Gladly Would I Teach

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When I tell people that I teach high school seniors, they often respond by rolling their eyes or by telling me that they could never teach seventeen and eighteen year olds. I always laugh and state, “There the easiest group to teach because they already know everything!”

It’s a great line, but it is far from the truth. No, they don’t know everything, and few of them behave as if they do. In fact, it is fascinating to teach high school seniors who are about to step out into the “real world.” They are so inquisitive about what will happen next, and they usually realize that today is the last chance they have to prepare for that huge step into college.

Research papers are due Wednesday, and we spent part of the class period going around the circle so students could tell the topics for their papers. Students often mentioned a topic that was unclear, and I tried to help them clarify the focus of their papers. Other students selected topics that were too broad, and I encouraged them to narrow their focus so their papers would be more informative. Most students were appreciative of my help, and I have no doubt that they will take my advice and write better papers.

However, there is always at least one student who rejects suggestions. When I told one student today that her topic was too broad, she immediately challenged me and told me that she had already done the research and the topic was not too broad. I tried to gently explain to her how she could write a better paper by narrowing the topic to something more manageable for a short (4-5 page) research paper.

Much to my surprise, she rejected every suggestion I offered, and all I could do was smile and move on to the next student.

I wanted to caution her about the importance of listening to a teacher’s suggestions. I wanted to reminded her that after having taught and graded the research paper for almost twice as long as she has lived that maybe I might know a thing or two about research papers.

Instead, I smiled and moved on to the next student who was much more receptive to my ideas. After more than three decades in the classroom, I know that some students have to learn the hard way.

I just hope she learns before she turns in the final paper on Wednesday!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

Last week I wrote about a terrible theft problem that my school endured a couple of decades ago. If you didn’t read the original story, you might want to read it before reading this post:

Watch Your Pocketbook

As a reminder to those of you who read the original post, while we were having an after-school faculty meeting to warn teachers not to bring their purses into the building because students had stolen two teacher pocketbooks from filing cabinets on that day, someone stole the administrator’s pocketbook from her office!

First we laughed at the irony and then we took up a collection to give to Sue, the administrator, in case she had an emergency while driving home that night. We all got home a little after midnight. What a day!

The next morning, Sue called me to tell me that a really sweet girl had called her at home to tell her that she had found her wallet on the way to the bus the previous afternoon. She had wanted to return the wallet to Sue, but she was afraid she would miss her bus; so, she took it home. Sue thanked the girl and asked her to bring the wallet to school with her on Monday.

Sue had only been in the school for a few days and knew few of the students.

“Sue, who was the student?” I asked.

“Oh, she was a really sweet girl. Her name is Cindy” (fictitious name).

“Was it Cindy Jones?” I asked.

“Yes, that’s her name. Do you know her?”

“Not only do I know her,” I replied. “I’ve already suspended her twice for STEALING!”

Sue then tried to convince me that the child seemed really sweet and didn’t think she could possibly have stolen her pocketbook. Besides, it didn’t seem logical that a student who stole would call to report the theft. That didn’t make sense.

I assured Sue that some of our kids were both dishonest AND not real bright.

That afternoon I drove to Cindy’s house, met the mother, and retrieved the wallet. (We later found the pocketbook itself on the school yard.) I’ll never forget Cindy’s house because it had burglar bars on every window on the ground floor, the only house in the neighborhood with such security.

The following Monday was a whirlwind of student interviews and unpleasant encounters with the mother who swore she had “never had an ounce of trouble” from her daughter.

In the end, Cindy served a few months in alternative school.

She returned to our school months later and resumed her thievery.

I’m so glad I decided to return to teaching instead of continuing in administration!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

I just read a poignant blog post about a stolen purse (Veteran Kindergarten Story), and it reminded me of an experience I endured almost two decades ago when I served a 5-year stint as an assistant principal, the longest five years of  my life.

I was working in a “challenging” high school, a school where we had great kids but also our share of kids who sold drugs and kids who disrupted classes. One year we had a small group of kids who stole items so swiftly, so slyly, and so shamelessly that they appeared to have popped right off the pages of a Charles Dickens’ novel.

Purses were their specialty!

When girls walked into bathroom stalls and locked the doors, one student would reach under the stall wall and swipe the purse. Or, a student would reach over the stall door and grab the pocketbook off the hook on the back of the door – long before the girl could leave the stall and identify the culprit.

When teachers showed movies or videos with the classroom lights turned off, one of the thieves would quietly grab a pocketbook off the floor, hide it, and then ask for a pass to the bathroom where he removed the money and credit cards from the purse before throwing it in the garbage.

The thefts finally reached teachers when a student stole two purses from two different filing cabinets late one Friday afternoon.

The thefts had become so brazen that we had to pull the faculty together on a Friday afternoon to inform them how serious the thievery had become and to suggest that teachers lock their purses in their car trunks instead of bringing them inside the building. That Friday we had a new Associate Principal, Sue,  in the building since the principal was ill. At the meeting, Sue apologized to the faculty for the thefts and asked for teachers’ help as we tried to identify and punish the students who had wreaked such mayhem. While finding the thefts disturbing, teachers were at least  thankful that we had shared our concerns with them.

After the faculty meeting, administrators returned to Sue’s front hall office to talk. We were exhausted. It had been a really long  and tiring day, and we still had to wait around for another couple of hours before we would leave to supervise Friday night’s football game. As we sat in Sue’s office, we decided to order supper.

Sue opened her drawer to get money.

That’s when she realized that her pocketbook was missing.

While Sue had beenconducting the faculty meeting and advising teachers to keep their purses locked in their car trunks, a student had stolen Sue’s purse from her desk drawer.

At least we had the weekend to recuperate.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

Today my students divided into groups to begin a huge research project that will take them several weeks to complete. The first thing students had to do was to organize themselves into groups of four and then select a controversial topic that they would like to research.

Many people might assume that 17 and 18 year olds would prefer to work in groups composed of both males and females. While this is indeed true for some students, most students prefer to work in all boy groups or all girl groups. As I watched them work in class, it was so obvious why they segregate themselves by gender.

As we all know, boys and girls work differently, organize differently, and play differently.

I sat at my desk this morning and watched kids get started. I provided a four-page handout of the project requirements and asked students to review it together. Many of the boys grabbed beanbag chairs and sprawled out on the floor. They talked and played around more than the girls, but they got their work done. Usually, one person in the group read the assignment aloud to the group or each boy read the assignment silently with little discussion about the assignment.

Girls, on the other hand, sat at their desks and almost always rearranged their desks so they were facing each other. Usually, one person read the assignment aloud as the other girls followed along on the sheet. Repeatedly during the reading, the girls stopped and discussed various components of the assignment. Most girls also took notes and highlighted important information.

When they finished reading and discussing the assignment, boys sat around and talked about a variety of topics. Most of the girls, however, started organizing the project and determining when they needed to meet to work on the project and who would be responsible for each section of the project.

From a distance, it appeared that the girls worked much harder than the boys. I’ve taught years and years and years, however, and I know that appearances are deceiving. Whereas the boys appear to be goofing off, when we gathered together again as a class, the boys asked many questions about the project and exhibited that they had read and understood the assignment. They just process, discuss, and organize the information in ways they are so different from girls

And female teachers.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to teach only girls (at least girls over the age of 15).

Oh, but what I would miss if I didn’t have the humor, insight, and entertaining work habits of the boys!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

One of my students walked into class a few minutes late this morning and handed me a tardy pass from the office. I took the pass, and in a casual glance, something I rarely do, I realized that the pass had been issued a couple of weeks ago instead of this morning. To keep this morning’s tardy from counting against him (excessive tardies lead to a revocation of parking), the student tried to excuse the tardy through the use of an old pass.

I invited the student into the hall where he immediately admitted his mistake. We walked  next door to the administrator’s office and completed a discipline referral since the assistant principal was not in his office. When another teacher asked me if I needed help, I responded, “No, I’m just really disappointed.”

When the student and I returned to class, I noticed that the young man started writing a note, a note that he handed to me on the way out of class. He didn’t say anything that I can remember as he handed it to me, but I took the note and immediately said, “You made a mistake, but I still love you.”

I later read the note, and it is one of the most poignant letters of apology I have ever received. In the letter he told me that he was worried about the punishment he would receive but he was more worried about the fact that he had disappointed me: “My juvenile attempt let you down. My juvenile attempt disappointed a teacher that cares for me so much. I am ashamed of myself and can think of few things that could hurt you more.”

When I had time later in the day, I pulled out stationery and wrote the student a note to let him know how much I appreciated his note and that  I respect him for taking the time to apologize after  he made such a mistake. I gave it to a student aide to take to the student so he would have it before going home.

I don’t know how the administrator will punish the student, but as far as I am concerned the situation is over. The student made a mistake, owned up to it, and now we forget it.

Oh that we would never make mistakes, but how I love a student who makes no excuses, blames no one but himself, doesn’t try to minimize what he did, and faces his punishment. An incident that could have blown up or could have caused me tremendous anxiety ends quickly and amicably.

Case closed.

All kids, even the best of kids, make mistakes. Most of the time they admit the mistake, and we move on.

It was a good day.

As I got into my car to drive home, NPR played the Hallelujah Chorus (Handel’s birthday).

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

For the past couple of days, I have been working on a faculty newsletter tribute to Ed Deavers, an outstanding teacher who died a little over a week ago. As I wrote previously, one of Ed’s former students established a Facebook page for Ed and invited students and former students to share their stories about Ed so they could grieve together.

As I copied many of these messages so I could add them to the tribute, I found one of Ed’s aphorisms particularly poignant. When students were working on plays together and worried about their own performances, Ed told them, “You’re safe; you’re warm; your with friends.” According to another student, Ed sometimes interchanged “family” for “friends.”

If we want students to learn, they must be willing to take chances, and they must learn to work together productively without fighting with each other or establishing factions. A supportive classroom environment is crucial.

What better way to welcome kids into a classroom and teach them to take care  of each other than repeatedly teaching them and saying to them, “You’re safe; you’re warm; you’re with friends.”

I wish every student could sit inside a classroom that emphasized this belief!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

Yesterday I was reading another blog that listed ideas of ways to get students to stay in their desks. Please Sit Down As I read some of the suggestions, I remembered an extremely clever and effective strategy that another teacher employed many years ago.

Todd was an energetic eighth grader who simply could not stay in his desk. When he misbehaved, he jumped up out of his seat. When he participated in discussions, he jumped out of his seat. If something across the room even remotely looked exciting, Todd jumped out of his seat.

Todd jumped out of his seat in the morning and in the afternoon.

In first period and seventh period

In English class and in math

At lunch and homeroom.

His team teachers were exasperated and talked to Todd privately, called parents, assigned extra homework, punished and rewarded, but nothing seemed to work.

Finally, Leslie held him for detention, something none of us had tried. Why hold him for detention when we knew he would pop up all over the place and drive us crazy? But Leslie had a plan.

When Todd reported to her room for detention after school, she told him to sit in his desk. Then she explained the rules. “Since you love to jump out of your seat, we’ll play a little game,” she told Todd. She then pulled out a stopwatch. “I’m going to set the watch for 30 seconds. When time expires, I’ll say, ‘Time’s up,’ and you’ll move to the next desk in the row.” Todd smiled, and Leslie clicked the stop watch.

“Time’s up!  Move please.” Todd enthusiastically jumped up and moved to the next seat.

Todd had so much fun . . . the first 10 minutes.

Twenty minutes into detention, he was bored and quietly moved to the next desk.

Forty minutes into detention, he was so tired of moving that he asked the teacher if he could stop. “Just 20 more minutes, Todd, and you’ll be through.”

“I’m tired,” he whined, but she reminded him of how tired all of his teachers were of constantly telling him to sit down.

When detention ended, Leslie explained to him that she loved his enthusiasm but he couldn’t keep jumping up from his desk and wandering around the room because it was disruptive. “Tomorrow when you are in class,” she reminded him, “you have to stay in your desk. If you jump up again, we’re going to be right back here in detention with the stopwatch.”

The punishment was revolutionary. While Todd continued to get excited in class and sit on the edge of his seat, we no longer had to warn, prod, punish, chastise, and chase Todd back to his seat.

Jumping up out of a desk apparently is lots of fun . . . unless you have to do it every 30 seconds for a solid hour!

  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

Here’s the final student-created Public Service Announcement I’m going to post. The assignment was wide-open. Students had to choose a topic and create a 30 second to 1 minute video to convince students to do something (or not to do something). The video had to exhibit two types of appeals (ethos, pathos, logos).

I’m always amazed by the creativity of students. Here’s a funny PSA. This time I posted it on Schooltube so it can bypass my school’s Internet filters.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott