Gladly Would I Teach

Every teacher who requires students to write research papers knows how much stress the process produces – FOR TEACHERS!  Yes, research papers are nerve-wracking for students, but teachers who experience prolonged research-paper stress year after year know how many times we secretly wish we could lower our standards and omit this time-consuming paper that creates so much misery, hard work, and frustration.

I am typing this post on Tuesday, the night before I will actually upload it to the blog because I know I will not have time to type an entry tomorrow when I collect research papers.

Interruptions 1 & 2: I just stopped typing this post in order to answer two emails about how to cite sources.

I'm already worrying about collecting papers because I know each of the following will happen.

1 out of 83 students will show up at least an hour before school because he is worried sick about whether or not one of his sentences contains a comma splice.

1, 2, or 3 students will run into my classroom to print papers because their printers "died."

1 student will ask for extra time on the paper.

1 student will turn in a paper with no internal documentation and swear I did not tell students they needed to cite sources.

Interruption 3:  "What's the password for Noodletools?"

1 student will cry.

1 or more students will swear the entire process is NOT FAIR!

1 student will turn in his paper and cheer.

1 or more students will not show up for class and will send me emails that they finished the paper so late that they are emailing it to me so they can sleep.

1 student will not show up for school and concoct an outrageous story of why he did not finish his paper – so outrageous that even he will not be able to keep a straight face.

Interruption 4: "What do I do if I submitted the wrong version of my paper to Turnitin?"

1 student will try to turn in a paper without a Works Cited page.

1 or more parents will email me chastising me for giving students only 2 days to write a research paper – as if any teacher in the history of the world assigned a research paper and only gave students two days to complete it. (Come on, Mom!) 

1, 2 or 3 students will turn in papers with 2" margins in order to meet the length requirement.

1 student will claim that his mother, father, brother, sister, priest, or rabbi thinks this research assignment is "stupid."

1 student's paper will be printed on pastel paper or on the back of another assignment because the family had no clean white paper at home.

1 student will claim defiantly, "That's not the way we did it last year!"

Interruption 5: "What do I do if the article doesn't list an author?"

1 student wielding a jump drive will run into the classroom between classes begging for help in retrieving his paper, a paper he will claim is "the best paper I have ever written."

1, 2, or 3 students will fall asleep in class.

1 or 2 students will have only two sources and claim that those two are the only two sources available on the topic.

1 student will claim he didn't know the paper was due today.

1, 2, 3, or 4 students will boast that they wrote their papers at the last minute (and then will later claim that I graded unfairly when their papers receive low marks).

1 or more students will submit papers that contain plagiarism and later claim they don't know how that could have happened.

1 or 2 students (true Gifts from God) will tell me that they really enjoyed researching and writing their papers, and I'll smile.

Interruption Tally for the Night – over 35 emails

Most Common Question of the Night – "How do I cite . . . ?"

Most Annoying Question of the Night:  "Do you have any suggestions for a research paper topic?!!"

And, finally,

1 student will leave the classroom and ask, "Do you think you'll have the papers graded by tomorrow?!!

And

1 teacher will contemplate losing weight and becoming a Phys. Ed. teacher!

Alec sits across the classroom underneath the clock that ticks down the minutes of the long 90-minute period. Several times during class he turns around in his seat to stare at the clock, and I can just hear the sigh of “how much longer until the bell rings.” He never says this aloud, and after spending many years teaching students who did not have the social skills to know better than to interrupt me to ask how much time remained in the class period, I should be thankful that Alec only looks instead of moaning, carping, or whining.

Few things exasperate me as much as students who whine. We all know them. They think we give too much work, think we grade too hard, think we only give boring books to read, and think we wake up each morning already conjuring new ways to make their lives miserable. When we ask students to open their books to the previous night’s homework, the whiners always chime in with “how stupid,” “how boring,” and “how worthless” the selection was. While it indeed may be true that we are all critics, no critic is as audacious, dismissive, and presumptuous as a teenage critic!

I used to hold my breath as I told students to open their books for discussion because I knew one student would say, “I hated this” only to be followed by three or four other students who would start listing all of their complaints about the work. If Thoreau had first read his essays to 21^st century teenagers, he would have given up writing and remained at Walden Pond with his precious beans for the rest of his life.

Students in my classes used to complain about literature (and seemingly just about everything else related to my class), and I would remain calm until one of them stepped on my last nerve, and I would lash out, “Who do you think you are to be so critical” or “We don’t care to hear your comments until you publish something and earn the right to be a critic.” Such comments never helped and only made me later wish I had never said them.

Finally, I awoke one morning and decided that if I didn’t like some of the behaviors of my students, I needed to be creative and find a way to teach them how to behave differently. That’s the day I changed my Class Participation grading rubric. I have always had a category for Enthusiasm on the rubric, but I added this statement: “If you are not interested, fake it!  Deduct 1 point for general whining and moaning about reading material or work.

It worked!

At the beginning of each semester when I review the class participation rubric with students, I bring up this section, and everyone laughs. I then explain to students how negative the classroom atmosphere becomes when people whine and complain, and I end by saying, “No one likes to be around whiners!” Students agree!

I never would have guessed that I could reduce whining by simply talking about it and emphasizing how good it feels to sit inside a classroom where students show enthusiasm and support each other instead of complaining and whining. As the weeks progress, I explain to students that we will read only good literature all semester and explain that even though we all won’t love everything we read that we need to figure out why others find the work so compelling, insightful, or memorable. This gives students something to ponder instead of whining.

Sometimes we just need to be a little creative to solve persistent problems that irritate us.

Alec no longer upsets me by turning around and checking the clock. He hasn’t changed, but I have. I simply removed the clock from the wall behind Alec and moved it to the wall behind my desk.

Now when Alec checks the clock, I think he is engrossed in whatever I am saying.