Category: #SOL26

Not bad for a blizzard

As an immigrant to Canada, I may never get over the way schools here handle snow days. In South Carolina, we sometimes had “weather days” because somebody somewhere had uttered the word “snow”; everyone freaked out, panic-bought milk at the grocery store, and school was cancelled. In upstate New York, where my sisters went to high school, school was occasionally cancelled because it was too cold out for kids to be waiting for buses. In Ottawa, if there’s a LOT of snow and we’re really lucky, they might cancel school buses, but schools are pretty much always open. “There are plows,” Canadians shrug. “Leave early.” And so we do.

This morning we woke up to clear skies and reasonable (read: still very cold) temperatures. There was no reason to expect buses to be cancelled. I didn’t even check my email. Luckily, my carpool buddy texted before 7am:

Hmm. A blizzard. OK.

Email revealed a message from one of my children’s teachers: students were “encouraged” to come to his morning class, buses or no buses. I woke Mr. 15 and sent him in. Mr. 17 said he would probably go in for Calculus because “it’s not snowing yet.” Blizzard-shmizzard.

No bus days are also “no new material” days because many students can’t get to school without buses. In practice, this often means that we end up with a handful of students and not much to do, but today was different. The few grade 12 students who arrived for first period asked to read their books, and then they did exactly that – for more than an hour! Then, during Reading class, we watched CNN10 and discovered that we could stream the Olympics – luge and ski jumping soon filled the room. 

Now, at the end of the day, I am sitting in a darkened classroom with students I’ve collected from several grade 9 classrooms. Kids have pulled out food (Where do they get it all? Is this what is in their backpacks? I’ve been offered both sour gummi worms and white chocolate.) and we are watching Olympic women’s hockey – Canada vs USA – while a literal blizzard blows snow outside the classroom window. There’s a steady undercurrent of talk and giggles. Phones are out, but kids are watching, too. They’re speaking Turkish, Arabic, and English while they cheer our team on. It’s not school, exactly, but it’s not bad for a blizzard.

Vocabulary Lesson

We’re nearly done reviewing yesterday’s words when a voice floats up from the back corner of the classroom. “Why are we learning these words? Who even says ‘persevere’?”

I bite my lip to keep from laughing as I face the class. “Persevere? Of all the words, persevere is the one that bugs you?”

Giggles. Yes.

It’s the second day of second semester. Most students have all new classes, but Reading class has only sort of changed. Sure, some students from Semester 1 have “graduated”; they are now reading at least a grade 8 level, so we’ve sent them off into the wilds of their regular classrooms. And some students have opted to take a break; we might think they still need reading support, but they need some time away to consider whether the hard work of improving their reading is worth it for them. Some students have opted in; someone has suggested that they might benefit from extra support, so they’ve joined our class. But the truth is that most students from the first semester are back for a second semester of improving reading skills – because learning to read takes time. This means our class is now a mixture of students who are deeply familiar with our routines and students who have no idea what we’re doing.

What we’re doing is getting ready to watch CNN10. Coy Wire, the anchor, is a fixture in our classroom. Every day, he brings us ten minutes of news, building background knowledge that was previously unavailable to many of our students because, well, reading. We started working with vocabulary in October, after Coy told us that “the perpetrators of the brazen heist at the Louvre were still at large” and I realized that our students didn’t know 

  • what or where the Louvre is 
  • what a heist is 
  • what brazen means
  • what perpetrators are and
  • what it means to be “at large”. 

Oof.

Too often, information swims right past these students, and their defense mechanism is ignoring whatever is going by. In October, I paused the show, and we developed a routine: say the word, tap the word, spell the word, define the word. Then we discuss the issue at hand: what on earth is Coy talking about? CNN10 is supposed to be 10 minutes long, but it often takes us 20 minutes to get through. Last semester, students mastered words like consensus, unprecedented, to mint, autonomous and scintillating. Their pride was almost tangible.

But that was then, and now it’s the second day of the new semester and the back of the room wants to know if anyone actually says “persevere.” Challenge accepted. 

“Hold on,” I say. “I’m going to find the first adult I can who is not teaching and bring them back here to see if they know these words.”

The giggles become shocked laughter. 

“I’ll be right back.” And I am. I return with Amy, an EA from down the hall. Not only is she extremely cool looking with her shaved head and stretched ear piercings, it turns out that she is the aunt of one of my students. Immediate credibility. 

“Ok,” I say dramatically, “have I prepped you in any way?”

Amy says no. 

“Have I whispered the answers ahead of time?”

No.

With a flourish, I turn to the class. “Are you ready?”

Yes.

I ask Amy if she knows the word “icon” and she gives the class a withering look.

“Seriously?”

They tumble over each other to assure her that they already knew that word and I just put it on the board for… reasons. They encourage me to continue.

“Segregate.” She nails it.

“Perpetual?”

“Goes on and on – like it lasts.”

I pause for an extra beat and take a deep breath.

“Ok, this is the challenge: Do you know what ‘persevere’ means?”

She does. 

“Do you think people use the word ‘persevere’ or is it one of those useless school words?”

Amy looks a little incredulous. “Um… people use it a lot.”

I give the class a triumphant look. They reluctantly agree that I *might* be right about ‘persevere’. Amy goes back to her classroom; we go back to CNN10. I begin making a list of hard words from today’s show:

Endure
Appeal
Scathing

And then… out of the blue Coy says that someone has “persevered.” Everyone sits up. Giggles. Grins. The back corner looks slightly abashed (not that they know what abashed means). I get side-eye and someone says, “I bet he won’t say it tomorrow.”

We shall see, friends. Or perhaps I should say, we will persevere.

Q&A: Report Card Edition

We are rapidly approaching the end of January. Here in Ontario that means plunging temperatures, rising snow banks and the end of first semester courses in high schools. That, in turn, means that stress levels in schools are ratcheting upwards. Students race to finish assignments and juggle projects from various classes; teachers push to gather evidence of student learning and struggle to mark myriad late assignments before exams. And everyone worries about report cards.

As a Department Head (officially known as a “Position of Added Responsibility” – a phrase designed to make it very clear that I am in charge of precisely nothing), I experience the end of January as a long series of “what if” questions that usually end in either frustration or confusion.

First, some clarity (it will be the last in this post, I assure you): 

  1. For reasons beyond my comprehension, Ontario uses letter grades through grade 6 when we randomly switch to numbered “achievement levels” (which teachers must then convert to percentage marks. So, A = 4 = 87-94%; B = 3 = 73-76%. Oh, and the A/ 4 range is 80-100%; all the rest of the levels have ranges of 10.) For this post, I’m going to use A, B, C, D because that makes sense to many people.
  2. A summative = a major final project; some classes have a summative and an exam; some have a summative and an exit interview; some have a different combination of things. Every class has some sort of final something.

“So,” a teacher sits down next to me at the lunch table. “I have a question.” 

Question: I have this student. They came to class for the first part of the semester and did really well. Lots of A+ work. Then they stopped coming a few months ago – I think maybe they were sick or something? I’m not really sure. Anyway, Guidance wrote to say that they’re coming back just in time for the summative. If they pass the summative, what mark should I give them?

Answer: Just ignore the parts where they didn’t come and, assuming they’ve done work for all the major curriculum expectations, give a mark based on what they did.

Question: So they don’t lose any points for not coming?

Answer: Nope, not if they’ve demonstrated their abilities.

Question: I have another student who emailed me that they were tired, so they skipped the summative and went home. Do I have to let them make up what they missed?

Answer: Yes.

Question: But their absence isn’t excused.

Answer: Exactly why is that a problem?

Question: A student told me they didn’t feel like reading Animal Farm, and they want to write their essay on Twilight instead. I haven’t read Twilight, and it doesn’t seem to be about the themes we discussed in class.

Answer: Wow! Are you complaining about a student who wants to read a novel? What sort of teacher are you? Of course they can substitute a random mediocre novel you haven’t read for the one you taught. And you should probably get a start on that book tonight – and maybe make time for the movie on the weekend, just so you’re well-versed on its world-building.

Question: I have a student who really loves the book series they discovered in grade 3. In fact, they love the series so much that they refuse to read anything else. If the lowest description for passing is “Limited” does reading this count as passing in grade 12?

Answer: Have you been paying attention? The curriculum doesn’t say how limited “limited” is. If they can read, they pass. Any reasonable grade 3 student should immediately be awarded a grade 12 credit.

Question: I have a student who attended class two times this semester. Can I give them a zero?

Answer: A zero?! After you’ve seen them? What are you thinking? They made it to class twice! Give that child at least a 30!

Question: I have a class that has done multiple major projects and essays. I already have all the evidence I need to evaluate their learning and I don’t plan to give a formal exam because it doesn’t make sense with the course content. Must I require them to attend during the exam day?

Answer: Ah… trying to slack off, I see. Wiggle out of exams, huh? We’re on to you! You must REQUIRE students to attend. And you must have something for them to do on that day that will help them improve their final mark.

Question: Hmmm… ok. I’ve made an exam because you told me I have to. Now  have one student who failed the final exam and another who skipped it. Can I…

Answer: Stop right there! Missing or failing the final can’t hurt their overall grade. What kind of monster are you that would let one day harm a child?

Question: Can you give me a concise explanation of what constitutes a passing grade for any class?

Answer: Have you been paying any attention at all?

N.B. Most of this is not true. Most of it.

Is it AI?

“Miss!” my student wailed, “my story is showing up as AI on all the checkers, but it’s not AI. I swear I wrote it!”

Forgive me if I immediately doubted her. The story was due that day and, from what I could tell, she’d spent at least as much time in class playing on her phone under her desk as she had actually writing. I also knew that she was very grades-driven, often sharing her results with friends as they measured their success and, I think, some of their self-worth by the numbers on their assignments. Others in the class might value learning over grades, but with her… I wasn’t sure.

Her friend made a face. “I hate those AI checkers,” she muttered, and she glared at me, as if daring me to say that her friend’s work might be faked. I knew she had just gone through a big blow up with another teacher over work that was flagged as AI. She had been extremely upset and threatened to drop the class (which would have harmed her far more than the teacher). Her guidance counsellor, her friends and I had talked her down, but it had been a near-run thing. And honestly? I figured she probably had used AI and was just mad that she got caught. Again, a nice kid, but very grade-focused.

I pulled up the first student’s story and glanced at it. My heart sank. The first paragraph was really good. “Don’t worry,” I said, even though I was worried, “I’ll check over your process work and trust that over machines.”

Her body relaxed with relief, and she slid into her seat. Her friend huffed again. “I wish every teacher would do that.” I wondered if I was being taken for a ride. 

What is this constant battle doing to us? I thought, and not for the first time. I hate that dashes – something I’ve spent years teaching students to use well – now make me suspicious. I hate that excellent work now immediately has me turning to AI checkers even though they are wildly unreliable. I hate that I spend time doubting my students’ integrity. The constant suspicion is eroding something in me, eating away at some social contract that I’m not willing to give up.

Last year, my own child’s teacher told the class which AI checkers she was going to use and what percentage of “probably AI” was acceptable. (Was it 12%? 8? Is it weird that some percentage is ok? And that we don’t know what that percentage is?) My child largely did his own writing, although as I helped him, I realized that avoiding AI entirely for his generation is not unlike my generation avoiding plagiarism entirely: there are surprisingly complex layers to it. Still, he did the work: researched and wrote, wrote and researched. Then, he put his writing through the AI checker, and it invariably came back as more AI than was acceptable. His solution? He put his work through a “humanizer” AI until the AI detector showed that it was human. 

I couldn’t decide if I should laugh or cry.

After school, I opened up the story that my student may or may not have written. The first paragraph really was excellent, but part way through, I started to see some pretty typical errors – little punctuation mistakes, wording that read like a 17-year-old rather than a computer. Still, just to be safe, I used a couple of AI checkers. They were all over the place. Useless. I checked her version history and her early drafts. Everything I had suggested that this was her work, so I proceeded with that in mind.

Still, I wonder what we lose as we learn the steps to this new, complex dance. Time, for sure. My students (and my child) check their work in various checkers, humanize their work and then turn it in. Then we teachers check the work in various checkers, look at version histories or keystroke trackers and grade it. Every minute we spend using these machines is time we could have spent writing or giving feedback or talking. We also lose a sense of trust – the students no longer trust themselves and heaven knows teachers don’t trust them. I have accused students of using AI who maybe haven’t, and I’ve definitely missed some who have. That, too, is a problem because the bar for acceptable writing is changing. I recently found some of my old college papers, and I don’t want to shock you, but they were imperfect. Now students have spellcheck and grammar checks, and enough kids are able to submit work that is AI enhanced that it’s easy for teachers to expect higher levels of “correctness” than are, perhaps, reasonable. It’s easy to get used to the glib, polished prose that AI generates and to see that as the goal even when we know that it’s not.

And what of my student? Was I influenced by my early concerns as I graded her story? I hope not, but it can be hard to let go of that early whiff of “cheating.” I think I did right by her, but I know I took on some mental load to do that. It’s all so much.

I have more to say about this, but I’m still typing largely one-handed because of my stupid broken wrist – and I’m not using AI to make up for my injury, so it will have to wait for next week. For what it’s worth, her story wasn’t perfect, but it was interesting and emotional. She got an A.