Have a holly, jolly Christmas

It's no surprise that I'm not a fan of Christmas music. In fact, mere minutes of it trigger my homicidal reflex. (This probably stemmed from working retail in high school; the Gap's 45-minute loop of poppy Christmas songs is something from which I may never recover.)

But just when I thought I couldn't get more cynical, I stumbled upon this article about the secularization of Christmas through Christmas music.

Another interesting thought about the great American gift card exchange.

Happy Festivus.

Why speling is impotent

In an email from a student explaining why he missed my office hours today:

Sorry...I got raped up in my take home philosophy final.

That really shouldn't be as funny as it is.

Irony at Work

Before I begin grading, I arrange the papers from (anticipated) worst to best—so I generally feel pretty good by the time I finish grading the class. I realize that this is both horrible and what education classes taught us not to do—in fact, they say to arrange them from best to worst. But as a striving optimist, I do the opposite. (As my husband says, "I feel bad for the poor kids who are on the top of that stack.")

I spent my day (and evening) yesterday grading a section of 101 proposal papers. One student, who has managed to climb from the beginning to the middle of the stack, wrote a fantastic paper. I was truly proud of the fact that Andrea had put so much effort into the paper—dozens of questions in class, emails, and even IMs—for she had created an exemplary product. Except there were no citations.

Technically, I should have failed this student—internal citations are detrimental to her ethos as a writer and, really, her integrity as a student. But I consider myself a generous person, so I wrote her a paragraph explaining that hers was an A paper, but she can't get an A without internal citations. It breaks my heart! I wrote. I know you'll crush the next one! Then I penned a B+ and circled it.

Today after class Andrea was a wreck. She tried pleading with me, asking to put in the citations so that I could give her the A. I explained a (true) story I had heard from another professor: he had a student who submitted a research paper without internal citations for the portfolio review, so he failed. He didn't just fail the portfolio review—he failed the course. So really, I said, the B+ is generous, because technically she should have failed. I then said that I hoped that she would learn from the situation so she wouldn't be the unfortunate student who has to repeat a course—or worse—because of something so silly.

Andrea was far from satisfied, but she eventually exited the classroom. I then went to my last class, a 102, and later stayed after to speak to a handful of students who had questions on their upcoming draft.

One girl, Lily, relayed an anecdote about a girl she met in the stairwell who started talking about being caught for accidental plagiarism; she had forgotten to use internal citations in her paper. The stairwell girl had told this perfect stranger, "This is bad karma for all the times I plagiarized. This time it was entirely by accident—and I got caught! I can't believe it."

I hope Andrea learned not to plagiarize—accidentally or purposefully—at least in my class. If nothing else, I hope the irony isn't lost on her.

Catholic Guilt as a Teaching Strategy

A concept I emphasize to my freshmen is knowing your audience. This is especially true with knowing my students.

I just—as in minutes ago—read a paper by a particularly competent writer. In fact, I saved his paper for the bottom of my stack so that I won't feel depressed when I go to bed tonight. This student wants to please me and wants to do well in our class, but he's definitely a freshman—he runs to our 12:50 class with his contact case in his hand because he woke up minutes before we're scheduled to meet. It's been apparent that his social life is infringing on his academic priorities, and it has become more apparent now that I've read his third paper.

This is the note I wrote for him at the bottom of his last page:

This paper is not double spaced. I'd rather your paper run short than have you think I'm too dumb to notice.

Frankly, I'm disappointed. It's clear you know how to conduct research and incorporate it into your own ideas, but your paper lacks development and seems thrown together. I sincerely hope you put more effort into your next paper because you're a talented writer who just isn't meeting his potential.

I'm curious to see how he does on the next one.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

On the wall of our department's reading room (faculty lounge) is the photocopy of a professor's letter written to an advice columnist. In short, course evaluations left the professor questioning her career path; the columnist reassures her by saying that "to allow students to say what they like anonymously about their teachers strikes me as democracy gone mad."

The columnist has a point about professors being the ones responsible for passing judgment, and that the distressed professor should be less concerned about being liked and more concerned about being an effective teacher. However. Just like students, professors should also be held accountable—perhaps even more so. These students are, after all, paying a hefty sum for the privilege of higher education; it is therefore our responsibility to provide that education.

This college professor should know her classes—and herself—well enough to discern immature ranting from constructive criticism; if she cannot, then perhaps she should consider a change of vocation.

Rhetorical Trainwreck

This is one of the best pieces of terrible rhetoric I have ever seen. I don't know whether to laugh or shake my fist in the air.

I'll punctuate you in the face

Today I taught punctuation to my 101 kids. As always, I began the lesson by writing the following on the board and asking the students to punctuate it:

A woman without her man is nothing

After they couldn't do anything more than add a period, I changed it to the following:

A woman: without her, man is nothing.

I then asked, "What happened when I added these two pieces of punctuation?"

One of my students said, "It made the sentence false."


For more on why punctuation is important, see this YouTube video. (Thanks, Rob.)

Out of Step

I heard it before I saw it.

I was standing just inside the Central Reading Room in our university's main library waiting for my 101 students to attend our library orientation. Then I heard it—that erratic, yet oddly rhythmic fall of footsteps that echoed in the open stone lobby.

I lifted my head, irrationally expecting to see Bobby, my former student, when I of course glimpsed another young man with cerebral palsy and a similar gait.

Bobby was in my most troublesome class to date: a standard ninth grade English class at the end of the school day my first year teaching. The roster comprised not only Bobby, but a student with an IQ of about 50; a student with an emotional disturbance; a half dozen overstimulated, undermedicated ADHD teenagers; and about as many repeaters. I would like to attribute my difficulty with this group to my inexperience as a teacher, but I'm confident I would flounder about as much now as I did then. While combating apathety and misbehavior, I also had to contend with Bobby, who, when I asked why he wasn't doing his work, replied, "leave me alone—I'm a cripple."

This was obviously unacceptable. What followed was a long private conversation with Bobby: his physical disability had nothing to do with his mental ability.

Bobby was one of those students—and help me, there are many—who made my life difficult from August until June, but the following fall became my best friend. (This may have been influenced by my teaching his doll of a sister Jackie in my English 12 class the following year.) Every time Bobby saw me in the halls—or even as he passed by my door while I was teaching—he'd say hello. He showed a chordiality in those who years I would never have guessed he possessed.

About two years ago Bobby began a series of surgeries to correct his walk. The surgeries would cut and then fuse the muscles in his legs, relieving the tension and allowing him to walk more normally. The last time saw Bobby was this past spring. His legs had healed enough that he had graduated from a wheelchair to a walker. He was substantially taller—not only the result of puberty, but also because leg muscles no longer wrenching his body together, creating a labored, staggered walk.

I won't say that Bobby's attitude toward me has anything to do with his corrective surgeries; I think it's mostly owing to his emotional maturation. In any event, when I heard the troubled walk of a college student—a walk no longer characteristic of my Bobby—I couldn't help but think of him and smile.

From Girlhood to Motherhood

So I've recently been thinking about babies. (This has probably been influenced more by the fact that I'm reading Midwives than the ticking of my biological clock.) It has occurred to me that my former students who were pregnant when I taught them last year have recently become mothers. Just as they probably did not equate sex with pregnancy, I had difficulty equating their pregnancy with motherhood.

I can't help but wonder how these girls—now women, I suppose—are faring. I know that most of them have the support of family members, even if the father of the child is no longer in the picture. (This is the case, I know, of three out of five of these girls.) What are they doing for income? What are they doing for higher education? I realize, of course, that most of these girls weren't planning on going to college.

But one of them was. Jenn, one of my darlings that I taught in tenth then twelfth grade, spent her years in high school getting experience in child development and early child development so that she could go to college to become an elementary school teacher (no small feat, as she was the first in her family to graduate from high school). Instead, Jenn got pregnant her senior year—which prompted her boyfriend to leave her—and in August entered motherhood instead of entering college. Her sister, two years her senior, was also pregnant and due in late summer; they will be raising their children together.

What life is this for Jenn? I by no means deem motherhood an inferior fate, but Jenn's teenage pregnancy has relegated her to the same life as her sister, who had not enough aspiration or motivation to graduate from high school. All I can do is shake my head; the thought of this young girl postponing—and probably never fulfilling—her dream saddens me.

Silencing my inner fascist

It's no secret that I'm a workaholic. Doing the bare minimum for anything just isn't my style. In fact, I take pride in the fact that I'm such an overachiever; it's part of my identity. For example, when I grade a paper, I spend several minutes reading and commenting on it; then I write a paragraph or two assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the paper before I assign a grade. My students seem to appreciate this, and I like to think it helps them become better writers.

Recently one of my more gifted (and more lazy) students came to see me during office hours regarding his literary analysis paper. He was telling me about his recent English teachers—an AP Language and Comp teacher who commented copiously and an AP Literature teacher who only marked a letter grade at the end. I expressed similar displeasure with a college professor who had similar practices. The student said that this teacher made him not want to work as hard because he didn't think the teacher bothered to read his work. My thought was the opposite: I still worked as hard but was frustrated because I didn't have feedback on my work.

I then was about to say that I believe hard work sets you free—when I suddenly had a flashback to my days of teaching Night: the gates of Auschwitz say arbeit macht frei—work will set you free.

This is kind of scary.

Maybe I'll take a day off.

Celebrate your freedom with a free coffee

Only 54% of eligible voters went to the polls in 2004.

In order to give Americans incentive to vote, Starbucks has offered a free coffee today to anyone who says he voted.

Yes, you read that correctly: Americans need incentive to vote. Colonists who came to this land seeking religious and political refuge. African-Americans who were persecuted for wanting to participate in the election process. Women who believed they too should have a say. Immigrants who come to this country so that one day they and their children can participate in free elections.

Americans need incentive to vote, so let's give them a free coffee.

The student and teacher I have become

As I grade—and teach—I am surprised at what my students do and do not know. For example, why don't students who placed into the Intermediate Writing Workshop at a "good" university not know how to recognize passive voice (and instead write in active voice)? That's something I learned in ninth grade!

Ah, ninth grade. The year I reached the 5-foot mark. The year my teeth were liberated from three years' orthodontia. And, of course, the year I had Ms. Berk. That heinous bitch.

Ms. Berk, the Devil's sister, was my ninth grade English teacher. Until that point, I had loved English class (known until then as "Language Arts")—I had excelled in writing and read voraciously. I was nothing but optimistic about English class when I entered my first year of high school.

Not only did I not do well in Ms. Berk's class, but she also told me that I should not expect to do well—ever. (This was, in fact, when I spoke to her about my abysmal Romeo and Juliet reading quiz, when I went to her for extra help; she told me, "You'll never get [Shakespeare]; you're just not an English student.")

Luckily for me, I work best out of spite. I have never understood students who didn't do work because they hated the teacher—wasn't that just a favor to the teacher?—so I worked. And worked. And worked. I compelled myself to be the obsessive-compulsive overachiever I am today, just to prove to Ms. Berk that she was wrong: I could do it.

Needless to say, my self-inflicted ass kicking worked. I excelled throughout English classes in high school and college, became (if I do say so myself) an exemplary high school teacher, and now a respected writing professor. So neener neener, Ms. Berk.

I have mentioned my experiences in Ms. Berk's class to countless students I have taught, mostly to tell them that they too can learn and love Shakespeare. (Because, a decade later, I still operate out of spite, I had hung a large scroll in the back of my classroom that proclaimed I was a Shakespeare Convert, and upon which over forty students signed their names beneath mine.) I have told a number of these students that I have learned more from Ms. Berk than all my good teachers combined because she was the type of teacher I hope I will never become.

In my fourth year of teaching, however, I've had more time to think about this statement. I may have demonized Ms. Berk too much. She did legitimately make me a better writer. Every PV scrawled by her cheap green pen challenged me to write and think in active voice. Her research unit forced me to read and digest the MLA Handbook when I was fourteen years old. I wrote and revised and rewrote every paper. I pored over every word of the texts assigned so that I could dominate class discussion the next morning. Because of her criticism, I pushed myself to be the student she said I couldn't become. And I learned. I still do not accept Ms. Berk's classroom (or student) management strategies, but she was the teacher who taught me more than any other.

Mother Tongue

I have always told my students that they were lucky to be native English speakers on the grounds that English is such a difficult language to learn. (Most of my native speakers, past and present, had a poor grasp of English, spoken or written.) As a wise man once said, "English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."

While I was washing the dishes a moment ago—I do most of my thinking during otherwise mindless tasks—I realized that there is another, far greater reason that I am fortunate to be a native English speaker.

Shakespeare wrote in my language.

Ok, so what? For the first time, this semester I have a number of international students. In fact, in a single class there are at least four languages spoken other than English. I admire them for their hard work—they, of course, are held to the same standards as my native speakers—but now I actually feel some sort of pity for them. If these students have read any Shakespearean plays, they were likely translated into their native language.

The very idea makes me wretch. A translation of Shakespeare?! Although English is not the most beautiful language in existence, Shakespeare made it beautiful with his meter. I cannot imagine that even the romance languages could rival the sound of a play written in our eclectic tongue.

That'll Learn Ya

Today I taught literature on the university level for the first time. Although I'm technically a writing professor, I believe—as most of us do—that reading and writing are, by nature, intertwined. Besides, I miss teaching literature and crave it almost as much as I crave chocolate chip cookies. (Although I cannot tell you the date that I last taught literature, I can tell you the last time I ate a real cookie was on December 17, 2007.)

Anyway, I built a literary analysis unit into my Writing 102 class. It consists of five stories covered in two class periods, culminating in the students composing a paper discussing a literary element of their choosing. I was very interested to see how these students would fare in such a unit.

My first 102 class begins at 8:30. These students are more chipper than you'd expect—several of them are commuters, which means two things: they're generally more motivated, and they've generally had more time to awaken on the ride over.

In fact, these were the only students who were awake enough to discuss Hemingway's brilliant story, "Hills Like White Elephants." A pocket of the room was very excited about the symbols in the piece and discussed it with fervor. The others, however, did little more than sleep with their eyes open. My prompting and tooth pulling did little to draw them into the conversation. As the class ended, I thought, well, at least the next class is usually livelier.

My 9:35 class was worse! Whereas the few enthusiastic students in the 8:30 section wanted to satisfy their curiosity about this elusive piece and thus asked questions and worked out ideas aloud, this class was content with it being a story about a guy and a girl drinking cervesas in a train station. (Abortion? Where'd you get that from?!)

Just as I had believed my literary discussions to be a total flop, I entered my 2:20 class. (Don't let the time fool you; these students often drag themselves to class post-siesta and are just as groggy as the warm bodies I teach in the morning.) I had admonished them on Monday for their poor attendance and punctuality; when I walked in the door at 2:19, they were all there. That's right: I said something, and students TOOK HEED. It was a strange sensation.

Not only were they there, but they seem to have (as instructed) pumped themselves full of caffeine because they were ready to roll. From the get-go students began asking questions, drawing conclusions, and engaging in discourse that usually is only featured in my sweetest of dreams.

What happened next was more than I would even hope to dream. Two of my students are taking a Sex Lit course (Sexuality in Literature?), and one of them pointed out the them of Ave (Maria)/Eva (Eve) in the story. The student asserted that Jig's role had changed from the sin-loving Eva to a maternal Ave with the conception of her unwanted child, thus changing the man's view of her.

Wow.

I learned something new today. (Oh, boy.)

I Believe in Yesterday

This afternoon on my way home from work I heard a block of the Beatles; I tuned in mid-"Help!" My mind wondered to one of the thoughts I find most comforting: four kids from Liverpool changed the world. At the time of the British Invasion, the Beatles ranged from 21-24 years of age, and they could not have had an inkling of how their music would influence the world. (This is a comforting thought because if this foursome could do it, I have faith that it could happen again.)

My thoughts then turned to an article I read on Paul McCartney in The New Yorker last summer: he had celebrated his 65th birthday. It's unnatural to think that Paul should have an age; he has somehow become immortalized with his departed brethren. (Ringo counts for squat.) We don't think of greats as growing old: either they are forever young or long since dead.

...Did you get the memo?

My husband and I recently drove into the city. When we exited the FDR onto 96th Street, we were diverted onto 97th because there was some type of obstruction. While we were trying to merge, there was an old man in an electric wheelchair navigating 97th. My husband expressed his frustration at the old man, and we drove on.

It took us several minutes to arrive to our destination on 95th, and when we did, we saw the SAME MAN in a wheelchair zipping down the street. Apparently the most efficient mode of transportation in Manhattan is not the automobile, but the wheelchair.

Office Space, anyone?

Academic Food Chain

It's always been apparent that there was a hierarchy within schools: not only are students ranked according to ability in their class placements, but the perception of departments and their members also feed into this system. (Get it? Feed!)

At my alma mater, the English building was tucked at the edge of campus—about a ten-minute walk from the academic quad—and was in disrepair. It's been a "temporary" building for over two decades; it will eventually move into another old (but nicer) building at some point. Maybe. Let's face it: English wasn't the bread-and-butter of the institution; there were several departments far more sought after and therefore far more glamorized.

Even so, there was a hierarchy within the English major. Although I generally didn't spend time with English majors outside of class (too much granola), I did get the distinct impression that the Creative Writing concentration was more prestigious. I may have taken the program for granted, but others didn't: it required a submission of a portfolio, which was judged by an admissions board. The other concentrations within the English major (rhetoric, various types of lit) did not have such stringent requirements.

This social assembly had been pushed to the back of my mind while I taught in a public high school. There I wouldn't say English teachers reigned on high, but we did have a reputation for assigning the most work and for being the most hard-nosed. (This was certainly true of the high school I attended, and I am inclined to think this is a general rule.) What took me by surprise, however, is that this happens to also be true at the university level as well. At a faculty meeting today, the Program Director said that full time lecturers would be pairing up with members of other departments to help them incorporate more writing lessons into their teaching. Apparently there have been members of other departments coming to us because they are uncertain of their own writing ability, and thus lack the confidence to teach writing or grade the writing of their students.

My first thought was glee: Others realize that writing matters! This is an excellent opportunity to make cross-curricular ties and (as the director pointed out) boost the reputation of the lowly writing department.

My second thought went back to the concept of a hierarchy: Others have a respect for writing teachers. I found this surprising. In our heart of hearts, we English teachers hold a secret contempt for those people who contribute to the world in some tangible way. No, I don't devise innovative products for consumers, but I teach students how to read, write, and think more critically. I don't do people's taxes, but I teach students to appreciate Shakespeare. I don't cure diseases, but I teach students to become better citizens. This is my job, and most days I'm proud of it, despite what American values have influenced me to think.

And for this job I don't get much compensation, nor do I truly need it (though it would be nice). My motivation for becoming an English teacher is purely selfish: I don't want to live in a society with illiterate degenerates who can't string a sentence together. Somewhere along the line, however, I became emotionally invested in the students of English, and it is for them that I go to work every day.

Whether it is in the forefront of my mind or forgotten amidst the frenzy of everyday life, I am confident that English does matter. In fact, we English teachers have been acknowledged as the teachers of teachers, a significant accomplishment for those of us who spend our lives in a field that everyone else dreads. Although we may not be at the top of the food chain, at least we don't get devoured too often.

Superiority Complex

Three years ago I was "found" by the English department chair at a public high school. Although I was technically not certified to teach, she "had a good feeling" about me and insisted that the principal interview me. He too found me awesome, and they employed me until I had to relocate.

Although I had been very new to teaching, it quickly became apparent that the English department chair was neither a good teacher nor a good leader. She only taught electives. She was absent frequently. She favored some members of the department over others and fostered a division within the department. She blatantly ignored others' gross incompetence.

I'm not sure when this type of behavior/work ethic began in her eight-year career, but it has only gotten worse during my stint in the district. This spring the administration had a long meeting with her regarding her professional behavior and asked for a letter of resignation. She came back a few days later and said she wouldn't resign, but would "try harder" next year.

And that was acceptable.

I have written multiple blogs exploiting the inefficiency and the incompetence that exists in America's educational system. Besides the detriment to the students, this type of leader (and those who allow her to continue to lead) are a detriment to teachers. During my three years there, I cannot recall a single thing I learned from this woman—even as a new teacher. Instead I learned to lean on other members of the department, one of whom, my wonderful friend Emily, became my unofficial mentor.

I have recently signed on to teach freshman comp with a four-year college in the New York Metro area. As with my first job, it appears I was given the chance to teach because of a good first impression with the director: he was the director of the same program at my alma mater, so my résumé caught his eye.

As a high school teacher, I compiled a research project manual that serves as a guide (Bible) to my students as they research, draft, and stylize their projects. I am quite proud of this document, and the director expresses praise for it as well. However, when I brought the Kinkos-bound document to his office this week, he in turn handed me the textbook the department would be using this semester: it had his name branded on the hardbound cover.

Always wary of proscribed texts (and the teachers who use them), I was hesitant to employ this text. Now that I am about halfway through reading, I realize that this is what I wish I could have written, and there are few things that I would change. For the first time in my (albeit short) professional career, I actually feel like my superior is superior.

I(heart)NY

Any New Yorker anywhere will refer to Manhattan as The City. Capitalized. Because really, what other city is there? This, of course, infuriates many non-natives who are jealous that they were not lucky enough to be born in a place that's on the map.

Somehow, it still caught me by surprise at how much New Yorkers simply adore the City. It's evident in the cliched-yet-beloved I(heart)NY tee shirts, self-proclaimed accolades, and Yankee Stadium-style lawn manicures. It's a love free of self-consciousness, as everyone else shares this fascination.

What surprises me more (somehow) is that I feel the same way. I had no idea how much I had missed New York until I came back. I have told my father, excitedly, in the past week that 1) a Mister Softee truck has a route through our development, and 2) there is a roach coach that sells egg creams. Honest to God, egg creams! I must be in New York! (He, a Washington Heights native, is filled with joy that his first born has returned home.)

Indeed I have.

True Love

While I was in the grocery store this week, I witnessed an eight-ish year old girl and her father interacting:
"Dad, I love you."
"I love you more."
"Yeah? Well I love you more than bacon."
"Really? More than bacon?"
"Well," she thought, "maybe as much as bacon."

Small Victory No. 6

Excerpted from an email from a former student of the class of '07:

In case I have not said it before, thanks for being a great teacher. I know that your new students will enjoy your classes as much as I did!! :-)

Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!

I love Barnes and Noble. When I go there, however, I become more and more overwhelmed. I have a fear of not reading everything I want to read before I die (and, paradoxically, a worse fear of reading everything I want to read before I die), and wandering through aisles and aisles of unread literature reminds me of this fear.

While I, a lowly English teacher, struggle to read (and process and remember) these volumes of text, there is one man who seems to have read and critiqued them all: Harold Bloom. On my bookshelf is a 745-page tome, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, in which Bloom examines each of the Bard's plays in depth, then draws conclusions about his work as a whole. Although this book could be considered a life's work, it was published a decade ago, leaving him ample time to compose thirty books, as well as lending his service as editor/author of introductions, forwards, and afterwards to dozens of books on a variety of literature...and still managing to regularly publish articles on the side. Bloom is an authority on the canon: in addition to these "smaller" works, he published The Western Canon, which is a survey of the greatest works of European literature.

I am in awe. I will be surprised if I am able to read in my lifetime all that this man has written.

And yet he seems modest about his brilliance: in Invention, he says, "...T.S. Eliot's observation [is] that all we can hope for is to be wrong about Shakespeare in a new way. I propose only that we cease to be wrong about him by stopping trying to be right. I have read and taught Shakespeare almost daily for these past twelve years, and am certain that I see him only darkly. His intellect is superior to mine: why should I not learn to interpret him by gauging that superiority..."

And so we mere mortals are humbled.

Resignation

The Gatekeeper has resigned.

This week my husband accepted a two-year position in the New York Metro area, not far from where I grew up. The New York accent that has all but disappeared since I left the region eight years ago will probably be resurrected by Christmas.

So I resigned on the last possible day permitted by my contract; on Monday a friend will help me extract three years' worth of materials and decorations from my classroom.

As for next year, I have begun applying to teaching jobs in high school and local colleges, as well as to a variety of positions in publishing. For now, the Gatekeeper has no gate to tend.

Suit Up

I like suits. My husband has a number of suits as well as myriad shirts and ties for a staggering number of wardrobe combinations. He, like most men, looks good when dressed professionally. A well-dressed man commands respect with his starched shirts, supercreased flat-front slacks, and well-tailored jackets. Why is it then that women's suits are often atrocious?

I can think of a number of reasons to conclude why women's suits may be so horrid:

1. Suits were created for men's bodies, and thus do not look good on women if not properly adapted. (To that end, suits generally also do not look good on women—or men—who are overweight.)
2. Suits, as I have already described, are a symbol of power, and most women do not carry themselves with the confidence it takes to assume that role of power.
3. Despite our cultural reputation, many women do not possess the style sense to piece together an outfit that suits (ha! so punny!) their body type and personal colors. This is not to say that men have this innate ability; the professional fashion deficiency of women may stem from the fact that they are left to their own devices in department stores, whereas men have professional, trained associates to attend to their wardrobe.
4. For our vast love of consumerism, Americans in general lack style. The women's suiting section of a department store will be froth with loud colors, patterns, and textures that ordinarily would be suitable for other types of apparel but are dreadful when applied to the masculine-based suit style. Just today I saw a woman wearing a green plaid suit—the type of plaid designed by a Scotsman with cataracts. I can hardly blame the style-deficient designer, as there was actually a consumer who bought and wore the product...and it's not even Halloween!

We can only hope that in our culture entranced by reality television shows, more programs such as What Not to Wear will reach more and more Americans and teach women how to dress for the workplace.

Merit Badge

There are some public schools in America who have—according to many educators and legislators—gone off the proverbial deep end by employing a system of merit pay. In these systems, teachers' salaries are individually determined by the educator's performance and by their students' performance on high-stakes testing (to meet the demands of No Child Left Behind...but that's for another blog).

As is, in our "average American" school district, teachers are paid based on their highest degree earned and by the number of years in the system. There is no reward for exceptional teaching, and thus many teachers have no incentive to apply themselves fully to the job. Although our principal continually refers to our staff as a "dream team," our mediocre roster is only a "dream" compared to the other abysmal schools in our region. There are some teachers, myself immodestly included, who consistently go above and beyond for our students, and we only do so out of personal pride in our work and out of a concern for our students' well being; we then return home to review online banking statements with too little in the deposit column.

An article in the July 10, 2008 edition of The Economist, however, suggests that something revolutionary is about to occur in DC Public schools. In our nation's capital "teachers are virtually unsackable and paid by seniority. Such incentives attract the lazy and mediocre and repel the talented or diligent." This all sounds familiar. It's clear that this "system needs fundamental reform"—and the new schools chancellor of DC public is lobbying to implement that very change.

Michelle Rhee, the chancellor, will begin the revolution by increasing teachers' starting salaries from $40K to (amazingly) $78K; top teachers would be eligible to earn up to $130K a year. These teachers, of course, would not be eligible for tenure and would be paid according to a combination of merit and students' performance.

Wow. $78K+ actually makes teaching in DC Public somewhat appealing.

Upon reading the article, my husband agreed that this was a step in the right direction—but it would never happen. Unions would never give up their bargaining power: teachers' salaries and job protection.

It saddens and angers me that unions, which are supposed to protect the rights of teachers (and thus indirectly the learning environment), are only interested in self-preservation. This year our school's union representative urged each of us to write to our congressman stating that we teachers were against merit pay. "What if I'm for merit pay?" I asked. Our rep, a thirty-something history teacher that believes watching movies such as Forrest Gump constitutes stellar instruction on American history, replied, "Then don't write at all."

The bottom line is that schools need to be reformed. It's difficult to say where the reform should begin—with teachers, administrators, unions, or parents?—but giving teachers an incentive to excel in their field is a major part of it. Let's see if the unions will allow this necessary reform, and what becomes of DC Public schools in the next few years.

The Gatekeeper Recommends: The Double Bind

A dear friend recommended The Double Bind and said that when I finish reading it, I was to call her right away—even if I finish reading it in the middle of the night. Indeed, I would have done so if my husband hadn't insisted I turn out the light at 1:30 this morning.

But now I'm finished, and she won't answer her phone. Ugh!

So I will pay it forward. My suggestion to you, good reader, is to read (or reread) these texts in the following order:
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (if you haven't read Gatsby since high school, it's time to revisit it)
The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian

...and let me know when you finish reading. You won't be disappointed.

Basic Instinct

Last week my husband was researching nearby strip clubs for a friend's bachelor party. He noted that the dress code for one club was "business casual." This struck me as odd. A dress code? For a strip club?

When I asked him about it, he told me that the dress code was to help deter riff-raff; this gave the bouncers the discretion to oust anyone who may potentially cause trouble or compromise the integrity of the establishment.

Um, what?

Setting aside my general disapproval of my husband watching other women take off their clothes, I marvel at the industry in general. Many people—mostly feminists—assert that these institutions degrade women. Really, it is the women who take advantage of the men: they are able to elicit many, many dollars from their customers by appealing to the sex drive of man.

We Americans don't like to talk about sex; we hide it from our children by imposing TV Parental Guidelines and make sex something of a social taboo. Although it seems that television and movies have become smuttier in the past few decades, sex has always been a part of culture. Even the literary canon contains sex: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is wrought with sexual misconduct, and Shakespeare's greatest love story is really just a horny teenager begging for sex ("O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?" a love-starved Romeo pleads).

This is not to say that Chaucer or Shakespeare (or Joyce or Lawrence or...) has any less credibility as a writer. On the contrary, each of these authors—as well as the authors of today's TV shows and movies—portray the sexual drive that exists within man. The sophisticated air of a Shakespearean play or the glamorous sheen of HBO's Entourage is life's normal pairing with sex. It shouldn't surprise me, then, that we attempt to masquerade a "Gentleman's club" as something more than a place that appeals to man's most basic instinct.

Commencement

Our high school's graduation was last week. Our principal asks (mandates) that teachers come adorned in academic regalia and sit in the front three rows, facing the graduates sitting on stage.

Brandi spotted me in the crowd, smiled, waved, and pointed to her mortar-board while giving me a thumbs-up. I smiled and waved back.

Between my friend/colleague Emily and I, we have taught almost the entire graduating class at some point in their high school careers. We made a game of determining which students should and should not graduate, based of course on a scale of A to E.

Emily has also taught Kyle, and (if possible) has an even lower opinion of him than I do. Although she did not teach Neal, she has heard enough about him from me and other colleagues to know that the nineteen-year-old is not qualified to receive a high school diploma.

I successfully managed a smile and applause for even these students (and was even able to control my gag reflex). Afterward, a number of faculty members met at a nearby dive bar/restaurant for a few quick drinks.

I wasn't prepared to see so many students and their families. Some of these students I adored, and genuinely enjoyed speaking to them outside of school. I was caught unawares, however, when Neal's mother came and tapped me on the shoulder.

She introduced me to Neal's father, and they both thanked me for my hard work...and Mrs. V. even apologized for her behavior. I remained positive, stating that Neal had done it, and I hope that he learned that he will succeed when he puts forth effort. I of course said hello to Neal, and wished them all the best.

Small Victory No. 5

Last year (2006-07) I taught a student named Luke in my GT English 9 class. Luke wasn't "GT material" on two counts: he lacked analytical reading/writing skills, and he didn't work very hard. Even when he began to apply himself more, he did not have the foundation to do well. He scraped by most quarters with Cs and Ds.

When he had a D as a final average at the end of the year, I spoke with Luke's father about Luke dropping down into Honors English 10 for the following year. He didn't like the idea of his son not being in GT English, but he agreed that it was better for Luke to not continue drowning. He had, however, made a deal with Luke that they would not go on their family hunting trip to Montana that summer if he didn't pull at least a C for the year. Luke's dad canceled the trip.

Whenever I ran into Luke in the hallways this year, he seemed to ignore me whenever possible. On Tuesday, however, he came into my classroom brandishing a stack of papers. He said, "Mrs. Casey, I knew you'd want to see this."

Luke handed me the papers: they were his placement test score results for the community college. His English scores were high enough for him to enter English 101 as a junior (whereas many students need to take more remedial classes first). I told him how proud I was of his accomplishment, and even emailed his mother about it later that day.

Before he left, Luke said he was really glad he took Honors English 10 this year because he was actually able to keep up with the work. I'm sincerely pleased that Luke has matured (academically and personally) enough to realize that he needs to establish goals and do whatever he can to reach them.

Not Alone

An article about the state of public schools in Florida:

http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/article610874.ece

Special thanks to T.E., who brought this article to my attention.

Not so much brain as earwax

It amazes me that students who are in class when we read Romeo and Juliet TOGETHER still haven't a clue about what's going on.

A sixteen year old freshman's quote identification response for “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet”:
Speaker: Romeo
This quote is important because... you wouldn’t have a clue at which he/she is talking about.

This is his response to a short essay question that asks students to include the literary device used in a passage and explain how it applies to the rest of the play:

The literary device that he used is good, nice words that are bad words refrased. And that’s how it applies to the rest of the play.

Lofty Aspirations

Excerpted from a GT English 9 student's journal that prompted her to write about where she wants to be in ten years:

I see my self as a graduate from the Naule accadome as a nurse, or a graduate from Harverd as a Lawyer.

Queen for the Day

Students received their yearbooks today. I expected to sign a few seniors' yearbooks at the senior picnic this afternoon—I signed perhaps three or four last year—but I was unprepared for the number of students who demanded my autograph. Four sought me out in my classroom en route to the courtyard where the picnic was being held; once I arrived at the picnic, I was literally surrounded by students who wanted me to sign their yearbooks. For an hour and a half, I chatted with students (past and present) and wrote endearing passages in winding patterns in their yearbooks.

Excited by my popularity, I told my husband about it when I returned home. He said, "you probably wrote something different for every one of them." He was right: I did. The notes I wrote to students contained inside jokes, an assessment of the student's strengths, and a specific wish about their future endeavors—all written in an informal tone. I have known these students at least since August (many longer than that), and thus I wrote with an air of familiarity.

I'm embarrassed to admit how much I loved being popular in a group of eighteen year-olds. I always say that if I wanted to be popular, I wouldn't have become a high school English teacher.
Really, it's not the concept of popularity that is important to me, but that I made an impression in these students' lives. This is the time of year when my toil seems to have come to fruition: yes, I have been hard on them all year, but nonetheless they love me for it. The trick is remembering this sentiment come August.

An Unexpected Allusion

On my commute home this afternoon, the song "How Could You Want Him (When You Know You Could Have Me)?" came on my iPod. I have heard this song many, many times, but somehow until today have failed to notice the following lines:

I'm quite contented to take my chances
Against the Guildensterns and Rosenkrantzes
It's a matter of Cain and Abel
And I can feel your knee beneath the table

I was impressed that an alternative rock group would make an allusion to Hamlet...and that I had never noticed it before. (Indeed, the fact that I had just read Hamlet probably has something to do with it.) In addition to the blatant reference to two characters from the play (Guildenstern and Rosencrantz), Hamlet himself makes reference to the Biblical tale of Cain and Abel (just as Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, slew Hamlet's father to take possession of the throne and queen). I also like that "I can feel your knee beneath the table" has a whisper of the sexual repression simmering between Hamlet and Ophelia. Kudos, Spin Doctors. Kudos.

Dénouement: The Final Chapter to 'The Gatekeeper'

Late Tuesday night I realized that Brandi had not brought me her make-up work. I emailed Miss Sit-On-It-And-Twist asking (literally) what was up. I heard nothing.

On Wednesday the principal came to my room—a rare occurrence—to find out what had become of her. I said I had heard nothing. Upon checking my school mailbox, however, I found a stack of work from her. I was incredulous: after all this, the girl didn't even have the gall to bring it to me face-to-face? (I had been in my room NOT teaching all morning.) I relayed this information to the principal and asked him to send her to me if he saw her before I did.

Sure enough, Brandi paraded into my room this morning. There were other seniors already in my classroom who had come to ask me to sign their yearbooks; Brandi jovially chatted with her friend while I finished my autographs. Once the others had moved on, her friend took the same cue and left.

Brandi immediately apologized for not having brought her work in on Tuesday. I expressed my concern not that the work was late—er, later—but that she had dropped it in my box when I could be easily found. Again the jocular demeanor faded and she said, "I put it in your box because I didn't want to tell you why I didn't bring it on Tuesday."

I replied, "but you'll tell me now?"

Brandi said she had to walk from the Community College—where she takes afternoon classes to get a jump on credits—back to our high school because she was stranded without a ride. The two schools are in different zip codes.

I of course told her that she could have called the school and someone (even myself) would have picked her up. Or called a cab. Or something.

I suppose you're wondering how Brandi fared? With the work she submitted, her average came to 59.5%, which, rounded to 60%, is the lowest possible passing grade.

Brandi thanked me—sincerely, I hope—and said she'd see me at graduation. That I will.

Small Victory No. 4

As one of their journal entries, I ask my GT English 9 students to consider why some people believe To Kill a Mockingbird to be objectionable, why the NAACP declares it is "unfit" for students, and whether they think ninth grade students should read it. This is one African-American student's response.

I believe that some people may find TKAM objectionable because of the views expressed by the characters in the novel. They consider black people as inferior and there is a constant use of the word "nigger" throughout the novel. The NAACP would most likely find it unfit for students for that reason, and because it is a way of demeaning blacks and may teach children that it is okay to use the word whenever they feel like it. I believe that TKAM is fit for people of all ages, and especially for ninth graders because it expresses a way of viewing how unfair discriminations against blacks in the past were. So by ninth graders understanding this it leads them not to want to be as blind from racism that their ancestors were. TKAM is a novel that expresses the views on quite a few different types of discrimination. By reading it, hopefully ninth graders can benefit by understanding that these discriminations were fueled by all of the jokes and fear and anger that people expressed towards a group of people, or a type of people. If a student can understand this and realize that it is wrong, then maybe there is hope that in the future there will be much fewer discriminations and racisms in the world. Since the children are the future of the world, and if they are educated on the harmful effects and unfair outcomes of unnecessary discriminations, then they will educate their offspring and so on, causing the amount of racism and segregation in the world to decrease drastically through time. Of course, this is only a hope for the future, but if it were even to affect one person in their views on racism, then that is still a step in the right direction.

School Appropriate/Work Appropriate

Just in case we needed to contact one another between Friday and Tuesday, Brandi and I exchanged emails. As she jotted hers down on a Post-It, she said, "it's not really school-appropriate."

I looked down at the Post-It: sitonitandtwist@____.com.

I advised her that before she applied to any jobs, she may want to register an email account that resembled her name.

Only Human: An Addendum to 'The Gatekeeper'

This morning I found a note in my mailbox from Brandi asking me to call her on her cell phone.

I waited until noon—how late do high school students sleep?—and dialed her up. She said she was heading over to school and that she would stop by my room to talk to me.

About fifteen minutes later, Brandi walked through the door. She's an attractive young lady: about 5'8", slender, always dressed in the latest fashions—sure jailbait for some unsuspecting guy in a bar. Once she sat down next to me, however, I saw the facade starting to crack. Her arms were mottled green and purple and she was trying her utmost not to cry in front of me.

When asked why she hadn't come talk to me sooner—this whole mess could have been avoided with some communication—she said through runny mascara that she was embarrassed, that she had to be a certain person for her peers, and she didn't want to let anyone know what was going on.

I soon realized that yesterday's judgment was premature as I had greatly underestimated the problems Brandi had at home. She said she had all of the work done, but her mother has had it in her possession; "Now," she said, "Mom's home and clean, so I can get to my backpack and give you my work."

I found myself telling Brandi that she could bring me the work on Tuesday, and I could grade it while she was still here so she would know her new grade right away.

Through tears she thanked me profusely, told me she loved me, and scurried out of the room.

My first reflection on this is one of self-loathing: I folded faster than superman on laundry day. Over a few tears. I'm the Gatekeeper, and I caved...just like that.

After speaking about this with a beloved colleague, my father, and finally my husband, I know now that if Brandi fails, it will actually be a detriment to the rest of her life. With a high school diploma, she will be able to register for classes at the Community College in the fall; from there she can finish the coursework to become an RN. Without a high school diploma, she will be unable to break free of the abusive lifestyle with which she has had to live for sometime now.

On Tuesday Brandi will bring me her missing work, and she will pass and graduate.


See Dénouement

The Gatekeeper

As a teacher of the only course seniors need to graduate, I proudly refer to myself as the Gatekeeper. I love the idea of holding this power in my hands; plus, it sounds cool (even if it does elicit an occasional "keymaster" joke). Today, however, I found that being the Gatekeeper isn't as great as I like to believe it is.

This year I only have two (of eighty) seniors who have failed for the year. One is Joe, who earned Es for all four quarters and failed the final. He's quite intelligent, but he feels that homework and classwork are optional.

The other senior who failed is Brandi. At the beginning of the year, she showed promise: she proclaimed her passion for helping others and told me about her parallel enrollment at the community college to begin her training to become a registered nurse. Throughout high school she had also been a part of the Allied Health program at the Vocational Tech school that partners with our high school.

At the beginning of second quarter, however, Brandi seemed to be overtaken with a case of senioritis: she missed seven class periods (out of the approximately twenty times our class meets during a quarter with block scheduling). Third quarter, she failed with a low E.

I made it clear to her that she needed to pass fourth quarter to be eligible for graduation, but things only got worse. She did not open Lord of the Flies once during the unit—inside or outside of class—and rarely even brought a backpack to school. When I made some half-joking comment about her consistent unpreparedness, Brandi threw her hands in the air and said, "I don't know where my backpack is!"

This sounds pretty bad, but it's not unusual; many students somehow manage to forget to bring a backpack, binder, writing utensil, etc. on a quasi-regular basis. How students can forget the only thing they need to bring with them is beyond me.

But back to Brandi: not only did she consistently attend class unprepared, but she did very little while she was there. If she was there. (Her poor attendance continued through the fourth quarter.) She didn't submit the last few remaining assignments of the year, sealing her quarter and final grades as an E.

Despite Brandi's abject failure, she amazed me by putting sincere effort into her final exam, on which she earned a C. Although this should mathematically average to a D for the year, the Three Es rule mandates that Brandi earn an E for the year.

Clearly Brandi did not earn a passing grade in my class and therefore cannot graduate.

However.

Today my principal stopped in my room and asked me to swing by his office for a few minutes. He told me he had spoken to Brandi and learned a little backstory. Apparently her father is severely, physically abusive. After beating her for perhaps months, he finally threw Brandi out of the house; she has been rotating through friends' couches for the last several weeks. As for her "lost" backpack, allegedly her mother stole it; the principal suspects it is to sabotage Brandi's chance at graduating, attending college, and breaking free from the lower-class, blue collar life that is all her family knows.

I like to joke with my students (seniors especially) that I do not have a heart; if it's there, it's hollow. Today I wish this were the case. Thrice the principal repeated that he is asking me no favors and that he will back my decision, whatever it may be. On his conference table were Brandi's last two assignments; I agreed to score them and enter them into the gradebook.

Brandi earned an A on both assignments, and her average jumped up significantly—from 34% to 46%. But 46% is still too low.

I brought my principal a fresh copy of Brandi's grade report and a copy of her attendance card that marked her plethora of absences. I then told him that Brandi had not earned a passing grade in my class and has not earned the right to graduate. Really, she didn't.

I have written a number of posts about students who will graduate despite their inability or foolish behavior; condemning Brandi to summer school (or year five or a GED) feels almost as dirty. I realize, of course, that I am not compromising my moral guidelines, just as I expect my superiors to do. Even so, I cannot help but wonder what will become of Brandi as I shut the door, turn the lock, and return the key to my pocket.

See Addendum

Typecasting

One of the major concepts I teach in both English 12 and GT English 9 is the archetypal approach to literature. Although I find it fascinating to trace similar ideas through time, cultures, and literary works, I had never seriously considered how archetypes affect our lives.

Piqued by a momentary curiosity to read about Celtic Mythology, I stumbled upon information about the Morrígan, a Celtic battle goddess who was believed to be comprised of three parts, Nemhain, Macha, and Badb. Instantly a number of triads came to mind: besides the Holy Trinity, there are the brothers Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades who rule the earth, sea, and underworld in Greek Mythology; in terms of psychology, there are groups of threes including Freud's tripartite psyche; the Greeks proclaimed that ethos, pathos, and logos are the three rhetorical appeals that work together to make a sound argument. Jeez, archetypes are everywhere.

Silly me, I should have seen this sooner. Tomorrow I will teach one of my favorite lessons: my GT English 9 students will read the remaining chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird for tomorrow, and we will discuss the archetype of loss of innocence. In addition to discussing the characters in Harper Lee's brilliant novel, class discussion will also call students' attention to other works we have read this year, including A Separate Peace and Lord of the Flies; we will then read an excerpt from the Bible about the original loss of innocence: eating from the tree of knowledge.

What I love most about literature is that although it is fiction, it is real. Archetypes don't magically appear in literature from all cultures and time periods; they reflect the same basic experiences most humans encounter during their lives. One of the things I love most about To Kill a Mockingbird is the narrative: it is so easy for students (and me) to relate to Scout as a narrator. Class discussion often diverts from the literary analysis to personal connections and experiences—everyone knows of a "creepy" house in their neighborhood; everyone has a love-hate relationship with a sibling or cousin; everyone has experienced discrimination. This is what makes Mockingbird such a timeless novel: forty-eight years after its publication, it still tells the tale of childhood and the loss of innocence.

Independent of To Kill a Mockingbird, I relate to many of my students' experiences through my own memories of high school and college. My young age—I'm twenty-five, a scant eight years older than my seniors—can be an advantage when I'm trying to relate to America's youth. Yesterday one of my senior boys (men!) was telling me that now that he is eighteen, he finds himself fighting with his father less often. Acting as a sage, I told him it is common for teenage boys to enter an (almost-Oedipal) power struggle with their fathers that eventually fizzles once the adolescents approach their twenties. As I said it, I recalled my husband's account of conflict with his father (with whom he now has an excellent relationship) and how my twenty-one year old brother is now on much more amicable terms with our father. This is not an amazing coincidence; this is the normal course of a relationship with many teenage boys and their fathers.

The difficult part about teaching archetypes is that they exist in students' lives. (Indeed, I have only recently learned this myself.) Many teenagers believe their situations to be unique, which often leads to trite and clichéd poetry. But they are not unique at all: we have heard it all before. The beauty of it, however, is finding a new way to tell a tale that touches readers with its timelessness.

I can't wait to teach archetypes tomorrow.

Disillusionment

"Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy."
-William Golding, Lord of the Flies

I'm something of a cynic. I know, it may be hard to believe, but it's true. Just when I believe that I can become no more cynical than I was the day before, I become continually disillusioned by the world in which I live—and the district in which I teach.

Let's recall Kyle, the walking nightmare who essentially plagiarized an essay and needed to pass his final exam to graduate. (See Playing the Percentages.) Just as he sort of plagiarized his essay, he sort of cheated on his exam; that is, he copied off of a neighbor, but changed a few answers. I am unsure why I am incredulous that he would pull this again (after cheating on the midterm and his Macbeth unit exam), but I am still appalled.

But more than being incredulous and appalled, I was filled with a sense of dread. I realize the implications of accusing Kyle of cheating: 1) Kyle not graduating, 2) my being called a liar because I do not have 100% proof, and 3) parents raising hell with the administration and superintendents' offices. I took a deep breath and sought out the assistant principal.

Sam, our AP, doesn't like this kid any more than I do, nor does he believe in passing kids along if they don't deserve it; however, he told me point blank that I was "fighting a losing battle." He cited incidents in the recent past when the area superintendent caved on another issue with this very student. He insisted I would not win; I should ignore this incidence of academic dishonesty.

Until I inconveniently noticed Kyle had cheated, I was feeling pretty good about my job: I seem to have gotten through to Neal on some level, and I had just shamelessly proclaimed my awesomeness on this blog by posting parents' and students' comments to me. Knowing that I would not have the support of my superiors was a hollow feeling: I too would have to fold in the interest of self-preservation. I felt sick.

As I drove home that afternoon, I realized that I was disgusted not by the events that transpired, but at my own naïveté—I was a fool to believe that earning a high school diploma is about education and not about politics.

Celebrating Mediocrity

Remember Neal? (See Playing the Percentages.) Because Neal cheated on his Lord of the Flies essay—twice—he only managed to scrape by fourth quarter with a low D. The only way he could pass the course and graduate is if he somehow were the recipient of another miracle that would also allow him to pass the final exam.

Before we proceed, let's have some more background on Neal. He is at the close of his fifth year of high school; he lost a year somewhere in the earlier grades and is taking English 12 for original credit. Neal has a legitimate learning disability and has had an IEP since early Elementary school. Unfortunately, he is one of many who have used an IEP as a crutch, and thus his writing and reading comprehension skills are profoundly limited. What's more, Neal has a debilitating fear of failure: he has developed a defense mechanism that reassures himself that if he doesn't really try, then he doesn't really fail.

Neal has somehow managed to float through twelve—er, thirteen—years of school before he actually needed to work toward anything. For one reason or another, teachers have passed him along, possibly in fear of having to reteach this truly annoying human being for another year.

Then he got to English 12.

As I have discussed in an earlier post, Neal did little but serve as a distraction in my class for two quarters. He snapped out of this funk sometime during third quarter and put forth enough effort to barely pass. (That is, if you call 60% passing, which our district does.) I must say that he has put forth a sincere effort since he resolved himself to graduate...until, of course, he decided to plagiarize a major fourth quarter assignment.

So it's all come down to Neal's final exam. He is a notoriously bad test taker; he hasn't come close to passing an English exam all year. I expected the "Old Neal" to show up the day of the exam: enter the room with a defeatist attitude, whimsically bubble answers, and write a few barely-coherent sentences for an essay.

But the Old Neal didn't show up that day. He went to the library for small group testing; he receives extended time on assessments when necessary. The Special Ed department chair later told me that Neal spent a period and a half—about two hours—taking the multiple choice section of his exam. When I got to his essay in the stack, it was a page and a half long—considerably more lengthy than anything else he has written for me all year. Once the exam was graded, I calculated the score: with the County's curve, Neal earned a D.

This may seem anticlimactic; is a D (curved!) really a great achievement? To Neal, however, this is more than he had hoped to achieve: he tried his best, and he did not fail.

Although I stand by my credo that every student needs to have a knowledge of great works of literature, this is really my secondary purpose. Neal may not be able to have more than a literal comprehension of a text, but he successfully completed a character-building exercise. I hope in the future he remembers that cheating will get him nowhere, second chances should not to be taken for granted, and honest effort will yield positive results. I celebrate Neal's achievement with him; he didn't fail as my student, and I like to believe that I didn't fail as his teacher.

Oh, Baby

Sometimes when I am upset with the behavior or performance of my students, I refer to them as my "little bastards." This may seem cold-hearted and insensitive, but I have come to find out that it's actually true.

One day in my Gifted and Talented English 9 class, somehow the term bastard came up. One student proclaimed, "I'm a bastard." There was a brief pause—do I acknowledge such a thing? The pause was only momentary because a number of them announced that they were born before their parents' marriage (if they were married at all); one girl even proudly stated that she was a flower girl in her parents' wedding. It was difficult for me to hide my incredulity when one asked me, "Mrs. Casey, you were born before your parents were married, right?"

Not only are these students bastards, but many of them choose to perpetuate the cycle. I teach 80 seniors, 30 of whom are female. Right now four of them are pregnant. This also does not count the other students who had children before they reached their senior year of high school. (I am also unaware of any abortions that may have occurred.) So to my knowledge over 13% of my female seniors are pregnant.

Clearly, merely teaching abstinence or contraceptive methods is not effective in this population. Because many of them probably do not use any kind of protection, it is our duty as a society to provide contraception for them. Just as students who do not have access to municipal water sources are given fluoride supplements in school, we should provide Depo Provera shots for all female students thirteen years or older. Many taxpayers may balk at the cost, but it will be well worth the investment. Preventing teenage pregnancy will not only reduce the number of tax dollars needed in programs like WIC, but it will also greatly benefit society as a whole: this can help eliminate the generations of birth out of wedlock that so often leads to generational poverty.

It is important we end the cycle of teenage pregnancies. Education is no match for human instinct; therefore, we must temporarily sterilize mother nature in order to help so many teenagers with the difficulty of preventing unwanted pregnancies.

When the hurlyburly's done, When the battle's lost and won

The following is to remind myself why I get out of bed in the morning.

Excerpted from emails from parents:

You really have nothing to thank me for, both me and Chris need to be thankful. You are going above and beyond what can be expected. I know Chris is not your only student in your class, I just hope he is aware of this. THANKS.

From the parent of a particularly vehement student: I wanted to let you know that while I was helping Justin clean his room this weekend, I came across a drawer full of his English assignments with your comments. I questioned Justin on why he was keeping them and his response amazed me. Apparently, he values your opinion on his writing.

Excerpted from the journal entries of graduating seniors:

I'm thankful for you taking the time to put up with our class. I know it was tough but you did it and you have my respect and admiration. You did a very nice job teaching us and your style of teaching really helped the information sink in and it kind of enthused us to do our work. Thank you for being the best English teacher I have had. I'm only speaking the truth (not trying to suck up). -Mike

You've been a really good teacher this year. It's been fun to be in your class. I've learned a lot about vocabulary especially from the drills everyday. They're a pain but they help. You shouldn't change anything when teaching your students next year. I thought you did everything really good and were really helpful. -James

I learned the most throughout high school in this English class and you are the one teacher I feel has pushed me to work hard. And I love that you never let the pressure off and now I know I can work under that pressure. Thank you. -Kara

Another memorable moment of mine would be meeting Mrs. Casey. She is the best English teacher ever. I wish I could have had her all 4 years. -EJ

Thank you for all your time and effort this year. I don't think I could do this without you. I now see I might graduate because you always turned me into the office when I copped class so I could come the next time. Thank you for e-mailing my parents and telling them I was failing so I could keep the pressure on and get that D and then the C. Your class was a blast. I love being so outspoken in there. Sorry If I bugged you at some time. -Paul

Know Thyself

The following is from a senior's journal response to a prompt asking him to assess his strengths and weaknesses in the course.

looking back from english class this year I would have to say that some of my strength and weakness would have to be that I goten a lot betting in writting pappers like the paper that we just did with lord of the flies also I would have to say I gotton a lot betting in comerhension.

Playing the Percentages

In the community where I teach, walking the stage at graduation is one of the proudest moments in a student's life. Not only is it important for the student, but the family celebrates this simple act. There is a strange dichotomy in the community: possessing the high school diploma has a high value, yet students and parents do not necessarily believe that it is important for the recipient to earn it.

Seniors have only six school days left, and I am kept busy with scoring the last few assignments before grades close. Recently I have been confronted with two dilemmas involving seniors and graduation.

Neal is a 19 year old IEP student who did almost nothing in my class for two quarters. Third quarter he somehow pulled a D; he needs a C fourth quarter to be eligible for graduation. He had that C until he submitted his Lord of the Flies paper: a student who can barely write a coherent sentence suddenly had the ability to craft sentences using words outside of his vocabulary. Within moments I found these same sentences on Spark Notes. Standard policy: zero on paper, notify parents. Done and done.

The next day I received a passive-aggressive email from Neal's mom that basically asked for a handout. After consulting with administration, my department chair, and the special ed department, I decided (against my better judgment) to allow Neal to resubmit the paper with late penalty.

When I sat down to score Neal's second essay, I could not believe what I read: Neal plagiarized this paper from another section of the Spark Notes website. I sent a short, blunt email to both of his parents stating this and that the zero will stand. My husband asserts that there is no way that the parents can argue, but I'm not so sure. Any logical person will conclude that if Neal fails English for fourth quarter, it is really his own doing. A parent fixated on her son graduating, however, may not think so clearly.

Next there is Kyle. Kyle is reasonably intelligent but lazy. He also needs to pass fourth quarter with a C to not have to pass the final exam. Immediately after reading (and responding to) Neal's plagiarized essay, I read Kyle's, which was strikingly similar. Kyle, however, was smart enough to cheat "better": he consulted Spark Notes, but paraphrased the ideas so that they sounded like they were written by a high school senior. This is still clearly cheating: the ideas weren't Kyle's, he did not attribute them to another source, and the assignment was a garbled, unfocused piece of trash.

Before I circled a big fat zero at the bottom of his page, I needed to carefully consider the ramifications of my actions. If Kyle's essay is a zero, then he fails fourth quarter and automatically fails for the year. This means he doesn't walk across the stage. This means that his parents, who have been labeled as Walking Nightmares by administration and teachers alike, will wage war against me.

My knee-jerk reaction for cheating—always—is an automatic zero. It's clearly unacceptable. However, Kyle's eligibility for graduation literally hinges on this one essay. Objectively, I think the motherf*cker doesn't deserve to graduate if he is stupid enough to pull such a stunt the week before his final exam. In this community, however, the teacher is often held more accountable than the student in these cases.

To get some moral grounding, I called my colleague/mentor/friend who has also taught this student and is familiar with his family situation. Together we figured out that if Kyle's essay grade is 38%, he will have a 60% for the quarter, and his graduation will come down to his ability to pass the final exam. On his rubric I made a note stating that it is clear that the ideas are not his own and that those 38 points are a gift; I also wrote that it is his responsibility to be sure he passes English so I could see him graduate in June. Smiley super perky teacher note! :)

As I recount the events of this evening, I am sickened with my own "best judgment" to compromise my moral values and award Kyle those scant 38 points when clearly he has earned none. My manipulation of points and a rubric (that is supposed to be objective) is despicable, and this represents everything that I loathe in my profession. Yet I have succumbed to it anyway. Although I still have many ideals about teaching and education, I realize now that even the best of us fall short of these on a regular basis.

It is more than likely that I will watch Neal and Kyle walk across the stage on graduation night and reach for their diplomas; their parents will beam with pride, and I will smile and clap for these students as though they had accomplished it themselves.

Follow-up Blog on Neal: Celebrating Mediocrity

Hard Timed Writing

I recently gave my English 12 students a timed writing asking them to explain Dickens' purpose for writing Hard Times and judge how well it fulfills his purpose. I really shouldn't be surprised at how often I have read this response:

Dickens wrote Hard Times to show what a hard time it was.

Small Victory No. 3

Excerpted from a Gifted and Talented English 9 research paper discussing the dispute surrounding Huck Finn and arguing why the novel should be taught in schools:

The NAACP believes that the exposure to the word nigger will damage black children's self-esteem. Although, song lyrics of many popular songs contain the same word; parents and the NAACP do not challenge them. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn only uses the word because it was a part of history and was the common dialect of the South during the time period in which the novel was written and takes place. If anything the exposure to the word should help students have an idea of American history.

Small Victory No. 2

The following is an excerpt from a standard 9 free response journal. The author, DJ, is one of the kids that comes from the outskirts of our school zone; in fact, if he lived a block over, he would probably attend the neighboring (rougher) high school.

There are two teachers that have my respect. You (Mrs. Casey) and Mr. K. And the respect I give these teachers I receive back. These teachers are always true to their self and never try to be someone else around certain students or teachers.

English Teacher for Hire

It occurred to me as I graded my seniors' Lord of the Flies theme essays that I'm not really an English teacher.

When I was in high school—or even in middle school—I wrote essays regularly for English and Social Studies classes. I recall having shorter (1-2 page) essays on a nightly basis, with some longer essays as major assignments due perhaps every week or two.

Although I feel like I am now forever grading as a teacher, very little of it is what I imagined would be a part of a normal English teacher's job description. My normal grading stack includes journal entries (scored based on ideas, not mechanics) and classwork assignments (mostly graded for completion because students will otherwise not attempt the work). Really it is my gifted and talented ninth grade students who write essays, and even those occur once, maybe twice per quarter.

At what point did the standards for a high school diploma become so low that graduating seniors consider a 2-3 page paper a major assignment? When did the job description for an English teacher include babysitting and assigning points for busy work?

Scoring essays is by no means fun; it usually proves to be a daunting task. This is usually because the students' essays are so laden with errors: typographical errors, syntactical errors, organizational errors; many of these essays, if they contain a thesis statement, have one that is incomplete or incoherent. We as teachers may assign fewer essays because the students don't do them or because the quality is so poor, but what we really should be doing is assigning more essays and more major projects so that students will gain the proficiency they need to truly earn that high school diploma. Then we could truly call ourselves English Teachers.

All eyes and no sight

I have begun teaching a unit on Romeo and Juliet to my Standard 9 students. We spend a few days on pre-reading material: biographical info on Shakespeare, dissecting language, etc. We spent the 80-minute class period on Monday stomping the rhythm of iambic pentameter* before reading a Shakespearean sonnet. Although the lesson wasn't everything I had dreamed, my dysfunctional standard class actually seemed to understand meter and the sonnet.

On Friday we began class with a feud (using only Shakespearean insults, of course) before reading the Prologue. Not all students notice that it is a sonnet, so I usually lead them to it.

"So, the Prologue has fourteen lines, is written in iambic pentameter, and has a very particular rhyme scheme, so it is a..." With upturned palms, I signaled a collective response from the class; instead, my prompt was received by slouched shoulders, glazed-over expressions, and even a few speckles of drool on the corners of mouths.

"...sonnet," I finished.


*I can't take credit for the idea of stomping iambic pentameter. See the lesson at the Folger Shakespeare Library Website.

Small Victory No. 1

My advanced ninth grade students are currently working on their research papers. I have written a forty-five page research paper manual and a detailed calendar of deadlines to keep them informed and on track. Their initial reaction to the novel-like packet was one of fear: What could be in there? Other students responded with anger: Why do we have do all this work?!

Their outlines were due on Friday. I required them to submit a detailed outline, complete with thesis statement, topic sentences, all specific evidence for each paragraph, and MLA-style internal citations. Upon entering the classroom on Friday, the students inundated me with complaints about the amount of time and energy that went into their outlines. And for what? they wondered.

Now that we are at the rough draft stage of the process, they have a new outlook on things. The same students who cried about their outlines now realized why I had required to write them in such detail. One student said, "I hated doing the outline, but writing the rough draft was so easy. Now I see why you've been telling us how important outlining is. I'm going to do this for all of my papers from now on."

Handicapping Students with Special Needs

In order to help students with special needs (learning disabilities, emotional disturbances, etc.) be successful academically, many of these students are given an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) that constructs goals and methods to help that child succeed. One common accommodation is the use of small group testing: students with this accommodation go to the library with the special educator to take the same test as their classmates. The distinction is these students can have directions and/or test questions read aloud to them, or they may even receive additional time if needed.

The concept of an IEP is a sound one: it levels the proverbial playing field and gives students with special needs a greater opportunity to do well. The system fails, however, when we do not allow these students to release their crutch and stand on their own two legs.

There is a special educator at our school who is committed to ensuring students get good grades on their English 12 exams. This is all well and good until it is apparent that it is not the students who are taking these exams.

Based on my experiences with this special educator over the last three years, it seems that if he does not outright tell the students the answers, he leads them there blatantly. Even the students' perception of him tells me my hypothesis is correct. The general education students have also learned that Mr. Brooks will give them answers, and therefore will not have to think for themselves.

Today my English 12 class had a grammar exam. Shortly after our warm-up exercise, I began distributing the test. One of my special education students became worried when he did not see Mr. Brooks in the room yet and asked if he could go to the library by himself (!) and wait for Mr. Brooks there. (Obviously not.) I apologized and encouraged the student to try his best on the exam.

After a few minutes, the same student asked if I could tell him a grammar rule that would clearly lead him to several answers on the test. He had the tone of a student who is accustomed to receiving such aid. I shook my head and apologized again—I could no longer answer such a question once the exam was distributed.

As I finished saying this, Mr. Brooks entered the classroom, and the special education students quickly collected their exam papers and writing utensils and scurried out of the room.

I do find it a strange coincidence that the student with special needs who could not remember a basic grammatical rule somehow had the highest score on the test.

I do believe that Mr. Brooks has the best of intentions: help these students do well on the test so they can graduate, boost their self-esteems, etc. It is clear, however, that he is not doing these students any favors; they have been conditioned to use the special educator—and their IEPs—as a crutch, and therefore have limited their own academic growth. Although Mr. Brooks is clearly at fault here, he is not the only one responsible: these seniors did not learn to behave this way since August; they have been learning this since the first time they had been branded special ed.

The purpose, once again, of an IEP is to give students with special needs a chance to succeed in the same academic setting as the general education students and to receive the same high school diploma. If we do not provide the same quality of education for these special education students, then we should not give them the same diploma or send them into the same work force. We owe it to these students to hold them to the same standards as the general ed students, yet use their accommodations to scaffold their education—the way the IEP was intended.

Veto

As a teacher of English 12—the only course required for graduation during senior year—I am something of a gatekeeper: any student who fails my class will not walk on graduation day and will have to repeat the course over the summer or during the following academic year.

Although I have this mighty gatekeeper status, there are still students who escape my clutches—those who should not receive a high school diploma, yet do.

I humbly propose that each teacher be given a veto stamp that will deny a student his diploma. First off, stamps are oh-so satisfying...Stamp! You FAIL!

Secondly, there are some students who can barely read or write, yet somehow are passed through the system until they are out of it...and we as a society are inundated with droves of imbeciles who cannot think for themselves. This is clearly a detriment to society.

For example, I have for you the response to a one-question reading quiz on Lord of the Flies. This response was written by a graduating senior:

The Boat was the Island we on fire.

Really, you don't even need to know what the question was because this response doesn't make a lick of sense. A student with such limited mental and written ability should not be allowed to graduate from high school; in fact, it's student like this who have helped devalue the high school diploma.

Veto.

Scapegoat for Dinner AGAIN?!

Another student attacks her teacher in Baltimore City. Who is responsible for the attack? The teacher, of course.

This article is another example of how teachers have become a scapegoat for that which ails society. A high school sophomore—a student who should be old enough to know right from wrong—commits a violent act, and it is the victim who is held responsible.

Teachers are by no means perfect; most of us are even human. It is not, however, fair to assign sole responsibility to the teacher who leaves her workplace in an ambulance.

Let's step back for a moment and consider who else may be responsible:

The student. I cannot think of a reason why a rational person would deem it acceptable to assault an adult—especially a person of authority. The student needs to be held accountable for her actions; in fact, it is probably the lack of accountability to this point that has led her down this path.

The parents. Besides a brief mention of the responsibility of the "community," the article does not mention the role of the parents. Where are they? What are they teaching their child? What is their reaction to their daughter inflicting physical harm on a teacher?

It is, of course, important for teachers to be prepared to work with students of various cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds; this is true not only for instruction, but for conflict mediation as well. Professional development on conflict mediation is worthwhile for teachers, but this type of training does not excuse parents of their responsibility of raising their own children.

The Id Comes Alive

We are reading Lord of the Flies in English 12, often discussing Freud's theory of the tripartite psyche. Today we were recalling what we knew about each part of the psyche before focusing on the id.

One student who had missed the initial lesson on the psyche was determined to understand each of its components. When our class reiterated that the id represents the drive for hunger, pleasure, and aggression, this student asked, "So it's like when you get an erection when you sleep?"

Read Anything Good Lately?

Some food for thought:

On average, Americans ages 15 to 24 spend almost two hours a day watching TV, and only seven minutes of their daily leisure time on reading.

Reading scores for American adults of almost all education levels have deteriorated, notably among the best-educated groups. From 1992 to 2003, the percentage of adults with graduate school experience who were rated proficient in prose reading dropped by 10 points, a 20 percent rate of decline.

In 2002, only 52 percent of Americans ages 18 to 24, the college years, read a book voluntarily, down from 59 percent in 1992.

The number of adults with bachelor's degrees and "proficient in reading prose" dropped from 40 percent in 1992 to 31 percent in 2003.

Excerpted from "Study: Americans Reading A Lot Less" (note the incredibly vanilla title)

Sink or Float: The Three-E Dilemma

Jake is failing. His first three quarter grades, if added together, are shy of one hundred percent. Even so, he visits me almost daily to get an update on the status of his grade—has it managed to creep up to 60%, the district's lowest passing grade?

In all fairness, Jake's average this quarter is substantially better than the first two: his grades have been 22%, 25%, and now 52%. It would seem to the outsider that there is no mathematical way that he could pass English 12 for the year; however, county grading policy assigns quality points based on a letter grade, not percentage. If Jake earns a D this quarter and a C next quarter, he won't even need to pass the final exam to walk across the stage on June third.

If, however, Jake's 52% stays firmly rooted in E-range, then he will automatically fail for the year. Despite any high grades he may earn in fourth quarter and on the final that would mathematically (by county standards) earn him a passing grade for the year, he has already failed. How do teachers motivate a student to do his work—and act like a respectable human being—if he is merely biding his time until the end of the year, when he will attend summer school?

This is where the teacher encounters the three-E dilemma: do I assign this kid an E, which he clearly deserves, thus causing seven weeks of turmoil (and guilt for denying a senior his graduation "right"), or do I "float" him up to a D?

I consulted my department chair, mostly to ensure that I would have her support if I my actions resulted in an uproar from Jake's parents. My DC advised me to float him—and make it painstakingly clear that there would be no more favors in fourth quarter. As I pencil in the D-bubble on my grade scan, I wonder if I am actually doing Jake a favor at all. There is a decent chance that Jake will continue warming a chair in English, not doing much work, and will fail anyway. If, however, Jake takes this bit of generosity and truly applies himself fourth quarter to earn that C, then yes, there is a chance he will learn to take advantage of such opportunities.

My greatest concern is not whether Jake fails or graduates, but of the community as a whole: students have come to expect these bits of generosity from teachers, which explains why they respond belligerently when it is denied. We have created a culture of concessions: students with 68% (and numerous missing assignments) expect that, out of the kindness of our hearts, we teachers will see that it is close enough to a C and float it. I hear what students say about me (and call me) when I refuse to float their grades, and I truly do believe that it is out of the kindness of my heart that the grade stands. More than literature, more than language, I try to teach these students the skills and the mentality that will allow them to survive life after high school. On an almost-daily basis, I simultaneously question my own judgment for doing what I believe is right and damn the system that put me in the situation to question myself.

For this quarter, Jake will float.