Reading Stuff Good

            I just ran across something as I was cleaning out my flash drive.  It is a list generated from an education textbook of “Strategies Used by Proficient Readers.”  They include the following: Asking Questions, Visualizing, Determining Importance, Making Inferences, Making Connections, Synthesizing Information, and Using Fix-Up Strategies.  I made a handout for my students listing these and including descriptions of each.  At the time, I thought it might be helpful.

            As I looked at it again I began to wonder.  The truth is “good readers” do these things, and the more they do them the more they will get out of reading.  Yet to call them “strategies” now seems to me a bit off.  The word strategy implies a conscious effort is being made, like implementing a specific strategy in an athletic competition, and I don’t think that applies to “good readers.”  And giving pupils like my high school students a list of strategies to implement may not be the best way to encourage their use.  I’ll try to explain.

            Take, just as an example, Visualizing.  Any time I read a novel I am visualizing the setting, the characters, the events, etc.  But I am not doing this “consciously.”  I do not sit down with a book and tell myself, “Remember to visualize what you are reading.”  If you have ever gotten lost in a book you know what it is like to become so involved in the process of reading that the world around you melts away, and all you see are the words on the page and the images in your head; often it may even seem you are not reading at all but simply existing in the world of the book.  If someone or something distracts you it might take a minute to reacquaint yourself with reality.  That’s a great book.

            But if I tell students to Visualize, if I make it, in a way, an assignment or a task, I am making it conscious, I am focusing their effort on it.  My hope is that the “required task” will eventually become habit, but I am not sure that it will.  Unfortunately the psychology of the modern student, well trained by our educational system, is to do that which is required and then forget about it.  Visualizing becomes a task you must complete to earn a grade or points, not something that becomes habitual and valued.

            The question, which I have no answer to at the moment, is how do we get our students to read organically?  How do we get them to “use” these strategies without having to consciously think about the strategy they are employing?  How do we teach them to read well in a culture that is saturated with images so that they never need to imagine anything in everyday life?  I am not sure that presenting them with a list of strategies is the way to do it.

Ah, Technology

A few years back I started keeping my grades in a spreadsheet instead of by hand in the old fashioned gradebook of yore.  I saved the files on two different flash drives just in case.  This year we are required by the district to use the district's program to keep our grades (so that parents can have access to their children's grades on a continuing basis.)  So I figured out how to make that program calculate my grades the way I want it done and started entering grades into that web-based program; since also using a spreadsheet would be redundant, I only entered the grades in the one program.  Then there were all kinds of vague problems this week with the school's program (called Schoolmaster) and we couldn't get into the system, blah blah.  I got worried that the grades I entered would disappear and that was the only place I recorded them.  So now I am back to using the old fashioned gradebook as a back-up and double-entering grades just in case.  Ain't technology grand?

To the sentences!  As always these are from student work, and my comments are in (   ).

- His body was based on putting revenge onto others.
- The Scarlet Letter portrays symbolism through many different concepts.
- The relationship my parents harbored...
- ... he owned no propriety to live on.
- Things can change in a minuet.  (I wouldn't know, having never danced one myself.)
- He must have always been in his late 20s.  (Lucky guy.)
... self preparing yourself...
- Dimmesdale''s gilt...  (It must have hurt.)
- ...the Black Man, Satin.  (Satan was what she meant, but Satin would be a pretty cool name.)
- During the time Dimmesdale simultaneously self-inflicted pain within himself.
- ... trying to coup with the excruciating pain.
- While I was eating my cake with Morgan's help...  (She ate some cake, or she was feeding the cake to you?  Think about it; this might be important.)
- While writing it where accidental ideas or topics come to mind which makes your writing special and good.  (Much about this "sentence" is "accidental.")
- ...the sperm downer that had helped to conceive me.
- Americans do not recycle their electronics and this is leading to massive increases in dumps.  (Every time I... you know, take a... I think about recycling my electronics?)

Hope all the students and teachers out there are happy to be back at it!

J

Minor Improvements

From about the year I started teaching, 1999, until June of 2010 the English Regents exam, given to all juniors in New York State, included four essays and was taken over two days, students having up to 3 hours on two successive days to complete each half of the test.  Recently the test has been shortened and now includes only one essay; however, the first three portions of the test are, in essence, the same as the old test, the students simply have to write paragraphs instead of entire essays.  You might think that, as I hate standardized testing, I would welcome this change.  However, the new test is only better in that it is a little bit more a sprint than a marathon, and it's easier to finish a sprint, even if you finish last.

Here is my chief objection to the test, both the old and new variety: the essay requirements force students to produce formulaic, boring, uncreative, thoughtless and terrible essays.  I will try to explain using the essay assignment that is still on the test, called the "Critical Lens."  Keeping in mind that the only thing that changes from year to year is the actual quote, here is a sample of a Critical Lens question:


Your Task: Write a critical essay in which you discuss two works of literature you have read from the particular perspective of the statement that is provided for you in the Critical Lens. In your essay, provide a valid interpretation of the statement, agree or disagree with the statement as you have interpreted it, and support your opinion using specific references to appropriate literary elements from the two works.
Critical Lens:
“…men are at the mercy of events and cannot control them.”
— Herodotus: The Histories of Herodotus, 1958

Let's leave aside the fact that most high schoolers have no idea who Herodotus was, (I don't), and the fact that the publishing date of 1958 is no help and may be a hindrance to them since he lived from 484 BC to 425 BC (Wikipedia), and did not see the 1950s in all their glory, as some students might assume.  Let's also leave aside one of my favorite maxims, which I think I made up myself but certainly someone wiser may have said well before me, which is that there is nothing so insidious as a quote out of context.

Problem 1: No matter how interesting the quote itself may be, students are not supposed to discuss it as a statement or ponder its truth in any depth.  Sure they have to agree or disagree, but they need provide no basis for their opinion, they need not discuss how they came to agree or disagree.  The "Critical Lens" is nothing more than a tool in an exercise which the test pretends is "literary criticism."  The above quote is certainly open to much interesting debate, which I can envision being very intellectually stimulating, but that debate is not part of this exercise.

Problem 2: Students are not permitted to have their own ideas about literature, or to have their own opinions about the meaning of a work, but must evaluate literature "from the perspective of the critical lens," even if that perspective is not theirs.  Students don't pick a quote that they think encapsulates a particular piece that they have read.  They sit down at a test and are given a quote they have never seen before and have to fit it to something they have read as they sit there in the gym.  In other words, we don't care what you think, we care if you can apply the thinking of Herodotus to the thinking of two other authors.  Don't think, just write.

Problem 3: They can pick any two pieces of literature they want, so there is a good chance that the teachers reading the essays will never have read the works they pick.  If I have never read the book the student is writing about, and the student knows I probably never read it, how does this NOT encourage some world class B.S.?  In fact, I can assure you that the B.S. flows freely in these compositions, and who can blame the students?  One student once admitted to me after the test that he had invented a book that didn't exist to write about in his essay.  Another student admitted to writing about a "book" which that student was writing herself.  How am I supposed to evaluate the ideas presented if I haven't read the books?  Answer: it's not about the ideas, it's a phony exercise which pretends to be academic.

Problem 4: Who decides what is and what isn't a "valid interpretation of the statement?"  The test makers have not provided us with any guidelines in this area.  And does it matter since the student only has to "agree or disagree" based on his own interpretation of it, no matter how outlandish his interpretation may be?  A student who says that the above quote means that man can control his own destiny only fails if he doesn't support that interpretation with works of literature.  In fact, you don't have to have the least idea what the Critical Lens means in order to pass the essay (but you still can't ask your teacher with help in interpreting it.)

Problem 5:  This is the biggest of all.  According to the "rubric" we are given, any student who does not "support (his/her) opinion using specific references to appropriate literary elements from the two works" can get a score no higher than 3 out of 6.  Students know that they have to write about literary elements (theme, characterization, symbol, etc.)  Most of their body paragraphs become an attempt to prove that they remember what one of these terms means and that there are examples of it in the story or novel they are writing about.  Their focus becomes explaining the characterization in a story rather than applying the quote to the story, which is the "task."  This produces forced, unnatural, and shallow or even meaningless writing.

So, here is what we are forced to teach and what the students are forced to write: formulaic essays that will fit all the criteria of the assignment, and thus will score well on the rubric.  Yet these essays are boring to read because they are all so similar, and they contain very little thought of any depth.  Writing becomes just another exercise, and not a meaningful way to interact with others.

"We don't need no education..."

J

A Sports Metaphor

I bet most of the 5 people who read this blog don't pay that much attention to the "current issues" in education.  Which is fine; I don't pay much attention to the current issues facing doctors or lawyers or auto mechanics.  In any event, one of the current issues facing schools is standardized testing.  George Bush's "No Child Left Behind" act and Obama's "Race to the Top" legislation are both education laws that severely amp up the importance of testing in evaluating schools, teachers, students, etc.  I would not be surprised if soon somebody tried to figure out how to evaluate the bus drivers, janitors, maintenance staff, and cafeteria workers based on student test scores.  It's ridiculous, and counterproductive.

A few months ago I was discussing education with my brother-in-law Lee, who is not a teacher.  (He is a hot air balloon pilot, though, and I still haven't gone up with him.  It's on my To-Do list.)  Anyway, the subject of testing came up and I dismissed test scores as unimportant; I think he thought my dismissal a little too cavalier, countering that tests are how we know if students are learning.  Now, there are mountains of evidence, well researched and documented by people in the field of education, which shows that testing really tells us very little about what children know and can do.  But if you are not a teacher, or if you work in the Education Department of the federal government or any state, you don't read this evidence.  (If you are not a teacher I don't blame you; I don't read the Journal of the American Medical Association.  As for the people in government, that's another post.)

Anyway, here is what I said to Lee, who also happens to coach basketball at his Alma mater.  Imagine that you have a few weeks to prepare your basketball team for the first game of the season.  On the first day of practice you decide that their dribbling skills are insufficient, so you spend the weeks leading up to the first game doing dribbling drills.  By the first game your players can dribble forwards, backwards, with both hands, they can crossover, dribble between the legs, behind the back... and that's it.  They can dribble.  You spent every moment of practice dribbling.  You don't know who is a good shooter, or passer; you don't know who plays good defense; you haven't taught them what kind of defense to play or what offensive plays to run.  You have 12 players who can dribble a basketball, and even then, owing to the differences between them, some will be better at it than others.

That's what the testing craze in education is like.  A test is just one way we can evaluate ability, just like dribbling is one aspect of the game of basketball.  But schools today are forced by laws (No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top) which can defund and even close schools based on test scores to focus all their energies on tests in a few subjects.  If students aren't taking tests, they are taking practice tests, or they are learning "test taking skills," which is really just a fancy way of saying that we are teaching them how to game the test, or they are filling in test-prep workbooks sold to the schools by the same companies that make the tests (and that is a HUGE racket.)  Result: basketball teams that can only dribble, and school kids that can only take tests.  And in the "real world" the ability to take a test is about as worthwhile as the ability to dribble a basketball.

At one point in our conversation Lee's eyes lit up; it had just dawned on him that he got good grades in school, and liked school, and was considered a good student... and he was a good test taker.  On the fictional team, Lee would be a star dribbler.  By the way, I would have been too.  But it's not important, because being good test takers didn't really help us in the long run.  Even the good dribblers (test takers) are never allowed to find out if they are good shooters or passers or defenders.  And teachers have to go out of their way, sometimes even defy the powers that be, in order to figure out what other skills their students have besides "test taking skills."  (Oh, and by the way, if you want to know why kids get bored in school, imagine being on the team that spends every practice dribbling.  Even the ones who are good at it are bound to get tired of it.  What student runs into class and shouts, "Can we do more test prep today?  Can we take another test?  Can we eschew all experiential and engaging forms of learning in favor of mindless and repetitive test preparation that teaches us skills which will be entirely useless the second we exit this building?  Yippee!!"  I mean seriously, when was the last time the ability to answer a multiple choice question played a huge role in the direction of your life?)

As a last note, if you do have kids, I think you should ask them, "What did you do in school today?"  But emphasize the word "do."  Make them tell you what they actually physically did.  If the answer is, "We sat in desks and filled in bubbles, then figured out who filled in the right bubbles, and learned tricks and techniques for knowing which bubble is right," then I think you can see the problem.  I am going to go practice my jump shot.

J

The Hero?

Well, I have had a good month off from grading papers.  And though I have thought about new posts, this is the first time I have sat down to write one.  As soon as I did I remembered one of the last things we read in English 12 this year, and some of the odd responses to a short answer question from the final exam.

The book is Lord of the Flies, and the question was, "Who is the hero of the novel?"  Students had to provide support for their choice.  Most of the students gave responses I would expect: Ralph, because he tries to maintain order and common sense; Piggy, because he is logical and wants to be rescued; Simon, because he is the only one that really cares about others.

But a few students decided that Jack was the hero.  Jack, the homicidal, blood thirsty, self-obsessed, power hungry psychopath.  Remember him?  And their reason was because the fire he started is what got them rescued by the passing Navy ship.  In case you don't recall the novel, Ralph is the one who tries to convince everyone of the importance of keeping a signal fire lit.  Jack spends the novel focused on killing a pig; hunting becomes his monomania and he frequently dismisses the signal fire as unimportant.  Further, the "fire" he starts that gets the boys rescued begins as an attempt to smoke Ralph out of a thicket so he can be tortured and killed.  This fire then rages out of control, burning up the vegetation of the whole island, including the fruit trees that were the best food source.  The fact that a passing ship sees the smoke is the purest coincidence.

This, to me, is a classic example of poor thinking about ends and means.  And I began to wonder as I read those responses where this kind of thinking originated.  Why would a few of my students be quick to ignore Jack's murderous intentions just because his means had positive, yet entirely unintended, consequences?  I am no lawyer, but I would imagine that in any court of law Ralph would still be found guilty of attempted murder; his intent was clear.  Yet these students think that because he accidently attracted rescuers he must be the hero, even though he shows contempt for the idea of being rescued throughout the entire novel.

It has been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Chesterton counters that intentions for good are about the only thing the road to hell can't possibly be paved with.  But I do not quite know what to make of these teenagers who somehow manage to believe the road to heaven can be paved with murderous intentions.

Survey Says

Every year in June I give my students a survey of sorts about the year in English class.  In this post I share some of the more interesting or humorous responses.  Take from them what you will.  I have for a few questions distinguished the College English class from the rest, because College English really is a different class.  The students can get credit at the local community college for the class, and I run the class more like a college class than a high school one.  As always, my comments are in (   ).


Directions: Do you really need directions at this point?
* Yes I really do.

What was your favorite work that we read this year and why?
- The Lord of the Flies because it was actually in English, not all the confusing British stuff.  (Everything in English 12 was British Literature.)
- I didn’t like any of them.  The short stories were all depressing, the poems were written by crazy people, and Shakespeare makes my head hurt.
- I liked The Importance of Being Earnest best because it was humorous.  I don’t think I’ve read anything else for school that made me laugh more than once or twice.  It was such a change from what we usually read in school, even if several people in the class did not seem to grasp the humor.
- I liked the short story unit because the stories were short.  (And the inventor of the short story rests easily in his grave.)

What was your least favorite work of literature we read this year and why?
- The Scarlet Letter because it sucked out my soul.
- Macbeth, because I’m not British.
- Any of the sonnets because we had to interpret them.
- The sonnets because I forgot to read them.

What did you like the most about College English?
- I loved how we spent a lot of time talking about what we were working on and then it turned into a weird topic.
- I liked being more independent.
- I liked that it felt like we had more freedom with our writing.
- I liked the freedom of being able to write about whatever we wanted most of the time.
- I liked the freedom we had to choose our own topics to write about, and that we were given the opportunity to turn in rough drafts of our papers.
- It was very independent.  For the most part we had a choice of what we wanted to write about.
- The independent aspect, how we didn’t have to constantly check in.
- We had the freedom of choosing the topics we wanted to write about.  (Seeing a pattern?  This kind of freedom is almost never granted to high school students, which is why they are often so uninterested.)
- I liked that you were very honest with us and told us exactly what you were thinking – especially in regards to our papers.
- It wasn’t like a normal class.  We didn’t have to raise our hands and it was more like an open discussion.  (I always hated having to raise my hand in school.)
- We had to think; every other class I’ve had this year has required me to simply memorize facts to ace tests, but because we only had essays, I had to rely on my own thoughts and interpretations to do well in this class.
- The freedom to get out of the class exactly what you put into it.
- My favorite thing was how I wrote many papers and hopefully I can recycle these papers next year.
- Brutal honesty.  No beating around the bush in Mr. Chaffee’s class.  I did enjoy the volume of writing as well, even if you don’t think so.

What did you like the least about English this year?
- I did not like how there were no multiple choice questions, I actually had to think to answer questions.  (That’s too bad, really, having to think.)
- The constant fear of failing essays.
- People who complained about your jokes because they couldn’t understand them.  (I know, I hate that too.)

What have you learned in English this year?
- Always pay attention!
- A lot of things that really aren’t relevant to English.  (But I hope they are relevant to life.)
- Girls get angry when you forget their names; 2 out of 3 men know when to shut up.  (There were only three men in his class!)
- Mr. Chaffee grades harder than any other English teacher!  (I try; after all, you're a senior!)
- Stuff
- What redundant means.  (I wrote that word on her papers many times.)
- I have learned how it’s not good to procrastinate because it affects your essays.
- That potty training a three year old is a b_____.  (That's my three-year-old, not his... I hope.)
- Good thought is better than a correct idea with no work or thought behind it.  An answer that isn’t necessarily right is worth it for the work and growth behind it.
- I learned that there’s no sense in using a $20 word when you can get the same idea across using $1 words, and it’ll cost less.  I also learned what I’m capable of when it comes to writing.

Did your teacher give you enough feedback on papers, etc.?
- Yes, I think the 60s I received were quite clear.
- Oh yes, quite enough feedback.  My essays displayed much green ink.

Do you believe you have improved as a writer this year?
- Yes, because in past years they taught us to write a certain way, where this year my teacher pointed out my mistakes instead of saying my format was wrong.  (This is the danger of teaching to the test, EVEN if the test includes an “essay.”  Our students only learn to write boring, empty, formulaic essays.)
- Yeah, because you edited the crap out of my essays.  (I wouldn’t have to if there weren’t so much crap in there to begin with!)
- I do believe my skills at writing and literary analysis improved greatly.  Your opinion may be entirely different though, and since you’re the only one with a degree in this area, your opinion wins.  (Indeed it does.)
- I think I have improved.  I used to not be able to write a 3 page essay on one topic, but now I can do it while actually sounding somewhat intelligent.
- Yes, I learned how to write correctly rather than write for the Regents.  (Regents = State exam.)
- I think so, but I believe if I wanted to I could’ve put in more effort.
- Yes, I don’t make such grandiose, empty statements, for the most part.
- I was really wordy before this class, and now I’m only moderately wordy.

Did College English affect how you read literature?
- I don’t think it helped because the SAT told me I can’t read.
- No. I’m pretty good at reading.  I still read from left to right until the end of one line, then I go to the next line.  At the end of the page, wait for it, I go to the next page!

Do you think College English was on a college level?
- Yes, the workload was intense.  (You’re telling me.  I had to grade all that stuff.)
- You realize you are asking this of high schoolers?
- Yes and no; yes because of the curriculum, and no because we’re high school seniors and no matter how hard you try you can never cure senioritis.  (I could, but the cure isn’t “legal.”)

Do you have any suggestions about how to make the class better?
- Maybe take out the reading, assignments, quizzes, tests, and essays.
- More movies and more research papers.  (More research papers?  By the way, this was from a regular English 12 student who did not write nearly as many papers as the College English students.)
- Allow students to choose what to do for their final project.  Let it be anything that could relate to what had been done during the year.  Like maybe composition of several different types of poetry, or a study of the court manners from the era of Hamlet.  That sort of thing.  (This was from a College English student; it's a good idea...)

Is there anything you would like to say on any topic whatever?
- I would not want to have your job.
- You weren’t a horrible teacher.  I did learn a few things that might be helpful in the future.  Thank you.  (At least I wasn’t horrible.)
- I like pie.

I also like pie.  Hope you are all enjoying the summer.  I plan more posts this summer with some of my odd ideas about education, such as they are.

J

So Long...

I had four sections of seniors this year, more than I have ever had.  And on one of the end of the year class surveys (quotes from those in a future post) a student mentioned liking my blog.  I have known for a few months now that some of them have found it, and in fact a few are apparently in an odd way amused to see their own sentences posted.  You guys are strange.  So anyway, to any of you seniors who will be graduating, best wishes, good luck, congratulations, yada yada yada...  That said, here are some of your last English paper flubs.  Enjoy!  As always, these are real student sentences and my comments are in (   ).

- This poem has one main theme, adventure and a want for freedom.  (Not a math major.)
- So the idea of Gwendolyn marrying Jack Lady Bracknell finds obscured.
- Love is a connection between two soles.  (That's why married people go through so many shoes.)
- A poetic element allows readers to think about the poem which the message the reader thinks is being sent is created.  (Deep?)
- He feels out the forms that are required by the government.
- The society is living where bureaucracy is taken into effect.
- This quote has a lot of meaning that is meant to be interpreted.  (As opposed to those quotes that are not meant to be interpreted, I suppose.)
- Jack hives a simple life.
- I pity any woman who is maimed to a man called john.
- Contradictory comes into play...  (He's my favorite character!)
- Love and Marriage has been especially emphasized on parts that in matters of love and marriage are unimportant.
- Jack and Algernon altar the truth.  (If you have read The Importance of Being Earnest, this is actually quite astute.)
- They have met for only a day.
- Both Polonius and Laertes believe Ophelia's relationship with Hamlet is a pleasure one.
- The characters consider themselves are really not in any way.  (?)
- None of them are really in love takes time.
- ... there is much more two her...
- ...heirs to the throne must marry someone else who is of royal decent.
- ...him name is Ernest.  (And hims name is also Jack.)
- ...biologically his name really was Ernest.  (No, I think biologically his name is homo sapien.)
- This is as if to say that marriage is like perjury.  (I guess it depends on who you marry.)

I have some more essays to grade, and final exam essays as well, so stay tuned.  And as promised above, fun and interesting comments from end of the year surveys coming up too.

J