Month: November 2020

Is this graded?

“So, um, Miss? I’m just having a little trouble understanding what we’re supposed to do. Is this graded?”

My jaw muscles tense, and I immediately loosen my posture in an attempt to disguise my frustration. I’m about to launch into my “it’s all graded” monologue, when I take a breath. Pause, I tell myself, Listen. We’re only on Day 3 of 22. We barely know each other. 

I’m standing in front of some students; others are watching me online. What are they really asking? They are confused. They want to do well. They want to manage their time and their workload. This question – this common, annoying, awful question – is not a sign that things aren’t going well. It’s just a question. It’s communication.

I launch into my monologue anyway. After all these years, the response track in my mind appears to be stuck in a rut. I try not to go on.

Afterwards, when the kids at home have signed off and the ones at school have gone home, I close my laptop and allow myself to slump in my chair. “Is this graded?”

I can’t even remember all of their names. I probably won’t recognize them on the street next year if – when – we are done with masks. Semesters have become quadmesters, and every day of class feels fleeting and precious. Though we are supposed to deliver only the basics of the curriculum, there is still so much I want for these students. 

I want them to find joy in reading and writing, to remember what it feels like to create, to know that they can affect the world around them, that they *must* affect the world around them. I want them to take risks and to speak loudly. I want them to ask questions and reject the answers. I want them to be curious and to love learning. I want them to know that they are important. I have 18 days left.

Is this graded? Yes. No. I don’t know how to answer. It’s not graded, but it still counts. It’s all graded, but the grades don’t matter. They really don’t. 

I whisper into the classroom, “What matters is you” and I hope that the echoes of that answer will linger until the students return tomorrow.

Back to class

The night before, I chose my clothes, portioned out my lunch and packed my bags. As I left the house, I double checked everything. I headed out early, earlier than almost any other day this school year. My children, knowing how I felt, wished me good luck as I left.

At school, I pulled books out of the book room and speakers out of drawers; everything went into the classroom. I gathered blackout poems and other decorations from last semester’s classroom and brought them into this quadmester’s room. I washed the blackboard and found my coloured chalk. I waited. Nervous? Excited? Yes.

The bell. And then the students. Slowly, masked and distanced, they arrived. Well, half of them. The other half were at home – but no matter! After months of teaching from home, after a quadmester of teaching Spec Ed (which has its own pleasures, but which is very different from classroom teaching), I was in a room with students, and we were about to start an English class.

We wrote. We read a poem. We talked about it and about ourselves. And, like every single year, like every single class, they blew me away with what they saw, what they said, who they are. Sure, I made mistakes – I talked too much (such a weakness), some students couldn’t find the meet link, my written instructions were too long – and for sure the hybrid portion of the day felt odd. “Can you hear me?” I asked the screen of avatars. The screen said yes.

I know it’s a pandemic & I know this will be exhausting & I know things will probably go sideways (and backwards & upside down) But for now, I’m back in the classroom – the chaotically hybrid pandemic classroom, but the classroom nevertheless – and I am happy.

Studying

My older child is walking around and around the kitchen island, muttering under his breath in French. I am sitting at the island, trying to write. Without missing a stride, he switches to English, “I think I remember better when I walk while I say it out loud.” Then he’s right back to “carnivore: qui se nourrit de chair…”

He has a test tomorrow. If you ask him, he’ll tell you he’s been studying for DAYS. If you ask me, he’s put in a few good sets of maybe ten minutes here and there. If you ask him, there is SO MUCH to remember that it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE. If you ask me, he would find it a lot easier to learn about ecosystems if he made some attempt to see them as, well, systems rather than a series of definitions to memorize.

I have pointed out that I know quite a bit about study strategies. I’ve offered some direction based on research in cognitive psychology. (FYI: The Learning Scientists have excellent resources for this.) I’ve talked about how we remember things better in context. I’ve suggested that drawing the cycles might make them more memorable. I’ve even remarked in passing that I am quite literally a Special Education teacher who helps students learn better.

I am, nevertheless, still his mom, and moms of 7th graders don’t know much. He is determined to memorize every last word on every sheet of paper.

At last he agrees that I can quiz him. I’ve explained how our brains need practice retrieving the information, not just putting it in there, and that, at least, he understands. “It’s like smoothing down a path for the ideas to get back out,” I said. I think he liked the metaphor. And when he runs into trouble remembering “Les 5 Besoins Fondamentaux” (the 5 Fundamental Needs), I tell him a little story about the racoon who lives in the tree in our backyard. At the end he says, “yeah, that makes sense. That makes it easier to remember,” then he gives me a sly look before he says, “you’re actually a pretty good teacher.”

I ruffle his hair and smile, “I’m glad it helped.” I don’t tell him that the name of that strategy is “concrete examples.” And I bite my tongue as he goes back to muttering under his breath. “décomposeur: défait des plantes et les animaux morts.”

Maybe next year.