Buzz

This week I enjoyed watching my new group of students have a breakthrough in their capacity to engage with a text.  These are my summer session students, who have a mere six weeks to develop their ability to analyze and write about literature, and they have even less time to get comfortable opening up and working together to achieve this, but they're doing a fine job.  The other day in class I set them up in pairs to analyze a play, and each set of students had a different question to consider and element of the play to explore.  The buzz in the room was beautiful.  They actively worked together and never stopped working, readying themselves to lead the discussion that would follow. They really discussed the text, helping each other find a deeper meaning in it, and they pulled their information together effectively in order to enlighten the class. It was inspiring and they didn't even know it.

This reminded me of a moment I had years ago when I was teaching 7th graders who were hard at work in small groups, collaborating on whatever task was at hand.  I remember stepping back, looking around, and enjoying the buzz in the room of all the little voices blending together like a hive of worker bees. They, too, were on task and working together to achieve the goal. One of my students looked up at me asked why I was smiling, and I said, "This is what learning sounds like." She looked around, smiled, and then turned back to her group, refocusing on the task and rejoining the buzz.

One Starfish at a Time

On my very first day of teaching, I was given a bookmark with that story on it about a little boy walking on the shoreline, picking up each stranded starfish and throwing it back in the ocean.  A man on the beach says to the boy, "But why are you bothering, you can't possibly save all of them.  It doesn't make a difference."  At that, the boy picks up another starfish, tosses it into the sea and says, "It made a difference to that one." Good teachers are in this business to make a difference -- it's not about the vacation, or the health benefits, and definitely not the money.  It's for the reward of knowing we helped someone succeed.

One of the most fulfilling moments of my career happened a couple weeks ago when a student of mine gave me the most rewarding gift I've ever received.  He wanted to thank me for being his mentor for a speech competition he entered, in which he will be presenting the argument paper he wrote for my class last semester.  When we first met in my Comp I class in the fall, he had just returned to school for the first time after having been laid off from his job, and I was very interested in his writing.  In fact, I told him that I thought his style resembled that of David Sedaris, the author of a piece I had read with the class.  This student proceeded to buy every one of Sedaris' books, becoming more enthralled with this writer's style with every piece he read.

A few weeks ago, this same student (now in my Comp II class) attended a book signing for David Sedaris and brought with him all of the books he had bought since last semester.  He also bought a book for me that he had Sedaris sign to thank me for helping him.  My student had some time at the signing to chat with Sedaris; the student talked about our writing class and how I had inspired him to explore a career in writing and "be more than a worker drone," as he put it.  So, Sedaris wrote in the front cover of my book, "To Krista: I wish you were my writing teacher."  I was so flattered and honored that such a renowned author would write such a thing to me, but I was even more honored that a student of mine would have such nice things to say about me that it would prompt such a message.

For all the times we are unappreciated in this profession, and for all the times these moments of inspiration go unmentioned, there are these select few times that remind me, once again, that I am meant to do this. This student thanked me for all I've done for him, but it is I who was grateful for knowing I am making a difference, one "starfish" at a time.

Wilfred Owen, Starbucks Visionary?

I had a nice chuckle this week with one of my classes that tends to make me laugh all the time.  We were reading Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et decorum est" in order to jump into our unit on the effects of war.  We read the poem aloud together. After the final lines, "Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori" ("It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country"),  I asked the entire class, "Who can tell me what that means?"  Though the translation was just underneath it, one of the students said, "Well, we know what dulce means."  I said, "Really, what?"  And several of them chimed in by stating very confidently, "It's that drink you get at Starbucks."  Of course, they were talking about Starbucks' ever popular Dulce de Leche.   I shook my head, laughed out loud, and enjoyed the moment of pure blissful ignorance on their part.  I said, "Yes, I'm sure that Owen was suggesting to his fellow soldiers that they get a latte at Starbucks before heading back to the battlefield in World War I -- back then there was a Starbucks at every trench."  We laughed again.

Though these students have moments of brilliance, they also have many moments of pure naiveté that actually make me love them.  This is probably because they can laugh at themselves when they make these little blunders, and the nice part is that it doesn't keep them from contributing to the discussion in the future.  Some students would pack their things and drop the class if they had an embarrassing moment like that, but show me one person on this earth that hasn't said something "slightly misguided" at some point. I say silly things all the time. So what?  We laugh and move on. In fact, it makes those moments of brilliance stand out that much more.

Striving vs. Surviving

Last week I was unequivocally faced with the dichotomy between students who want to strive and students who want to survive. 

Student A, a man who took my Composition I course last semester and is now taking my Comp II course this semester, came to me to ask me to be his mentor for a speech competition.  He had written a well-supported argument on the issue of immigration with a unique view and strong belief driving the paper.  Although he received an irrefutable ‘A’ for the paper, he still asked that I “grade” it again to look for any ways he could revise and make it even better.  Throughout Comp I and so far in Comp II, he has valued my feedback, recognizing that constructive criticism will make him a stronger writer, communicator, and human being.  He actively seeks out my classes because he knows I will push him to be better than he was the day before.  There is no “easy A” in my class, and he likes it that way, because he knows that when he gets that A, it was all him.

Student B, another young man in a different Comp II section this semester, came to me in the same week to ask why he was failing my class.  When I explained that it was because he rarely showed up to class and rarely turned in any work, he didn’t understand why he wouldn’t be passing anyway.  One of the requirements of the course is that students submit their work to turnitin.com as well as give me a hard copy for grading. Nine weeks into the semester and several missing assignments later, this student asked, "What's the point of the hard copy?” to which I replied, “So that I can give you feedback in order to improve your writing.”  He then said, rather assertively, “Well, I don’t need your feedback, I just need a grade.”  I was astounded, as I had never heard a student so vehemently reject the writing process.  Student B simply wanted the grade and expected it to be as passing one despite his lack of effort and refusal to follow directions.  It, unfortunately, wasn't.

Herein lies the fault line between students who want to be great and students who want to get by.  I have found this semester, more than any other, that there is a divide between the strivers and the survivors.  There is a distinct group of students in each of my sections who are pulling away from the pack, who have worked hard to improve, and who are now enjoying their achievement and finishing the semester strong. 

While I was annoyed at Student B’s clear disregard for the value of feedback, he did make me wonder if we’ve created this crater of indifference ourselves by focusing for so long on letter grades.  While I understand the need for grades in terms of ranking students and establishing a GPA, it does make me concerned that we push students to look to improve a grade, rather than improve their skills—the two do not always go hand-in-hand.  When I was in Grad school, my professor (now my colleague), who taught Teaching Writing as a Process, discussed with me the prospect of not giving grades since students focus so much on that one little letter and fail absorb the comments that would actually change that letter.  I experimented one semester with only giving comments until the final draft of the paper, forcing students to read the comments and improve based on them.  The results were fascinating—I had more students engaging in the writing process and understanding what they needed to do to improve their ability not just their letter grade.  However, they also felt extreme anxiety not having those grades, and I ultimately went back to the old way of giving them a grade just to see where they stand. 

I am considering trying this again, with some improvements to get the best of both worlds.   In fact, I am contemplating having students grade their own papers based on my feedback and a rubric.  Based on the types of comments they see on their papers, they could try to determine honestly what grade bracket they believe the paper would it fit into.

As educators, we must facilitate the learning process for students, ultimately putting their success in their own hands. Perhaps this could lessen the divide and encourage others to strive, rather than merely survive.  

The Cheater & The Champion

This semester, more than ever, I am dealing with a plague—plagiarism. This rampant disease is infecting educational institutions all over the country.  So far this semester alone, I have had to report seven students to Academic Affairs due to the blatant plagiarism they have committed in their work.  The lack of academic integrity is disheartening.  While the Internet does make it all so tempting, the students should have enough integrity and enough value in their education that they would want to do their own work—to learn something and to show that they are capable.  It’s easy to blame the Internet, but this has been happening for years.  I remember when I was completing my student teaching experience in a small town in Indiana over twelve years ago, my eighth-grade students were completing a little research project to do on an explorer.  One student’s paper was 100% copied from Encarta, back when CD-ROMs were the bees’ knees for finding information.  The student denied it, of course, and his mother supported the lie.  She shouted at me saying, “I stayed up all night working with my son on this!”  But when we showed her that the Encarta entry matched her son’s paper word-for-word, I said, “It doesn’t take that long to copy and paste, you should have gotten more sleep.”  Snarky, I know, but we both felt she deserved it, as does anyone else wasting our time with forged papers when we have plenty of legitimate ones to grade. 

One of the students I confronted this week regarding her plagiarized paper denied it right up until I showed her the 123helpme.com paper, from which she got 67% of her copied and pasted text.  The irony was that this didn't actually "help her" in the end since she got caught.  Given that she now has to start all over and write a new piece, while also being put on a “watch list” of sorts for cheaters, the student acknowledged that “No, it didn’t help.”  Lesson learned…or is it?  As another student mentioned, if she hadn't gotten caught, it would have helped after all. Every day, students try to find a way to beat the system, seeking out creative ways to cheat and just not get caught.  Some students work harder at cheating than they would if they were to actually do the work on their own.  Talk about irony.

On a brighter note, my students who are doing their own work are learning so much.  They are growing by leaps and bounds as readers, writers, critical thinkers, as students, and as human beings.  Those are the students I am proud of.  Any old Joe Schmoe can copy and paste from the Internet; a real student does his or her own work, looking for true success.  Whichever path a student chooses—that of cheater or champion—it becomes clear what that student is made of.  

I had a fulfilling moment just today with one of these students who chooses champion.  Her work is getting so good that it could easily be misconstrued as too sophisticated and the product of plagiarism, but it isn’t.  I’ve seen this girl grow as a writer and critical analyst over the last several weeks, and it is evident that she is applying what she has learned to better her work.  I decided to pull her aside to let her know how proud and impressed I am at her improvement.  She thanked me and actually said that it was nice that someone acknowledged it.  She said that another professor had questioned her writing not long ago, assuming she had cheated because it was good.  I’m glad that I could give this student the validation she was apparently looking for, but in the end it was I who thanked her, because I so appreciate an honest, hard-working student who has integrity and cares for what we teachers are trying to do—help them!