January 21, 2007
I’ve wanted to write this post for a week or so, but life has a funny way of interfering. Exams, late-night visits from old friends, a head-on collision with the fatigue truck, and one of those days when every item of clothing needs to go through the laundry have colluded to put this off.
And now, more distraction: watching da Bears destroy the Saints, who apparently are not accustomed to snow. I’m not much of a hardcore football fan–I don’t follow the NFL–but I like watching the games. I like watching the plays unfold. There’s a lot of planning done in very little time, and while things sometimes work out exactly as called by the QB, the plays gang oft agley. If I had the energy or talent I’d push the metaphor and explain how that’s just like the act of teaching, at least for me, but I don’t think anyone really needs me to explain that.
I just finished reading and grading the ENG213 Huck Finn essays. Yesterday afternoon, when I blocked out several hours in which to grade the majority of them, I never thought I’d be able to get through the whole stack. Now, there have been plenty of times in my teaching career when I’ve hated grading student work. I usually just take a lot of breaks and do things that I otherwise wouldn’t do. It’s a cliche, I know, but any teacher will tell you that their house is never cleaner than right after a huge batch of papers or tests has been collected. Anyway, I usually complain a lot, then somehow muddle through the grading, assessing the work in an impartial and pretty much fair fashion, record the grades in my fancy-shmantzy gradebook, swear I’ll never assign so much work due at the end of the marking period, and proceed to break that oath as soon as possible.
Not this time, though. These essays were good, by any standard measure: I gave a lot of grades in the A/A-/B+ range, because the papers were well-organized and used evidence to support a thesis. Some were even fun to read. The students showed that they understood the controversies surrounding the teaching of Huck Finn in a high school class and presented their opinions effectively.
I will never assign this essay topic again. It’s not that it’s too easy, or too difficult. It’s just pointless. My students read the novel, did a little bit of research, and answered a question that isn’t terribly interesting at best, and irrelevant at worst.
When I first assigned the task three years ago, I was genuinely interested in what that bunch of students thought about the issue. Did they think the book should have been required? Why or why not? Were their opinions influenced by previous and current controversies surrounding the book? Is book banning ever acceptable? Now, three years later, I find myself not caring one way or the other. It’s just not important. Huck Finn is required here. Most students say that the book should not be banned, because why would they go against what their teacher obviously believes? It’s a stupid question, and I never want to read anything about it ever again.
So what’s important? Reading these essays for the past couple of weeks (including drafts, outlines, and the like) has led me to this question: What is English class supposed to be about, anyway? What do my students need to learn? How can we (my students and myself) use the scheduled time and place to enhance our understanding of how humans communicate? Clarence Fisher, as usual, puts it so well I can hardly stand it:
If we are about hundreds of discrete skills that have absolutely nothing to do with their daily lives; if we attempt to fill their heads with facts they just might need some day, it is no wonder we are losing the attention, the concerns, the hearts of our students.
Classrooms need to be about passion.
Classrooms need to be about inquiry.
Classrooms need to be about connections and the stories these bring into our lives.
I’ve been reading a lot about the Classroom-as-Studio model. The idea is, the way I see it, to change the way classrooms work. Instead of being teacher-driven (I give you some information, you find more information, you report back on the information, I test you on the information), they will become student-driven (you decide, with some faciliatation from me, what you’ll investigate, then you teach everyone else about it and publish your findings). There are a ton of different ways to do this, but I’m concerned here with what might work in my classroom, with my schedule. Sure, that sounds a bit teacher- (or ego-) centric, but if this is going to work, it has to take into account several real conditions:
1. I don’t have tenure. This doesn’t scare me as much as it probably should, or as much as the dark mutterings ABOUT non-tenured teachers rousing the rabble would have me believe.
2. I have 58-minute periods with which to work. Also, these 58-minute periods meet only three days out of every four.
3. I share all of my classroom spaces with other teachers.
4. My classes are approaching the point of overcrowding (and in one instance, I don’t have enough desks in the room).
5. Unlike Rafe Esquith, I’m not prepared to devote every bit of my energy to this endeavour. I love teaching, I love my job, and I think about it a lot, but seriously. I do, however, identify with one of his main points, that “true excellence takes sacrifice, mistakes, and tremendous amounts of effort.”
So, where now? More reading for me, and definitely more thinking and writing (I think we call that “blogging”). More highlights of what my students write, when they write something that I think is getting toward where we should be. More asking them, the students, what they think they need and how I can help them fulfill those needs. More transparency, more openness, more willingness to experiment and admit that an experiment failed.
It’s entirely possible that after this semester, after getting scads of student input about the direction of the class, I’ll go back to my old totalitarian ways (This is what you’re learning! Because I said so! There are standards! THERE ARE STANDARDS!) because that works better. But not without trying something new.
January 25th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
When I heard Rafe Esquith talking the other day, I began to wonder what a high school English class would look like if followed his example, or the example of elementary school classrooms across the country. My own kids’ elementary school classrooms were life laboratories. Whether it was manufacturing, marketing, and selling their own goods or stepping into the shoes of a Japanese student or a 60s style coffee shop poetry reading, they were living life in the classroom. And they loved it! Maybe it means having my ninth graders buy a ranch or start a business or pursue a modeling career in order to understand why “the best laid schemes of mice and men go awry”. Perhaps every high school kid should have a life workshop class reminiscent of what they did elementary school and which puts them in the world in some way. Every teacher in the school might have one section so that the inquiry is shared. And the curriculum would be asking questions. What is it like to be a Sunni Muslim in Baghdad? What is life like in a mountain village in Kashmir? What is a viable replacement for gasoline? How would I heat my house if we no longer had oil? How would I negotiate a labor dispute? What would a really effective urban school look like? What is the best ways to create universal health care? Does NAFTA really work? And on and on. I guess I am reacting to what I see in so many of my students’ eyes. It is that “So What” face. The thrill is gone, whether we like it or not and no matter how much we point the finger at them. I’ll look forward to more about the classroom as studio. Thanks.
January 26th, 2007 at 10:03 am
I like that idea more than I can even say. This really creates a framework of questions for the classroom studio–assign students to take on a question, do some research, and present their findings in whatever way they feel appropriate. Should Lincoln have let the South secede? What happens if you try to write following Kerouac’s guidelines for spontaneous prose?
January 28th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
I can tell you that for 3 years I tried to live by the hippie-dippie student-centered class that my education professors promoted. I believed what they taught me. For 3 years, I couldn’t make it work.
Then click, clack, clunk, the thing seemed to fall into place this year. I threw out stuff I couldn’t make work, tinkered with things that did, and somehow, like I drank a magic potion, it worked. Now, chances are this has something to do with I’m dealing strictly with honors kids in English now (and the kids in my Spanish classes are presumably college bound–though those classes are still largely standards based, because there has to be some kind of continuity with the skills).
It might also have to do with the hybridization of the two approaches that worked for me. I give kids choice, but I don’t just set them loose and expect them to pursue knowledge freely. They just kind of sat there when I tried that.
So I say you’ve got the right idea, man. Keep experimenting. Find ways to give them choice. It might not be everything the ed experts promise, but it’ll feel good when it works.
January 28th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Well, Honors kids supposedly want to impress their teachers more. But I don’t entirely buy that. I think it has more to do with trying on a bunch of teaching styles, modifying, and finding what fits you AND your students. I’m in my fifth year and I believe that more and more each day.
The ed experts mean well, but a lot of ‘em haven’t been in a classroom in many years. I’ve learned not to read anything by any of ‘em without looking for the things that won’t work in my particular situation. If you’d really like to, sometime I can tell you the story of the time I decided that what was good for Tom Romano in his college English classes would be good for my mid-level sophomores. Oy.