Gladly Would I Teach

The first email arrived a little after 8:00 on Friday night with the subject heading “Major Crisis.” Two students needed help because they were having a “panic attack” since they couldn’t access one of the school’s online tools they needed for their group project.

The second email arrived a couple of hours later from a group of students who were upset because they could not access the same website and thought they had lost all of their work.

We resolved the problem by Saturday morning, but in the meantime, too many students were stressed out on a Friday night about an assignment that wasn’t due for days. Why weren’t these students at the football game, or at a movie, or out on a date? Why were they doing homework on a Friday night? Why were they back at work on a class assignment on Saturday afternoon when the leaves were changing and the weather was gorgeous?

On Saturday I accessed Facebook to check my students’ online responses to this week’s topic of the week. I had asked students to read the essay “Growing Up Scripted” and then respond to Doyle’s Assertion that today’s teenagers have little freedom. I posted the article a couple of weeks ago. Here it is again if you missed it:

Growing Up Scripted

When I first posted the article, I stated, “Whereas Doyle makes many interesting points, I’m not sure that my students see themselves as having little individual freedom.”

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Although most students admitted that parents and teachers had good intentions, student after student described a life of too much work, too many activities, too much homework, and too little time to relax. Here are three examples:

“Sometimes I just wish that I could go back to the days when we would go outside after school and play with friends until it was dark and it was time for dinner. I wish sometimes that our generation could go back to the times like Doyle described and get “on our bicycles on summer mornings and came
back home at dinnertime.” [from an excellent young woman who is kind, intelligent, cheerful, a teacher's dream]

“I am going to enjoy only my second full day of fun this entire semester tomorrow. Between my working every Friday, Saturday, and Tuesday, church on Sunday, youth group on Monday, school throughout the week,
and a very consistent 3 a.m. bedtime, ‘fun’ is just no longer an option. The
pressure to get near perfect grades, score higher than should be done on
standardized tests, and dedicate ourselves to countless clubs and organizations to show our commitment to excellence has morphed our age group from one that is typically filled with learning from new experiences and an overall ‘fun’ high school into one that is more or less like slavery. We do not make our own choices; society pressures us into making them. We either agree and follow the stream, or we try to fight it, to retain our inherent freedom and drown. “ [from a National Merit Semi-finalist who is hard working, charming, funny, and a joy to be around]

“The many activities we try to cram into 24 hours is outrageous. Where did relaxation ever go? For the past semester the only “me time’ I can find is in the middle of the night with my family asleep and half my homework finished. I have to force myself to go downstairs, chill on the couch, watch some television, eat ice cream, and learn some guitar. Otherwise, I would be working from the time I wake up until I go to sleep. There needs to be a cutback in the amount of involvements we subject ourselves to.” [from a student ranked third in a class of over 700 students, a warm, intelligent,  highly motivated, and kind young man who also admitted in his post that he had previously given up a sport he loved because he no longer had time to play it and keep his grades up]

When the media and politicians focus on the apathetic students with low motivation, low test scores, and few skills, it’s easy to overlook the hard working, highly motivated, and extremely intelligent students who are close to drowning under college prep classes, AP classes, extra-curricular activities, community service projects, excessive testing, and living up to their parents’ expectations as well as the expectations they have for themselves.

As a teacher, I often struggle with how much work I should assign and how hard I should grade when I know that many of my students are taking 3 other AP courses (on a block schedule – four 90-minute classes daily). Instead of having a full year to learn the subject matter thoroughly, students now have to speed through the entire course in only one semester. In the old days, students had six 50-minute courses daily for the entire year (math, science, social studies, English, maybe a foreign language, and always at least one elective). Our most gifted and most dedicated and diligent students today, however, have no idea what an “elective” really is.

Sometimes I just want to tell these students to relax and play a little more and be happy if they have a “B.” Unfortunately, among these highly motivated students, a “B” is often equivalent to failure. They would like to slow down, but they don’t think they can and probably wouldn’t even know how to slow down if they had the option.

On Sunday night I noticed the Facebook status of one of my students:

I have wonderful students. I just wish I knew how to ease their stress. Suggestions?

On a recent online discussion forum for my AP English classes, I asked students to describe teacher traits or characteristics that they believe are most important for teachers. Here are the top 6 characteristics they provided, listed in order of importance.

• Compassion / Interest in Students
  Most of us would probably think that older (12th grade) students would not be as concerned with whether or not their teachers really understand them or are interested in them. Students participating in this activity, however, cited that the teacher's interest in students both inside and outside of the classroom was the most important trait that teachers could display. According to these students, good teachers know students well, care about them personally, want all students to learn the material, and encourage students to excel.

• Passion for subject
  Good teachers thoroughly enjoy their subject and display enthusiasm that captures the attention of students. If the teacher is excited, students are much more likely to find the subject interesting.

• Thorough Knowledge of subject
  Knowledgeable teachers apply the subject to many different areas and explain why it's important for students to learn the subject.  They go beyond the lesson in the textbook in order to maintain student interest. Because they love and understand the subject, they welcome student questions and are better able to simplify concepts that students find difficult.

• Inspiration and Encouragement
  Good teachers are personable, happy, cheerful, and optimistic. Students enjoy being in their classrooms and want to learn. Several students mentioned that good teachers push them to learn more than the student ever thought he could accomplish simply because good teachers believe in students and serve as cheerleaders.

• Excellent Work Ethic
  Good students are open to learning new techniques, are available when students need extra help, grade work thoroughly, return graded work promptly, and ensure that students learn the material.

• Humor
  Good teachers like to laugh and maintain cheerful classrooms where students feel comfortable and have fun.

Interestingly, students rarely mentioned anything pertaining to how much work teachers assigned in class or for homework, nor did they mention grades.

Tomorrow I'll list the teacher traits that students find frustrating.

I dream of the day when I will be able to assign reading homework, and all of my students will read it thoroughly and come prepared to
discuss the selection in class the following day without any extra incentive, prodding, or threats of quizzes.

I’m still dreaming.

While most of our students will indeed read assigned homework passages, a few students will only read if they absolutely have to, and too many students will skim a passage instead of reading carefully. For this reason, when I am teaching a book or long work, I usually give a quick daily quiz over the homework. If students know they will have to take a quiz, most of them will read the passage carefully.

Many teachers, however, balk at the idea of daily quizzes because they don’t want to have to make up quizzes over assigned reading; they don’t want to grade daily quizzes, and they don’t want to lose so much valuable class time. I use a simple process for making and grading quizzes that takes very little time away from class.

1. I duplicate one quiz sheet for each student. This sheet can be used for 6 daily quizzes. Download Reading Quizzes

2. For each homework selection I make up 5 words, terms, concepts, or names that anyone who read the passage would know. For example, if we read a selection where a family adopted a dog, I would add the word “dog” to my quiz. I make sure that my 5 words cover the entire reading passage and are not taken exclusively from the beginning of the passage or the end of the passage.
3. In class I distribute the blank quiz sheet and tell students that they will take a quiz each day. I then call out the five words for today’s quiz and instruct the students to write them on their sheet. You may prefer to write the five words on the board or overheard.

4. I then tell students that they are to define the word or identify it so I can tell they read the homework assignment. I instruct them to reply to each word in approximately 5 words and emphasize that they should not write in sentences. For example, for “dog,” students only need to reply “family adopts.”

5. The quiz should take no more than 10 minutes.

6. I then collect the quizzes and place them in a notebook to grade. I can flip through the quizzes quickly and grade 30 quizzes in roughly 10 minutes. As I grade quizzes, I always concentrate on whether or not I think the student read the assignment. If I think he did, I give him the benefit of the doubt on each word.

7. On the following day, I pass out the graded quizzes and tell students to move to the next block to take Quiz 2.

8. I vary the difficulty level of the quiz according to the grade level of students and the level of the reading material.

9. To give an incentive to students who are present each day and to allay student whining about the obscurity of some items on the quiz, I award 50 points to the final quiz of students who take all of the quizzes and who refrain from whining about the quizzes. It works! (Students always want to add the points to their lowest quiz grade, but it makes no difference mathematically which quiz receives the extra-credit points.)

10. I make sure that I give different words on the quiz for each class that I teach because we know that students from earlier in the day tell other students what is on the quiz.
    

Here’s an example of a quiz I give on The Glass Castle (pages 3-28)

1. dumpster (author sees mother in dumpster)
2. fire (burned while cooking hotdogs)
3. Blue Goose (family’s car)
4. chlorinated water (only for sissies)
5. seizures (Brian has seizures as child

For each of the selections above, I would accept alternate answers that show the student read the homework assignment.

In time, students realize they must read carefully each night. While daily quizzes often hurt a student’s average, with this quiz format, students read better and their grades actually improve because of so many excellent quiz grades.

At this time in the semester, teachers of high school seniors are often
deluged with students who ask them to write teacher recommendations for college applications.  We want to help all deserving students, but sometimes those recommendations start stacking up, and we start worrying about whether or not we can complete them all and still have time to teach our classes.

At the same time, we want to make sure that we write really nice recommendations for students who work hard and who make positive contributions to our classrooms. Although there is no easy way to manage recommendations if you have many to write, there are some steps that you can take to save time and still write persuasive recommendations.

• Based on the student’s performance, can you really write an excellent letter of recommendation? Occasionally, a “B” student will ask me to write a letter. Even if the student is someone I really enjoy teaching, I always say, “Schools want to see recommendations that say this is one of the best students I have taught all year or in my career. Even though you are a good student, you have a ‘B’ in this course. Is there another class where you have an ‘A’ and where the teacher can write a recommendation for you and brag that you are one of the best students?” Often you can help the student find another teacher who will actually write a better recommendation and save you from writing a lukewarm recommendation.

• Have a procedure in place so students know what they must do. On my course
  website, I detail the steps students must follow if they want a recommendation
  from me. It tells them they must give me at least 2 weeks, that they must give me the form from the school (if there is one) as well as a stamped self-addressed envelope and other forms that I require them to complete.

• The guidance office where I teach already requires students to complete a form where students list information about themselves, their plans for the future, and
  their hobbies and extra-curricular activities. I have students make a copy of this form to give to me in their packet when they want a recommendation. Here is the form our guidance office uses: Download Guidance Student Profile Form

• I require students to complete a form that has them list specific information about assignments they completed in my class. This information helps jog my memory with course-specific information and examples when I write letters of recommendations. Here’s the form I use:  Download Parrott Recommendation Form

• Finally, depending on the student, I often like to include quotations from essays the student has written, particularly essays when the student has written about an important experience in his life or an essay about his beliefs. For this reason, I ask students to submit copies of two of the papers that we have written. (I stipulate which essays I want.)

Through the years, I have discovered that if I have these two forms from students as well as copies of two of their essays, I can write a very nice and personal letter of recommendation for each student. Most of all, with these aids, I can write a letter in much less time than it takes to sit down and write a letter when I am staring at a blank sheet of paper.

Back up your files!

Back up your files!

Back up your files!

We all know the warnings and the terrible stories of people who have lost important files because of computer problems.

We all know we should back up our files frequently.

We all have good intentions.

Most of us also have horror stories.

My horror story took place in 2006 during final exams. I turned on my laptop to finish my grades during an exam, but nothing came on. The computer was frozen, nobody home. The school technology expert pronounced my hard desk dead and told me he would put all of my files on a new hard drive. All he needed was my back-up.

You probably know the story from there. I hadn't backed up in awhile. . . two months to be exact. I took my "crashed" computer to a local repair shop who did their best to retrieve the recent files that were not on my backup. Eighty dollars and two weeks later, I had a new hard drive on my computer and most of my files.

Most of my files – not all.

I had no excuse for not having an up-to-date backup. I had an external drive that I could have used daily, and/or I could have backed up my files to the school's servers. This, however, took a few minutes, and I was so so busy, or so I thought. Besides, when had I ever needed a backup?

Despite my best intentions, even after my crash, I never seemed to find the time and desire to backup my files on a regular basis . . .

until I met Mozy, my new best friend.

Mozy is a FREE (to individuals) Internet storage and back-up system. It allows users to create an account and then backup all of their files to Mozy servers. Once the initial backup is compete (around 2 hours), Mozy automatically backs up user files every day when your computer is turned on and connected to the Internet. It works in the background and works at times when you are not working on your computer. After the initial backup, the daily backups take only 2-5 minutes (at least for me).

Best of all, I don't have to do anything . . . and I like free programs that don't require me to do anything.  I now know that if my computer crashes, if my on-site backup (if I had such a thing) is destroyed, Mozy has all of my files, and all I have to do is download them to my new computer or new disk drive.

If you want a simple and free way to backup your files painlessly, please take a look at Mozy! It may justs save you from frustration and embarassment one day when you least expect it.

Mozy

As I mentioned in an earlier post,
I was exceedingly disorganized the first few years that I taught. I had papers everywhere and had no idea how to establish order. Something as simple as filing items in a filing cabinet just escaped me, and I only learned to file appropriately by looking inside the cabinets of highly organized teachers.

If you happen to be disorganized and if you are ready to file all those loose papers away safely, here's my strategy.

1. Purchase several sets of Alphabetical filing guides (the hard cardboard tabs that fit inside a filing cabinet and display one letter of the alphabet). You will need one set of guides for each of the courses that you teach and one just for general school items (forms, homeroom, clubs, etc). You will also need one or two boxes of file folders depending on how many papers you have to file.
2. Designate one file drawer for each course you teach and one drawer for general school items. If you have limited space, you may be able to combine courses in one drawer; however, I would still keep the files separate (for example, 9^th literature in the front of the drawer and American Literature at the back of the drawer).

    

3. Label the contents of each file carefully and do not combine items in one folder. For example, if you have three activities plus a test for The Great Gatsby, place those items in separate folders. Obviously, this will take many folders, but it will make it easier to organize files and find them later.

    

4. After labeling folders, place them in alphabetical order by course. For activities and tests for major works (novels, plays, etc.), file them alphabetically by the title of the work. Don't file all tests under "Tests"!

    

5. Be careful and make sure that you alphabetize the work according to the course. If you have an assignment that you use in all classes (a student information sheet perhaps), file it for BOTH courses.

    

6. All files that do not pertain specifically to a course that you teach (homeroom information, locker lists, school forms, etc.) should be filed in the general school drawer.
7. Based on how you use items, determine if you need to file only one copy of an assignment or multiple copies. For example, I rarely keep more than one copy of a test since I usually update or modify tests each time I administer them. However, I always re-use vocabulary quizzes; therefore, I save an entire class set of each quiz.
8. Because I keep digital files of all of my assignments and tests on my laptop and since I teach in a school where we do not have a limit on how much paper we can use, I rarely keep multiple copies of any assignment other than vocabulary quizzes.
9. Place a different color folder in the front of each filing cabinet. When you are too busy to file papers properly and you are automatically thinking about throwing the item on top of your filing cabinet or just sticking it quickly somewhere in the filing cabinet, place it inside the colored folder. Then, when you do have time, you can simply sort through and file the loose papers in one folder instead of having to begin your filing time with a search effort to find all of your unfiled papers.

One of the benefits of filing papers by course is so you can move folders to storage boxes when you no longer teach a course and need the extra room in your filing cabinet.

Filing papers alphabetically is easy, but you might find a different approach that works better for you. I know English teachers who file folders chronologically according to when a literary work was published. I know other teachers who file papers in the order in which they will teach items. The front of the cabinet houses files for the opening weeks of the semester, and the ending activities are at the back of the cabinet.

As with just about anything related to organization, it takes hours to set up files initially, but good organization saves time in the future when teachers no longer have to hunt for items or recreate items they have lost.

A few weeks ago I made an appointment with a counselor to help
me get over my phobia of bridges. In spite of my embarrassment and reluctance
to participate, she made me tap my face and say, “I’m afraid of bridges, but I still
love myself.” I felt foolish, but I have to admit that it seemed to ease my
anxiety or at least distracted me as I looked around the room in search of a
hidden camera. As you sit at your desk surrounded by clutter and feel anxious
at the mere thought of trying to organize it, perhaps you might want to start
by tapping your face and saying,

“My desk is a mess, but I still love myself!”

Warning:

If you don’t have stacks of papers all over your desk, your
chair, and/or your table, this blog is not for you. Just smile and thank the
good Lord you don’t have to worry about such problems and come back tomorrow
when the topic may be more pertinent to you. Or, better yet, skip to the bottom
of this post, click on Comments, and give me directions for organizing the
drawers of my desk. I still can’t figure out how to bring order to pens,
post-it notes, cards, paper clips, and all those extras that I am convinced
breed inside my desk drawers!

For now, let’s start with something really simple for
teachers who are drowning in clutter. 

Promise yourself that
you will clean off your desk in the next 7 days.  

You don’t have to do this immediately or all at once. Take
your time.  You are NOT allowed to scrape
everything into your filing cabinet drawers, desk drawers, or box that you
shove inside the closet. You get the idea. Here’s how I would weed through the
clutter.

1.      
1.  Label a file folder for each period you teach, each
course you teach, your homeroom/advisement, and for each extra-curricular
activity, club, or sport you supervise. Label folders for department, school
forms, staff development, and personal. Find a different color folder and label
it “To Do” or a similar title. If you want to color-code your folders, do so. Place
the folders in a box so you have a temporary filing system.

2.      
2. Go through the stacks of papers on your desk. For
each paper, ask yourself first, “Do I
really need to keep this form, paper, or handout?”  Many of the papers that have been stacked on
your desk for weeks may simply be thrown away. Do you really need to keep a
copy of a handout that is saved on your computer?  If so, place the paper in the correct folder.
If you have papers to be graded, put them in the appropriate class period
folder. If the papers pertain to the course, put them there. If you find you
have something that doesn’t fit in one of your labeled folders, make a new
folder and label it. Do not throw everything in one huge folder that you label “Miscellaneous”
because you will simply create folder clutter.

3.      
3. If you have a form that you must complete, place
it in the colored “To Do” folder

4.       4.  Don’t
forget the garbage can!  Keep asking
yourself, “Do I really need to keep
this?”

5.      
5.  When you have placed all of your papers in
folders, move the personal folder to
your bag to take home. Place the colored “To
Do” folder on your desk and allow it to stay there all year. Place your
class period folders on your desk or in a drawer of your desk. Now you have all
of the papers you need to grade in one place. After you grade papers, keep them
in the class period folder so you can find them quickly for class distribution.
In fact, you can assign students the task of checking the folder each class
period and passing out graded papers.

6.      
6. Place all of the other folders in your filing
cabinet (or keep them in the filing box) until we move on to organizing the
filing cabinet a week from now.

You have one week to clean off your desk. If you are a quick
learner and ready for accelerated study, move on to cleaning off other areas of
your classroom.

If you feel anxious, repeat after me:

“My desk is a mess, but I still love
myself!”

And start cleaning! You’ll feel so much better when your
desk is clean. It’s painful work, but it’s not like you have to cross a bridge.

When I first started teaching years ago, my organizational
skills were so poor that I probably spent as much time trying to find things as
I spent preparing lessons. When I cleaned my desk, a rare event, I simply raked
all of the stacks of papers off my desk and into a filing cabinet drawer, any
filing cabinet drawer, because one drawer was just as good as any another. When
I filled up one filing cabinet, I asked for another one. Since I was so
disorganized, I never threw away anything because I was so afraid that one day
I might need it. I take that back. When I ran across a stack of ungraded homework
papers that were dated over 2 months before, I tossed them.

I lived amidst clutter in those days: ungraded papers,
graded papers not yet recorded, make-up work, stacks of handouts distributed
weeks before, phone notes (We didn’t have email in those days.), lesson plans, parent
notes, homework,  forms to be completed,
forms half completed, forms due weeks before, paycheck stubs, staff development
forms, homeroom forms, attendance forms, forms, forms, forms.  

When I returned graded papers to students, inevitably a
student would chime, “Where’s my paper?” and I would have to give the student
credit for the assignment because I knew I had lost papers on my desk, in the
stack of papers on my chair, in my car, or on my desk at home. Sometimes I
suspected that kids had never turned in the work in the first place, but who
was I to challenge them since I never could find all my papers?

I lived amidst clutter.

As much as I hate to admit it today, I truly had no idea how
to organize anything, and I actually believed that I was just fine in my
disorganized state. Besides, creative minds always struggle with organization,
right? I wasn’t disorganized; I was just creative, I often claimed in a feeble
attempt to turn a weakness into an attribute.

Besides, I worked long, long hours, and I didn’t have time
to organize.

It wasn’t until my seventh year as a classroom teacher when
I transferred from a middle school to a high school and had the chance to start
over in a new classroom that I learned to organize myself. As I became
organized, I realized that I didn’t have to work as many hours.

I was happier and more productive.

More students turned in their work on time, and fewer
claimed that I had lost their work.

I no longer worried over all those forms I couldn’t find or
complete on time.

If I had the chance to design a new required course that
teachers would have to complete before achieving certification, I would call it
Teacher Organization 101. I am convinced that organized teachers are happier,
more productive, and more successful.

Since I just started this blog, I have no idea who will read
it and whether or not they might need organizational tips as I did when I first
started teaching, but part of what determines the topics I include on this blog
are tips, suggestions, and information that I wish someone would have shared
with me years ago, and I desperately needed organizational help. Who could
provide better advice to disorganized teachers than a reformed clutterer? (Yes,
I know “clutterer” is not a real word, but it fits my previous state of
disorder.)Today I am an extremely organized person, proof that reform is
possible.

I will entitle future blogs that deal with organization “Teacher Organization 101.” If you need
help with organization or want to learn new tips, I hope you will find these posts
useful.  In fact, I hope you will
actually comment on these posts and give me topics to address.

If you have mastered organization, you’ll know that these
posts may not be useful for you.

Tomorrow let’s tackle the clutter on a teacher’s desk!