Category: teaching

Here is where we grow

School doesn’t start for at least half an hour, but I’m already letting two students into my classroom because one of them thinks she left her vest here yesterday, and ninth graders often move in pairs. As I jiggle the key in the lock, a large figure lumbers up behind us.

 “Oh!” I smile, “I heard a rumour that you passed your Civics class!”

He lurches to a halt in the near-empty hallway and glares at me. My key finally turns, opening the door just as he leans forward and breathes, “I cheated on all my tests” – only he says “testes” and, their eyes wide, the girls practically tumble into the classroom. He shuffles away.

In the room, the lost vest is retrieved and then, in a significantly more graceful echo of what just happened, one child leans towards me and murmurs, “Why would he say that?”

My mind clicks backwards through the moment, and I realize what they think just happened. “He was embarrassed,” I reassure them, “because I gave him a compliment. Some people have a hard time being praised. He did not cheat on his tests.” I emphasize the word tests.

They nod, unconvinced, and head into the hallway just as he returns. They flee. He stops again and looks me up and down. “Do you still have that box?”

I know exactly what he’s talking about. “Oh, yes!” I feign distraction as I move to the front corner of the room. The box he wants is hidden under a desk. “I was just wondering if maybe I should get rid of it,”  I pause, “but if you really did pass Civics, I suppose you could get a prize.”

He squints his eyes. “Two.”

“Hmm…” I pretend to consider this. “Well, first I need to know if you cheated on any tests.”

He glances around, wary. No one is nearby. “No,” he admits, and I swear I see a bit of a blush on his cheeks, but I could be making that up.

For the next fifteen minutes, he rummages through my “Box of Terrible Prizes.” He holds up various items, considering. He tells me which things are still there from last year (hint: it’s most of them), and I remind him that they really are terrible prizes. Undeterred, he checks out tchotchkes and useless plastic toys. He asks more than once if I have anything that makes noise. I do not. He points out prizes that he brought in for trades. Eventually, I remind him that class will start soon, so he makes his choice. Two prizes. No noisemakers. Delighted, toys in hand, he shuffles out of the room, leaving me aglow.

******

Last year, when he was in grade 9, I taught him. Well, “taught” might be a bit of an exaggeration. Last year, we were in the same classroom and sometimes he kind of did English-y things. Often, he was rude to me and others. Sometimes he was very rude. By the end of the school year, even after he’d left my class, every time he saw me in the hallways, he sneered things like, “Oh. It’s you. I hate seeing you,” or “Seeing you makes my day awful.” I am embarrassed to admit that, eventually, I let this make me angry. 

Sure, I had read his school records and communicated with his middle school teachers, so I knew he needed a lot of time and stability to settle into a place. I knew his IEP and had read all his old report cards, but he drove me up a wall. I wasn’t alone; few teachers connected with him. I couldn’t imagine how his middle school teachers had been able to find what they confidently called his “sense of humour.” All I saw was an angry young man.

One thing about a school, though, is that it’s full of kids – and kids grow. And, whether we like it or not, we’re all sort of stuck there together for a few years while they do this. He is lucky to have a Resource room full of people who have kept an open mind about his growth. I will argue that I am luckier that he kept an open mind about me – or maybe he never quite realized that I was actually angry. And I’m lucky that those same colleagues have helped me see him more clearly, too. 

*****

This morning, I realize that I get his humour now: I laugh as he moans and groans about the quality of my terrible prizes; I snicker when he tells me that I need more, and that I’m clearly not giving out enough prizes – maybe this year’s grade nines aren’t as good as he was. I fake exasperation when he lingers as my 12th graders come in, and he scowls when I make him leave, but he’s here. He’s still here. And here is where we grow.

Once an English teacher…

The first hint was on page 194. Blue ink.

I was a little startled. I mean, this is a trashy romance. The main characters murmur and gaze longingly. I was enjoying the story, but I wasn’t exactly on the lookout for grammar errors; in fact, I’d consciously decided to overlook some of them. And yet…

“As if”? I nearly laughed. This is my fellow reader’s quibble? I mentally shrugged, then moved on. Until it happened again. And again. And again. Someone had taken her blue pen to the novel and fixed “like” – and only “like” – a dozen times throughout the novel.

Wait. I lie. Once, she fixed a typo. Indeed.

I imagine her reading along, overlooking the missed subjunctive, ignoring the diction (minx!), letting the anachronisms lie… and then she hits her limit… “like.” She shudders. She thinks of the years she spent in the classroom, teaching students when to use “like” and when to use “as if.” She thinks of endless hours of grading essays, the constant battle against the demise of the English language. Her fingers tingle, and before she knows it, she has a pen – because of course she always has a pen nearby – in her hand, and she has made the correction.

Once she’s started, she cannot stop. The pen is uncapped, the errors egregious – at least in her eyes. Surreptitiously at first, then with greater and greater glee, she fixes the error each time it appears. As the novel climaxes in a crescendo of smouldering looks and husky moans, with one final flourish, she amends the typo in indeed and, triumphant, re-caps her pen. The world is now a little more orderly.

The next day, chastely, she returns the book to the library. Maybe she glances about as she slips the book into the returns slot; maybe she holds her head high, firm in the knowledge that she is right.

One way or another, I got double the pleasure out of book two of Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series: trashy romance, and proof that English teachers never really leave the classroom.

September Looms

I gave myself the summer off, mostly. From blogging, from prepping for classes, from worrying about who can or cannot read and what needs to change or stay the same. I tried to actually relax – or at least not to be actively stressed. I attend zero conferences. I abandoned books I didn’t like. I didn’t plan a big family trip. I hung out with friends and family and quit Twitter. Overall, I think I did ok. 

I still have a week left before school starts, so this morning I rolled out of bed and plopped almost directly into our oversized beanbag to read a little of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Whereabouts. Instead of immersing myself in the story, however, I found myself wondering if I could finish it and return it to the library today, another item checked off the before-school to-do list that’s already filling up. My mind gleefully got into the go-getter groove, and soon I was listing as much as I was reading. Gah! Not what I had wanted.

I tried to shake off the looming lists and plans. I tried to read one more short chapter, but Hera – our cat – was having none of it. She scaled the back of the bean bag and dragged her tongue across my cheek. Skritch. Then she did it again. She clambered onto my chest, batted down the book, and looked me in the eyes. I knew she was right: time for tea and then into school to set up the classroom.

So I got up, neither fully relaxed nor fully tense, and lumbered down the stairs towards September.

It’s kind of a funny story

Commenting on student work, 2024 edition
Me, to a student who obviously used AI: please use your own words.
Student: what says this isn’t in my own words??
Me: I expect students to write in the doc I provide. I am automatically worried when I see a large chunk of work pasted in.
Student: I wrote it on paper before I pasted it onto the computer. If I find the paper will that help??

Um… that’s not how paper works.

That’s how I shared the story with friends. It’s all true, and dear Heaven, but this generation of kids…

But it’s also not the end.

Today, the last day of school, the student came to class. They finished up some work and, at the end of class, hung back at my request. We both wanted to see if all their missing work had been submitted, and I wanted to talk about that pasted-from-paper document. The student had resubmitted it, this time with a photograph of a handwritten document – the paper they supposedly wrote before they (magically) pasted it into the doc.

It was already hot – today’s high was 32C/ 90F and felt like 43C/ 109F – and the end of school was on everyone’s mind. I know I had to muster up all the calm I could find; I assume the student had to do the same. I opened the assignment. I showed the student how I could see the copy/ paste. I showed them the AI detector and the 100% AI result. I acknowledged that I could see the handwritten document, but shared my concern that the assignment didn’t fit the instructions. Then, as patiently as I could, I said, “I can see that you’re upset. Tell me what happened. I’m listening.”

Then I listened.

And it turned out that I was wrong. They walked me through their work and showed me their thinking. They hadn’t used AI to generate the text, but they had typed it up in Grammarly (because when you’re learning English a good grammar program goes a long way) so some of the words were not quite theirs. And they had followed the instructions, sort of, they just hadn’t organized properly to separate parts. And they were shocked that I could see the copy/ paste and a little hurt that I thought they might have “cheated.”

So we talked about cheating and about getting behind in our work and the shortcuts we sometimes take. We talked about the pressure of finishing all that late work and about talking to teachers rather than hiding. Then I thanked him for talking to me and shooed him off to catch up with his friends. The whole thing probably took three minutes, maybe two.

It’s not as good a story as the one where a student says “I wrote it on paper before I pasted it onto the computer” and the teacher thinks, “Um… that’s not how paper works”  but the real part of teaching, I think, is the part after the funny part – the part where we listen – and I wanted to write that, too.

Sort of tutoring

“Miss, are we done with that thing?”

He’s caught me in the hallway between classes. I hesitate, not quite sure what to say. He bulldozes ahead, “You should come get me from class today, like maybe thirty minutes in.”

Ah-ha! He wants to continue our reading comprehension sessions. Or rather, he wants to get out of his science class for twenty minutes.

“I kind of figured you should stay in class and work on your summative project,” I say. 

“Nah,” he scoffs, “I don’t understand any of it. I’m just making stuff up.”

I relent. “Fine. I’ll see what I can do.” 

So, about thirty minutes into his Science class, I pull him out.

The project is pretty cool, if you ask me, which he didn’t. They are supposed to be creating their own habitable planet and an alien race that lives there plus some other stuff, but I don’t get a good look at the project because he’s already asking a question.

“Is there a difference between mass and density?”

I tell him to look it up.

“But if you know, why don’t you just tell me?”

I just give him a look. He asks again, gets sidetracked for a minute, and then circles back to ask one more time. Silently, I take his computer and type in “Is there a difference between mass and density”. I turn the screen back to him so he can see the bazillions of responses.

“There is! I thought so! Why didn’t you just tell me?”

I ask him what the difference is. He tells me it doesn’t matter. I refrain from making a joke about matter.

Now he wants to know why the mass of the planets is listed as x1024 and how do you type up high like that? And also what’s a good temperature? Like, you know, a neutral temperature. And why does he have to use Celsius when he’s sort of used to Fahrenheit and actually he’s not really very good with either so is 16 cold? 

I ask him if he’s talking Fahrenheit or Celsius. “Either,” he says, “I just want to know if it’s cold.”

Every time he asks a question, I help him look it up. Every time a webpage comes up, he groans and says he doesn’t want to read “all that.”

“Miss, I just want to put down easy stuff and be done,” he tells me. “Can’t you just tell me the answers?”

I tell him that if he just wanted the answers, he wouldn’t have asked me for help. He disagrees. So I don’t tell him about distance from the sun, and I make him look up if a planet can have long days and short nights and whether or not it can always be Fall. He argues with me every step of the way, right up until he tells me class is almost over and he needs to go get his stuff. 

“Fine,” I say, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice. “Do you want more help tomorrow?”

Not like you helped him today, says a little voice inside my head. I mean, we fought for many minutes about whether or not he needed to know what axial tilt is. (He does, but he refused to read the information.) Classes end in one week. We are all exhausted and ready to be done.

“Yeah,” he says, “if you have time you can come back. I like it when you help me.”

So tomorrow I will once again sit with him and refuse to either answer his questions or allow him to barge forward without thinking. I will bite my tongue, and he will be frustrated with me, but apparently we’re both good with that. 

One more week.

Writing beside him

I’m helping a former student write a personal essay for his Grade 11 English class. We’ve talked it through, and planned a little; his next step is to write it. Reading and writing aren’t his forte – he’d much rather be on a playing field than in any classroom – but this story is important to him, and he wants to get it down on paper. So here we are, sitting in the upstairs lobby – currently one of the coolest places in our very hot school – and he’s writing.

This kid has my heart, as many of them do. Last year, he didn’t do particularly well in our first semester English class, so he agreed to change his timetable in order to be part of a reading class with me during the second. That alone took some courage: not everyone who needed the support was willing to accept it. Once there, he mostly tried, even when the work was repetitive or “not that interesting,” even when he took extra long body breaks or got frustrated by the “simple” books he was reading.

Knowing that history, I’m intrigued by his choice to sit with me in such a public place this afternoon. With only two weeks left in the school year, students are out of classes nearly as much as they are in, and many of them wander aimlessly through the halls. Several have stopped to greet us; pretty much all of them give us at least a passing look as we sit here at a student table and work. There’s no hiding that we’re writing together, no hiding that I’m helping.

Nevertheless, he’s nearly filled a page with his small, neat handwriting – a feat which would have been unfathomable last year – and his focus hasn’t wavered, though he has had to stop a few times to flex his tired hand. Meanwhile, I sit here typing my own story, this story, marveling at this moment of quiet togetherness amidst myriad other students. We are here, the two of us, writing; we are here, the two of us, writers. 

This sense of camaraderie has me thinking about what we mean when we say that teachers need to “get to know their students.” How well do I know him? I didn’t spend a lot of time last year asking him about his family, though I did call home when I needed to. I have no idea if he has pets, and am not clear about how many siblings he has. In fact, I don’t know many things about him, but I know enough that I can tell him, honestly, that I believe in him. I never told him he was a strong reader or writer; I did tell him that I thought he could be. I never told him this path would be easy – heck, I was clear that parts would be hard – but I did tell him that I thought it was worth it. Other teachers and coaches told him the same thing, complimenting him when he improved, noticing when he was reading, harrying him back to class when he was in the hallways. When he faltered, he had a team of people to remind him of his long-term goals.

Today, he has a story to tell, and he has found me. He says he needs help, but I think he just needs someone who believes in him to write beside him. What a privilege! I can do that any time.

Stolen Kisses

I’m walking towards the library in the middle of my prep period when movement in the stairwell catches my eye. A black t-shirt stretches across a broad back and muscular arms. A black hijab tilts upwards. Two faces come together briefly, then separate.

I keep moving. I don’t want them to know that their moment was observed. I want a world where kids can cherish a stolen kiss, hidden from other eyes, weeks before high school comes to an end.

When I return from the library, the stairwell is empty.

Nine Times

This morning was dreary: gray, rainy, and far too chilly for mid-May. On the drive to work, the spitting drizzle was too sporadic to merit even the slowest setting of the windshield wipers, but too persistent to be ignored. I rotated the on/off knob back and forth, back and forth. In the classroom, only dim light filtered through the high windows, making the space too dark for reading. I was forced to flick on the harsh fluorescent lights. Students groaned. Even inside the building, the air felt heavy. No one wanted to be at school.

Heads nodded towards desks during period 1. Half-lidded eyes flickered open, then closed. Students strove valiantly to pay attention, to fight off the malaise, but it was no use: several slept during work time. After a few half-hearted attempts to keep them on task, I let them rest. 

I had hope for period 2 – grade 9 – but they wandered in, half-dazed. I surveyed them as they read and realized that there was no way they were going to write an in-class essay today – or at least no way they would write a good one. We needed a change of plans. 

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. None of these ninth graders had ever seen it. Just what the day called for. On it went. 

80s movies can be tough for the students. They start more slowly and rely more heavily on dialogue than their modern counterparts. Worse, I wouldn’t let the students use cell phones – even though we were taking a break – so they were stuck actually watching. And then we got to this scene:

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – Nine Times

“Why are they so worked up about him missing nine times?” asked a student.

I snorted.

“Well, there was a time when if you missed ten days, you had to repeat the class.”

The students close enough to overhear this discussion looked at me in disbelief. And no wonder: over a fifth of this class has already missed over nine times; another handful have already missed seven or eight. And we still have five weeks to go.

“Like, you failed just because you didn’t come?” 

“Exactly like that,” I said.

And we went back to watching the movie. I’d like to think that the students had a renewed respect for Ferris, but I suspect they were simply shaking their heads at the weird things we used to do in the olden days.

(In case you’re wondering, it’s still a good film.)

Again

The assignment was due March 5. Today is April 2. So far, only six students have received grades. Why? Because only six have fulfilled *all* the requirements, and I’m refusing to mark assignments that aren’t complete.

Before you get worried, I don’t think I’m overly demanding. The basic assignment is to write a 100-word memoir. A complete assignment has a title and a story that is exactly 100 words. Students must use a spelling/grammar-check (I’ve recommended LanguageTool, but some use Grammarly)  so that no underlined problems remain, and they must label three “craft moves” – or good things in their writing. For the last part, a poster in the classroom lists things we’ve studied and they’ve seen multiple examples.

Some students have only been through one round, but most are on their third or fourth attempt. In years past, I’ve marked what came in, no matter how incomplete. But this semester, something changed. I decided that every single student was capable of following all four steps:

  1. Title
  2. 100 words
  3. Spell check
  4. Label

What is different? I wish I knew. The closest I can come to explaining is that I am taking my role as a “warm demander” increasingly seriously. To the very tips of my toes, I believe that every student in my class is capable of completing the assignment. Even more, I believe that they are capable of completing it well. So I keep returning the assignments with plenty of feedback (“I really appreciate how you’ve opened this fun memoir. Next you need to give it a title and run it through LanguageTool.”) and insisting they do it again. This weekend, one student turned in the identical assignment three times. Last night I caved and wrote in all caps, “USE THE FEEDBACK.” Today, they finally asked for the explanation they required to finish their work. 

I’m not sure that I’m making the right choice, and I need to be clear that I am consistently upbeat and encouraging as I hand back the assignments (again and again with no mark), but I figure if they learn nothing else this semester besides “follow all the steps” that’s probably a reasonable life skill. 

Now, off to write, again, “True compliment about the writing. Next, you need to give your good work a title and run it through LanguageTool.” I’m betting I can get 24 completed assignments by the end of next week because I’m pretty sure I’m more stubborn than they are – at least about getting this right.

The Truth About Stories #SOL24 31/31

In grade 9, we’ve moved from our first unit – Stories of Us – into our second – Stories of Others. We’ve written Where I’m From using not only George Ella Lyon’s wonderful poem but also interpretations by Melanie Poonai, a young writer from England, and Danika Smith, an Indigenous author from British Columbia, as models. We’ve worked as a class and in small groups to create Where We’re From poems that help us understand our class as a whole. Students turned these into posters or short videos – and the school board’s print shop has delivered gorgeous prints that now decorate our room. We’ve written our own 100-word memoirs, too. Now, it’s time to look outside our classroom walls.

It’s also March, which means that I am in the middle of writing and publishing stories every day. I tell the students about this, and they are interested, impressed, curious, bored, and not listening. Some of them want to know where I get the stories from. I laugh and say, “from you.”

For a few days, we listen to StoryCorps interviews and look at Instagram posts from Humans of New York. We practice active listening and asking follow-up questions. Then, I put this quote up in the right-hand corner of the blackboard as one of our daily quotes:

The truth about stories is that that’s all we are. 
-Thomas King

After reading time, I draw their attention to King’s words. I ask what they think he means. It takes a minute, but when they arrive at an understanding, a few of them marvel. “It’s really true, isn’t it? Our stories are really important,” says one. “It’s like what we think about what happens is as important as what happens,” says another. I just nod.

I think about the quote all the time. I think about how I am made of the stories I’ve heard, the stories I tell myself. I think of how the way I tell the story affects who I am and how the stories themselves change over time. I think about the value of regularly capturing tiny moments, recognizing the story I’m telling myself as I live it. These stories are everything. As Jess writes, “There is gold in every piece of your story.”

Now, the students are out in the world (mostly in the hallways, to be honest), interviewing other people: family or friends, students or staff. They have to choose a tiny powerful moment from their interview – a story – and pair it with a photo. I post these on our Instagram account, and we marvel at the moments that shape our community. The students must think about what part of their interviewee’s story they chose to tell and what parts they left out. How will that change people’s perceptions? What story are they telling? These students learn to lean in to other people’s stories and consider them deeply.

This year, this part of the unit is closing as March comes to an end. Today marks the end of seven years of this challenge for me. I know that, tired as I am, I will miss this – the writing, the reading, the commenting – tomorrow and in the days to come. And I know it’s because of the stories people share, and the stories I choose to share, too. What a privilege it is to be part of so many stories! What a boon to be allowed so many views of the world!

If Thomas King is right, and I think he is, then I am so much better, so much more because of the stories others have shared this month and in all the months and years past. I am better, too, because of the time you’ve taken to read my stories. Thank you.