The Way of the Future

1) Teacher makes up a blank chart in Microsoft Word.

2) Students download the chart and fill it in with quotes, citations and examples of the American Dream as stated by the characters in the novel.

3) Students upload individual assignments to Turnitin.com.

4) Assignments are automatically cross-checked for plagiarism against tens of thousands of books, hundreds of millions of other papers and billions of websites.

5) Teacher viewes individual papers and reads the plagiarism reports.  Teacher adds comments with one click, anywhere in the document, and can even choose from a list of common comments, like “fragment” and “incorrect citation” — which each come with multiple paragraphs of explanation and reference.

6) Students log on, read comments and print a copy if desired.  (It’s usually not.)

Less waste, less headache, less drudgery.  I actually found myself commenting more because it’s so much faster to type in a box than to write on a piece of paper!

It doesn’t approach the cushiness of, say, an architecture professor, who assigns letter grades for entire projects DURING the students’ presentations.  Nevertheless, these advances have certainly made life easier for English teachers everywhere.

Scenes from the First Day

I awake well rested.  I get ready in a quiet house, make the bed.  Morning prayers: I read the name of each student, wondering what they will look like, what they will say, what they will think of me.

They are huge classes: last year my largest class was 15, and this year my smallest is 17.  Every chair is filled, even the ones by the windows.  Rain blows in and soaks their backs.  They squeal and run for cover, kicking their backpacks in front of them.

They enter to index cards — one on each desk.  The assignment is on the projector: name, interests, English history (grade, most and least favorite part) and the clincher: a 10-word summary of a story they heard recently.  “Anything that caught your attention,” I say.  “It could be funny, gross, sad, or just strange.”  They hem and haw and whine.  “I can’t think of anything!  My life is so boring!” I remind them that they’ve lived through a hurricane and an earthquake in the last week, and a flood is forming in the streets outside as we speak.

It’s uncomfortably warm; I quickly pin up my hair and am glad I wore a black shirt.

We pass out textbooks — as many as ten per student.  Their groaning turns to laughter as I ask, “Raise your hand if you have TOO MANY books on your desk!”  They ask if they have to bring every book to every class. “Yes,” I say solemnly, “And you have to carry them on your head, too.”  I don’t care what Todd Whitaker says about sarcasm; it works if you know how to use it properly.

The opening exercise is a huge hit.  They highlight dutifully and enjoy reading their selected phrases along with me (this is one of the most powerful ways to begin analysis of any piece of writing, and yes, I stole it from another teacher.)  They have lots of questions, lots of ideas.  They talk about parents and friends who have lost jobs and houses.  They demonstrate how much they learned and overheard during the last presidential campaign, and during the last year of school — referencing simile, climax and conflict as elements of the “story” the author is telling.

“Mrs. Lowe,” one student pipes up, smiling.  “Can I be your favorite student?”  I ask about her cooking skills. “That’s a high priority if you’re considering the position.”  Now they all want to tell me about their cooking skills.  “I can make cheesecake!”  “I make the BEST cookies!”  

I spend as little time on the syllabus as possible, but because I am organized, I don’t need to.  They read and sign the class policies, which include expectations for both students and teacher — “I expect you to hold me to these as I will hold you to them,” I say, without a trace of a smile this time, meeting and holding each gaze in turn.  “I will demonstrate respect, responsibility and passion in this classroom.  You will do the same.”

So thirsty.  I always forget how much talking there is in teaching.  I will not leave the room to get a drink, even though it would be easy.  This is my classroom.  I am in charge.  End of story.

Every ten minutes or so, to lighten the mood as much as to learn their names, I reshuffle the stack of cards in my hand and call on another student to tell her story.  A little brother who has an imaginary friend.  A dream about red turtles and a shooting star.  A dog who went out for her last walk, came home and dropped down dead.  After the laughter and murmurs of sympathy, we address the story itself: why is it memorable? What do we love about it? How does it compare to what we will read this year?

Gently, I hold their collective hand through the quarter syllabi that show each and every assignment.  Next class: vocabulary and an oral quiz on summer reading.  After that, they’re on their own to remember and complete their work.  But I know you can handle it, I say.  

“I have to say,” says one student as I leave the room, “That was a fun class.”  As I enter the next: “I’ve heard great things about you, Mrs. Lowe.”

Of course every day won’t be like this.  But thank you, Lord, for letting this be the first.

Joyful

Yesterday was tough, disappointing and tiring. It was also exciting, cathartic and joyful.

I'm choosing to focus on the joyful part. When I saw how my hardworking student and her mother had prepared the refreshments table for her recital, my heart was lifted. They'll never know how much.

Something about that ritual, the one I've performed countless times for students whose names and faces are now blurred by time -- the one I can perform by heart, including the speech at the beginning, the silly story punctuated by repertoire and the encore bow at the end -- never fails to help me face the trials I am called to bear with renewed strength. And even with joy.

The Endless Summer

My school raised several million dollars for a major addition to the building, which was to take place over the summer.  Anyone who’s ever observed an ongoing construction project knows that deadlines are seldom met, so when the first day of school got pushed back several times, now holding at 10 days later than the original, our gleeful gratitude far eclipsed our shock.  However, the gift of a week and a half, just when I’m starting to get depressed about all the things I didn’t accomplish this summer, is nothing to sneeze at.  Here’s my plan:

• Clean the house from top to bottom.
• Organize all the junk in the basement.
• Sell one or two more unused pieces of furniture (I’ve had pretty good luck with Craigslist, despite a preponderance of flaky people who simply stop responding when they’re no longer interested.)
• Weed the gardens and harvest remaining produce.
• Go through my piano and vocal music; purge and reorganize.
• Catch up with friends I missed all summer. 

The real surprise? An earthquake that unleashed widespread devastation in the area this afternoon.  We’re slowly digging our way out from all the havoc.

Starting Over

“Once I finally learned how to teach piano the right way,” said the instructor who trained my mom, “I had to fire all my students and start over.”  She was obviously (and humorously) misdirected in this remark, but expressed clearly the familiar frustration of trying to teach a new system to an old and complacent student.

For other reasons, though, her words have an uncanny resonance to me at this moment. My studio is half the size it was at the beginning of the year, which was half of what it was when I began teaching from home, which was half again what it was when I used to travel to students’ houses.  Over the years my students have lost interest, moved away and succumbed to the seductive allure of home lessons; they’ve been replaced, but never in the same numbers.  I suppose I could start advertising, but I prefer word-of-mouth referrals because they ensure the parents know what they’re in for before they ever show up for the first lesson.

So here I am, with half a dozen kids and what could be viewed as an opportunity.  With twenty or forty students, cancellations are commonplace and overhauls to the schedule nearly impossible.  With six, I decided, I can try something I’ve wanted to do for years: group lessons.

I started small.  Two groups of three: one for beginners, one for advanced.  I told the families that for our end-of-year event, we’d replace the last lesson in June with a group class.  I dreaded the scheduling, but it actually wasn’t so bad, and I was even able to put the groups back to back for two solid hours of games and performance.

Surprisingly, though I’ve had lots of classroom and private teaching experience, this new hybrid format made me a little nervous.  I wrote out a schedule of games, reminders and stalling techniques in case I ran out of things to do.  And then I unlocked my front door and waited.

They came with parents and grandparents and anticipation.  They sat on the rug, pointed and spoke and clapped rhythms, worked cooperatively and let their personalities shine through.  The slower, more methodical boy accepted help from his bouncy, lightning-fast friend.  They both stared wide-eyed at the girl who played the last piece of the volume they had just started.  The preteens fell into joking and jabbing each other as if they’d always been friends.  They complimented each other and talked seriously about improvements for the future. When they left, smiling for a few parting photos, I wondered why in the world I hadn’t done this a long time ago.

Oh, yeah – because I couldn’t have done it then.  I can, however, do it now.  And I’m already scheming about how to make it a permanent part of our plans for the future.