Mea Culpa

The following are responses to surveys filled out in the last week of school by my English 11 and 11E students. Some are funny, some I think are interesting. The "Mea Culpa" in the title of this post is twofold: 1. The length. 2. I feel as if I am tooting my own horn a bit at times in this entry and I don't mean to. But sometimes the things they write make me wonder about "education." My sometimes extended comments are in ( ).

What was your favorite work that we read this year?

- My favorite book was The Great Gatsby because it is a piece of work that caught my action.

What did you like most about English?

- I like our random talks.

- I liked the conversations we had every day about random things. (Trust me, these conversations were not that random. Ok, some were random, but many were less random than the students realize.)

- Mr. Chaffee's sarcasm.

- I liked that you didn't make things boring, just what we had to learn was boring.

What are one or two important things you have learned this year in English?

- I would say I have learned a lot more than two things. (Response ended here.)

- It is important to think for yourself. (Nobody told them this before?)

- I've learned that I should not plagiarize. (She did it twice.)

- Nothing really. (So sorry.)

The rest are from 11E: What did you like most about English 11E?

- ..we talked about our own ideas.

- Chaff-tangles. (For group discussions we arranged the desks around the perimeter of the room, but they didn't really make a regular geometric shape, so they called it a Chaff-tangle.)

- Being able to talk about things w/out having to raise hands and be all strict.

- It's the one class I could actually relax and laugh in.

- I liked our conversations where we talked about life. It was refreshing to learn / talk about things I wanted to discuss. (Evidence that our "curriculum" has become irrelevant?)

- I liked that we actually had intelligent discussions and they felt productive.

- That there wasn't any pressure like traditional classes in English, we could come in and discuss things without worrying about what's going to be on the test, which allowed us to develop better ideas. (Exhibit A on how testing is evil and corrupting.)

Did the teacher give you enough feedback on papers?

- Oh yes, I got plenty of "redundant" and "vague." I'll never be redundant / vague in my essays again.

- Yes you did give me enough feedback but for some reason I didn't fix the things you told me to fix. (And what do you think the reason is?)

- Yes, there was enough green ink on papers to kill me.

Do you believe you have improved as a writer this year?

- Yes, as shown in my writing folder. I'm figuring out how to use a paper to support my thesis instead of going off on random tangents. (Good start.)

Did you like / dislike the journal writing?

- I liked the journal writing when we had prompts because when we just write our reactions I just spilled crap on the page. (Well, you shouldn't keep crap so close to your journal.)

On a scale of one to ten, how hard was this class?

- I would say it wasn't really hard but the way you grade papers is more critical because we are expected to rise above average writing. (Hope it wasn't a struggle to "rise above average" in an advanced class.)

What have you learned in this class?

- I believe that I have become a more independent writer and thinker. You really pushed us out of our shells, which I needed. (True story.)

- I learned that you should come up with your own ideas and beliefs, and be able to think beyond the literal stuff.

- That I need to become more independent.

- Not everything has to be structured / organized; writing should be interesting and enjoyable. (Interesting writing? Hmm...)

- Actually, I can never recall what I've learned when I'm asked but I think I've learned more about life than English. (English IS life, sir!)

Is there anything else you'd like to say on any topic whatsoever?

- This year has taught me that grades truly don't matter. It took me all year to realize this but over the past couple days I've come to understanding. Grades are simply a number. Humans let a # control their lives. How silly. If there's one thing I could pass on to the 10E class it would be this. They are like me last year, always worrying about grades. There's so much more to life than a number.

I was thrilled to read this because this student was the most concerned with grades all year. She is not alone. The educational system takes everything that they do and puts it into a giant trash compacter and spits out a bunch of numbers, then tells them that those numbers reflect very important things about them. It's hogwash. I have told my students that grades and standardized testing (numbers and data) are the heroin of the educational system: they are terrible for our health, but nobody can, or wants to, figure out how to kick the habit. Anyway... for now, no more teachers no more books!

J

Last Papers

I know this will be a major disappointment to some, but this is the last major entry for the school year which will include major amounts of student sentences.  Major bummer, right.  By the way, my students think that “major” is a good adjective or adverb for just about anything.  I think they are majorly wrong.  As always, my comments are in (  ).

 - Characters display their impulsive feelings more then what they really want out of true love.  (Go figure.)                                                                                                                                                     

- Lady Bracknell has relationship feelings for him.

- Shakespeare has written enough literature to keep people talking for hundreds of years.  (So you’re saying he can stop writing now?)

- Hamlet doesn’t do anything that he could from.

- A play wrote by William Shakespeare, which he never talked about just put on as a play for entertainment.

- Hamlet doesn’t want to make more faults in something that already has a fault in it.  (A good philosophy, I guess.)

- Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a play that can be interpreted in several ways.  (Just several, though.  Not a lot, not a major amount.)

- … his father past away.

- Hamlet is partly worried about the immortality of killing.

- The Shakespearean play Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare…  (As opposed to the ones written by?)

- Women of that time period would not show their feelings of that time period.

- Hamlet was one of the most controversial plays ever wrote by Shakespeare.

- Hamlet went insane and decided to have this madness upon people that was out of control and crazy.  (And I went insane reading that sentence.)

- (Two students wrote the following word for word.)  Hamlet doesn’t know what will happen to his sole if he does commit suicide.  (Depends on how holy his shoes are!)

- Hamlet argues amongst himself.  (In a strange way this makes perfect sense.)

- The American Dream is achieved by happiness.

- He ended up dead and alone.  (To be dead is bad enough, but to also be alone!)

- Finny is the epiphany of a Christ figure.

- In this poem grammar laws aren’t follow.  (Nor are they in that sentence.)

- It’s complete random crap, that’s how I know it’s modernism.  (I mostly agree.)

- If Finny had survived, he wouldn’t have lived.  (Which would have made surviving pointless.)

- (This was the last sentence of a paper.)  That was the moral f this year and what I have learned about literature, that sometimes the gloomy man with a pen is right, the world really can suck.

Well said!  Another entry is coming soon; in fact, I already typed it up.  Stay tuned.

J

Free Clichés

So many times my students want to repeat tired clichés in their "interpretations" of literature. It's as if they are still reading children's books. After a while I get tired of reading that I should "look for the beauty within," or that "money can't buy happiness," or to "never give up." It's not that they are "wrong" per se, it's just that their interpretations are so shallow, so reliant on surfaces, and they miss the depth of the novel or poem or story. They can't see anything in great literature that they didn't see in "The Little Engine That Could." (Thud! That's the sound of me jumping/falling off my high horse.) To the quotations! As always, these sentences are from student work and my comments are in ( ).

- It also goes to explain the identity of ones self to what the mirror believes to be. (Yup, right on.)

- Poetry is a combination of art and literature. (No, poetry IS literature which is a FORM of art. Thanks for playing the Semantics Game, enjoy the parting gifts.)

- Poems are a group of thoughts put together in certain ways and with the use of specific words. (So is prose, there, Shakespeare. Are you getting the feeling I am doing something wrong when I teach poetry? They can't even define the word!)

- The last three lines of each stanza also carry repetition. He uses the word "and" in each one. (I find some of the most powerful poetry uses the word "and" over and over!)

- Clouds do not fly. (Well, they don't walk.)

- Masefield uses the imagery and language to show his theme. (Thanks for the clue.)

- Really all the speaker wants is to be at see.

- The bird is good because it symbolizes more to the theme of hope being in everything.

- By saying this it means that this poem takes the reality of life and tells the readers how life really is. (It's brutal... life, I mean.)

- "Sea-Fever" was written by John Masefield with the use of literary terms. (I hope he cleaned them after he used them; they rust.)

- The citizen has no control or says about his life.

- That's why people lurk for hope. (If you don't lurk you'll never take hope by surprise.)

- The use of alliteration improves the request of the poem to the ear.

- The water can be a symbol of the feels the woman is having. (I had feels once; water is a good symbol for them.)

- The speaker associates being alone with loneliness. (I would never have seen that connection.)

As you might be able to tell, all of these came from papers on poetry. My students do not get poetry. Of course, very few of them try... It's almost June!!

J.

What Field Exactly?

I hate in May and June when my classes are half empty because everybody goes on field trip after field trip. Today I was missing about 20 students between two of my classes because of an AP Physics field trip; Physics? What are a bunch of physics students doing in a field? Anyway, three other seniors decided to skip my class and spend the whole period in the library. Did they think the librarians wouldn't see them? I was not amused. (If any of you three are reading this blog, I am coming for you! Guess who will have speaking parts for the rest of Hamlet!!) To the sentences! These are all from student papers and my comments are in (  ).

- (From a student journal, and the Department of Redundancy Department.) This chapter was hard for me to understand, especially considering that it was hard for me to understand.

- Krebs no longer wants to go out with girls and fun.

- Krebs goes through the notion of life.  (Whose notion I don't know.)

- He started to just go through the notions of life. (Who copied who I wonder.)

- Aunt Georgiana illusioned herself into thinking she was in love.

- These concepts play a negative role in the two characters.

- Authors would convey their ideas of life to the reader. (They would, if only there was a way.)

- The relationship between a man and a woman is a never-ending element of life. Even the Bible includes this relationship. (Even the Bible? You don't say.)

- "The Chrysanthemums" is probably based before women's rights. (Wait, there's another one about the same story.)

- The story is set back sometime in history, perhaps even before women's rights. (So neither of these students bothered to figure out the time period of the story within a hundred years or so, and they think of "women's rights" as a moment in history at which everything changed. Ah, the study of history.)

- John is keeping his wife from expressing herself and letting her have an outlet for her insanity. (We all need an outlet for our insanity.)

- She has been sworn to bed rest. (Swear you will not get out of bed! SWEAR!)

- He was a silent character with large emotions. (How large, exactly?)

- Every author in any story you read has a purpose to what their writing about. (Thanks for the heads up.)

- The story doesn't always have to be in someone's point of view, it could be that the point of view of the people can effect the story. (Air...I...need...air...)

- Their relationship reveals that they don't have a relationship at all.

- (The following phrase was used by two students to pinpoint a period in the past.) ...back in the day...

- In life violence can errupt out based on events that have occured. (Good to know.)

- ...a female girl... (As opposed to?)

- Many stories have a single climactic moment that reviles something about life or the world.

- Many young children have life changing experiences that of which change who the are. (1. So, life changing experiences result in change. Deep. 2. Could you write a sentence that of which I understand.)

Now if you will excuse me, I need to skip class and sit in the library. No, wait, that would be my students.

May Flowers

Ah, spring. The birds are singing, the flowers blooming, and the seniors all need some kind of pill to cure senioritis. Here are some more fun sentences from my students from various papers on various works. As always, these are unedited and my comments are in ( ).

- Finally the narrator rips off the wallpaper, but only showing that she has lost reality. (Hope she finds it.)

- Gatsby was ok when we talked about it. (We? I have no idea who we are.)

- The Great Gatsby, a novel by Scott Fitzgerald, is a novel full of repetition. (Like this sentence.)

- When the illusion fades away their life is left.

- He lets too many other things get in the way of stuff. (I hate when things get in the way of stuff.)

- Jay Gatsby faces reality and he faces his own reality which is known as an illusion.

- ...to keep up with appearances...

- Jay Gatsby was creating this fack imige about himself. ("fake image," I think.)

- ...his realization of reality kicked in... (For some reason my students love it when things "kick in.")

- Literary elements are the frosting of a story. (I hate it when they come up with meaningless metaphors in their intros.)

- Characterization brings about the fascination people have with each other. (Huh?)

- Dummy was so protective of the fish that he erected a fence around the pond where he and his wife lived. (Now, the character's name was Dummy, but it was the FISH who lived in the pond!)

- Words in short stories are very significant. (Shocker.)

- ...she had gone crazy in the mind.

- Symbolism means to represent a certain thing by symbols or coming up with things that show symbols or represent them. (No, that is not what symbolism means.)

- The house seems hunted to her.

- Dummy is characterized as a preservative person.

- Being young and vulnerable, knowing the specificities from a male to female was unknown to the narrator. (Your guess is as good as mine.)

Until next time...

J

This Is a Blog

If the title of this post sounds obvious, welcome to my world. I can't tell you how many students open their essays with painfully mundane statements of the blatantly obvious, many of which boil down to: "Writers write!" Often this takes the form of a sentence like, "Authors use imagery in their stories." Others congratulate the author in a manner similar to this: "Without the minor characters the many intricacies that make Shakespeare so widely popular would be lost." Well, it's a good thing he thought to include those characters then! Now to the quotes. As always, these sentences are taken from student work, and my comments are in ( ).

- He could be mental challenged.

- Peyton Farquar allows his psychological plane to take over. (Never let your psychological plane have the upper hand!)

- Him miss one and fell through the ice.

- Words in short stories are significant. (Almost as significant as the pretty pictures.)

- Lady Macbeth shows that guilt is not a priority of hers yet. (Guilt is always my priority; that and self-loathing.)

- The reactions and actions from Macbeth are different from one another.

- Macbeth is a sole character that violence is involved in.

- Lady Macbeth does a speech about violence. (Hmmm....)

- Macbeth will not be able to be king without being able to not worry about people finding out that he killed Duncan.

- In Macbeth Shakespeare makes a valiant effort to create a theme. (Unfortunately, he fell short.)

- Macbeth will not be able to sleep no more because of the tremendous guilt that invaded his body. (That's a bad infection.)

There is a line in Macbeth in which Macbeth is told that he cannot be killed by a "man born of woman." The following two quotes come from that line. The first demonstrates a frequent error of my students (not knowing the difference between "woman" and "women").

- Macbeth thinks that Macduff was born of women. (And then stitched together by Dr. Frankenstein?)

- Macbeth would not be harmed by anyone born a woman. (So he should only fear the transgendered, I suppose.)

Back to class.

Jeremiah

Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

The title of this post is a quote from Macbeth. I choose it because it is appropriate to some of the student sentences contained here, and because most of these sentences come from Macbeth tests. And they think Shakespeare is hard to decipher. As always, these are sentences taken from student work, unedited, with my comments in ( ).

- As he fell, his mind detached itself from his body.

- He is without the idea or romanticizing. (This sounds like a bad translation.)

- Duncan gave Macbeth a higher roll. (I think he laced that roll with something.)

- There are many reasons not to kill the kind.

- William Shake spheres...

- (From the Department of Redundancy Department) ..the desire to want something...

- (Also from the DRD) He does not let it lead to self inflicted suicide.

- Macduff was born by sea section. (It was quite the delivery.)

- The witches told Macbeth what he wanted to hear but not the hole truth.

- My favorite part was when Lady Macbeth died. This is because I don't like her.

- There is overpowering and manipulants. (Have you ever taken manipulants? That's some good stuff.)

- Lady Macbeth's evilness shines through.

- Lady Macbeth did not act lady-like during the play.

- My least favorite part was when Lady Macbeth killed herself because she deserved to be murdered by the Scotlands. (And maybe the Englands too.)

- (One student's reason for not wanting to see the play on stage) I have my own visions of what this play would look like and I don't need some terrible director to ruin my images.

- Macbeth was told to be aware of Macduff. (Don't beware, just be aware.)

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow... I grade more papers.