.

Oh, how much time I would have if I didn’t have to include essays.

Maybe I’ll find time to blog tomorrow.

For tonight, however, it’s back to the red pen and grading.

“My Access” Helps Students Write

I have my doubts about this new program that reviews student writing and offers suggestions for revision, but I really hope it works. Imagine how much help such a program would be for English teachers who drown under stacks of essays. Although I have my doubts, an English teacher interviewed in the article states:

“It’s important that teachers go back and explain that the score is not necessarily reflective of their overall writing,” said Warren, who teaches advanced placement and honor students. “As far as the mechanics go, it’s dead-on with the spelling and grammatical errors.”

Actually, if the program can check and teach grammatical and mechanical errors so teachers can narrow their focus to teaching the content of papers, I would be ecstatic.

I just wish I had the money to give “My Access” a try!

Yesterday a teacher asked for advice about easy and quick ways to grade notebooks. I’ll pass along the information I gave in case you are staring at a stack of notebooks you have to grade over the holidays. My method is so simple and practical that I am embarrassed it took me over a decade to figure it out.

The best aspect of my notebook grading is that I do NOT take home any notebooks, nor do I have stacks of notebooks on my classroom floor for days and days as I grade them.

Before revealing my grading suggestion, however, I’ll review why I have students keep notebooks in some classes. I want students to keep all handouts, assignments, notes, and graded work in an organized fashion. I want them to be able to find everything they need to study for tests and to study for the final exam. I hope during the process that they will also improve their organizational skills. I’m not particularly interested in whether or not their notebooks are pretty so long as they can find what they need and read it.

At the beginning of the semester, I tell students how I will grade their notebooks and I make suggestions for how they should organize their notebooks (how many dividers they need, sections they need to establish, etc). I also insist that they have a notebook just for my class since I may take it up during the semester. I emphasize the importance of bringing the notebook to class each day and, particularly at the beginning of the semester, I remind them to place their work in their notebooks.

Instead of collecting notebooks to grade, this is my process.

1. I tell students to place their notebook on their desk and prepare for a notebook check.
2. I distribute a one-page notebook check (See example below.)
3. I tell the students that the notebook is timed and that they must finish it within 30 minutes (adjusted for individual classes). Students must write answers on the notebook sheet. They may not use their textbooks, hunt for papers in their book bags, or ask me for help. They can only use their notebooks to find the answers.
4. The notebook check includes abbreviations that I have to explain to students before they begin. For example. The first question may state:  Night 3.12.  I explain to students that this means they have to go to their questions on Night.  Look at the questions on chapter 3 and provide the answer to #12.  All answers should be 2-3 words. (I don’t ask essay type questions on notebook checks.)
5. Depending on the class, I ask from 20 to 50 questions.
6. I walk around the room to ensure that kids don’t pass papers from their notebooks to other students and to ensure that they can’t copy other students’ work. I collect papers as students finish.
7. If I have multiple classes of the same subject, I collect the notebooks at the end of the notebook check and keep them overnight so students in one class cannot give their notebook to a student in another class.
8. Instead of taking home stacks of notebooks to grade, I only have a stack of short answer questions to grade. Since I make students write answers in little blocks, I am able to grade the papers much faster.

Some teachers wonder about students who are able to answer questions on a notebook check even when they haven’t written down the answer. For example, what if a student did not write down the answer to question number 12 in chapter 3 of Night? As long as the student knows the answer, I don’t care. Students tell us all of the time that they don’t need to write down the answers because they know the answers. If that’s the case and they can indeed remember the answer all semester, I am happy to give them credit for that question. (As we all know, however, most students cannot remember the answers.)

By utilizing a notebook check of this type, I test whether or not students have maintained the papers that I requested and whether or not they have them in a reasonable order that THEY can retrieve easily.

If you still feel the need to check notebooks to see if they are pretty or tidy, you can always add a category to the notebook check and flip through notebooks quickly to add that score after grading the notebook check.

For years and years I plodded through notebooks for hours until I reached the point that I really didn’t care what grade I gave them! Then I went through a period when I didn’t require notebooks because I didn’t want to mess with grading even though I knew it would help students if I required notebooks. When I finally figured out how to grade notebooks through checks of this type, I was delighted because I could emphasize the organizational skills I wanted to instill in students and grade their notebooks quickly and painlessly.

I’m attaching a sample notebook check and answer sheet below.

Notebook Check

Notebook Check with answers

“Before I collect your papers, please turn to the back and write me a note. Tell me how you think you did, how easy or difficult it was to write the paper, whether you allowed yourself enough time or if you waited until the last minute to finish the paper. What grade do you think you will make? Is there anything specific you want me to check?”

Why did it take me more than two decades inside a classroom to recognize the value of the simple act of having students reflect on their work BEFORE they turn in assignments? Many teachers have students reflect on assignments after they have been graded, but I find it is more enlightening to have kids reflect before I read or grade the assignment.

After I grade a paper, I turn to the back and read the student’s note. I make sure to answer any questions that students pose or clarify information that they do not understand. Most of all, I read their reflection before I write my final comments on the paper. If I think the paper is really weak and the student indicates in the note that he waited until the last minute to write the paper and knows it isn’t good, I don’t need to berate him for his bad judgment. Instead, I can tell him to learn from the experience so it doesn’t happen again.

If a student has a weak paper but tells me in his note that he is proud of the paper and thinks it’s really good, I know I need to convey my comments in a way that hopefully will not upset the student and then offer to help the student individually on the next paper.

Often I will have students who write good papers, but in their notes they will tell me that they think their papers are dreadful. Some of these students are frustrated, or have impossibly high standards for their own work, or they are modest and have difficulty complimenting their own work.

Some students will write long notes and tell me how their papers might not be their best work but they enjoyed parts of the assignment and learned a great deal. A few students will share their exasperation of reading the paper and worrying because they know something is wrong with it, but they just aren’t sure what it is. They want help.

Sometimes students write beautiful papers and when I read their notes, they apologize for waiting until the last minute to write their papers, papers they consider to be inferior. I always praise them and say they are among the lucky few who appear to work better under great stress.

Some students actually tell me that their papers are drivel and then apologize for making me read them.

Through the years I have been amazed at how often students are able to see the same strengths and weaknesses in their own papers that I see. While there are indeed times when students think they have excellent papers and I think the paper is weak, this is rare, particularly later in the semester when students are accustomed to my grading.

Student reflections on their own work helps students review their work and think about what they can do next time to improve. Student reflections also help me when I return their work because I have a better idea of how kids will react to my grading and whether or not I need to pull them aside to discuss the paper individually.

If you have kids who are frustrated with their grades or students who always challenge your grading, try giving them the chance to reflect on their writing or their assignments before they submit them. The process certainly would have helped me if I had known to do it when I first started teaching.