im returning thisessay 2U cuz u haven’t done any of th things i asked like for example u didnt capitalize i & u forgot that u half to use spellcheck and um punctuation cuz this is something u wrote for school also i specifically asked u to, you know, spell words out instead of using txt shorthand again cuz this is for school
yah & how fast can u get it back 2 me cuz i need it for report cards? Sry! I know its late but if u cd be fast that wd be grt. Also ur parents will freak on me if ur marks r low so id rlly appreciate it if u wd do this solid
I no writing formally might seem whack, but trust, its the move – or at least, it’s ur move if u want to level up
Twenty-seven. I have twenty-seven “This I Believe” essays to comment on, ideally before tomorrow morning. And that’s just for one class. It is 6:17. Wait, let me be clear: it is 6:17pm.
Y’all. This is not going to happen.
I would like to write “How did I end up here?” but I’ve been teaching too long to pretend I don’t know. These were due before March Break and I should have been done before I even left. But some people wanted extensions and some students were late, and I put things off, and here we are.
I would like to pretend that this is because our flight home was delayed yesterday, but I’ve been teaching too long to believe it. I was never going to get through these in one day. Getting home earlier would have made no difference.
I would like to think that the students know how they did or that it won’t matter to them or that this isn’t a big deal, but I’ve been teaching too long to fool myself about this, either. They want their essays back, with a grade.
The good thing about “teaching too long” is that I have learned to forgive myself for this. Am I a fast grader? Sometimes. Thorough? Pretty much always. Right now that has to be enough because there is little I would change about the past ten days, even knowing where I am right now. I loved my March Break – I loved travelling, seeing family, learning to scuba dive. I loved swimming, walking on the beach, and hanging out with my kids. I loved writing and reading in ways that were not completely focused on work (although anyone who knows me knows that I am pretty well always half-thinking about teaching). All of those bits – plus a few hours of lesson planning – mean that when the bell rings tomorrow morning I will be ready to teach again, focused and interested and excited for what each student brings.
After all this time, I’ve finally realized that teaching is an impossible job. There are not enough hours in the day or days in the week for me to learn and plan and teach and care and mark. I could work all day every day and still there would be more. In fact, sometimes the better I get, the more work I have to do. This doesn’t mean that I don’t feel guilty about work I haven’t finished, but it does mean that I handle it better, and I have a much stronger understanding that I am responsible for taking care of myself.
So here I am, reminding myself – and all the other teachers heading back to work – that it’s ok not to have everything done. Tomorrow, we will show up in all our imperfect ways, and the essays will (sadly) still be there on Tuesday.
P.S. And this is why I don’t assign homework over breaks. Everyone needs time off.
For multilingual Friday, I’m trying a photo “essay.” As I’ve worked on this, I’ve realized how little I know about this as a form. I have struggled for a theme, tried to figure out organization, made choices about what to keep and what to cut. I thought I was just going to play and share pretty pictures – and in the end, I think that’s what it looks like – but it turns out, given a new language, I had to work to understand form and learn how to manipulate things. Also, it looks different on a laptop than on a phone. Gah! If I had been at home rather than on vacation, I would have given up because this took so long. Makes me think of what I’m asking for when I ask my students to “just” write an essay or some such. Interesting.
The instructor gives the ok sign to each of us, one after the next, and waits for our mimed response. Next, he points two fingers at us and then at his eyes. Once he has everyone’s attention, he removes the second stage from his mouth and slowly blows out bubbles as he searches for his “missing” air supply. He finds it, puts it back in his mouth, and starts breathing normally again. Then, he points directly at my youngest child and signals for him to repeat the same actions. Nearby, I watch patiently, waiting for my turn, confident that, far from putting us in danger, this activity will make us all safer in the long run.
This week, my family is taking a scuba diving course. We’re learning a lot and I, of course, am busily observing both how we are instructed and how we are learning. I am always curious about how skills are taught outside of classrooms. Scuba is particularly fascinating because the consequences of not being able to perform the skills effectively can be deadly, but plenty of regular people scuba dive, so, while there can be no compromise, skills acquisition has to be manageable for all sorts of people.
Before we arrived on the island, all of us completed a five-section, multi-part online course with a final exam that we had to pass with a minimum of 75%. Each section built on previous sections for at least some of the learning (i.e., “How to be a Diver, part 3). As a family, we took four very different paths to success: one of us started early and learned methodically, using the “You will learn” introduction to each section to guide their reading, taking notes to learn “how not to die underwater”; one of us read the information in chunks, making sure they were able to pass the short required quiz at the end of each section before moving on; one of us skipped most of the reading but watched the videos for each section before “acing” the quizzes (not my word); and one of us went straight to the quizzes and tried them, then, once they knew what they didn’t know, went back to review only that section before completing the quizzes correctly and moving on. These choices were not obviously age-based, and no, I was not the one who took notes. We all passed the final exam, though one of us had to take it twice (72% then 80%). The last person finished the day we left on vacation. (Ok, that was a kid.)
If you’re keeping track… PADI (the group that administers the course)
used a focus checklist (“by the end of this section, you will be able to…”)
presented the information in both written and video format
offered low-stakes immediate retrieval assessment questions (we could redo them as often as necessary)
encouraged spaced practice by expecting us to review things we had learned in previous sections
at the end of each of the five sections, offered more retrieval with a section quiz which we had to pass but could retake and THEN
provided an evaluation which mimicked the section quizzes and which we had to pass with a 75%. If we needed to, we could review material and take it again.
That is decent pedagogy.
Today, we started the “practical” portion of the course with… wait for it… a written quiz based on the material we learned online. It was not for points. We simply took the quiz and then the instructor reviewed the answers and chatted with us about mistakes that anyone had made. For much of the information, this was at least the FOURTH time we had been asked to retrieve it. I don’t want to shock anyone, but we all passed this low-stakes review.
I’ll probably write more about the practical part of the course later, but I want to pause here and notice what I can take into the classroom from the written portion. For me, the lesson focus wasn’t particularly useful – I tended to skip that part – but one of my children loved using it to guide his attention. Interesting. We all spent different amounts of time with the information and took it in differently (I didn’t watch a single video; everyone else watched some or all of them). The low-stakes retrieval questions worked for all of us, as did the “do it until you pass” mastery quizzes at the end of each section and of the written course. The spaced practice was effective, too: if you’d forgotten something from a previous unit, you got a quick review in order to pass the current one.
I was most impressed, however, with the “extra” retrieval we did today. Let me tell you, everyone who took the course is very clear on the biggest ideas – and PADI has used both spaced practice and retrieval practice to ensure that we actually remember it.
Of course, a classroom is a different place. Most obviously, students’ motivation for learning in a classroom is not quite as compelling: rarely does anyone die because they forgot where to put a comma or mispronounced “epitome.” But I’m also thinking about how our family moved at different paces and took information in differently. That could happen in a classroom, to some extent. I think a lot about the Modern Classrooms Project, for example, which seems to account for some of that. My particular school is desperately low on technology, so I’m not quite ready to adopt the approach, but it seems right. I wonder what I could do to make learning in the classroom just a little more like getting ready to scuba dive?
Maybe I could just bring some really cool fish.
This tarpon – and her friends! – were at least three feet long & swimming casually next to our lunch spot.
Last night, after a long day of travel that culminated in beach and pool time, I crawled into bed, exhausted, and read a few pages of my new book (The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store). This morning, I woke to a long meandering chat with my aunt over tea and coffee. At some point, as I caught her up on my life, I talked about literacy. If you talk to me long enough, I pretty much always do.
She has recently gone through her books and had set aside some for me to look through, in case I want any. Would I contemplate taking books from an island back to Ottawa? Yes, yes I would. I am constantly looking for ways to get books into my students’ hands, and books cost a lot, so I am well-known for my – ahem – willingness to accept books. As a matter of fact, I brought books as gifts for my cousin-nephews, so I’ll have space to take more back if any of these look enticing. Now, out on the veranda, as I sit down to write, books and reading are on my mind, as they often are.
I know the 2024 NAEP Reading Scores have just been released, and I know they’re not great. I teach in Canada, but I have little evidence to suggest we’re doing a lot better. Oh, I know our PISA scores are better than most, but only if you consider having 50% of Canadian students reading at level 2 or below “fine”. I do not.
I’ve just spent a frankly silly amount of time looking at the statistics I linked to in the previous paragraph. I was reading because I wanted to be sure that what I wrote was true, and now I’m stuck for what to say. Thinking about literacy is a huge part of my life, but is this little blog, mostly anecdotes, really the place to write about this? Is today, sitting by the ocean, really the day? And what will I say that others haven’t said? My family is waiting for me (only half true: the teens are still asleep), and hey, I’m on vacation: I should be relaxing. But I am almost never not thinking about literacy.
Even here, on vacation, reading and writing are firmly part of my life, and I find myself wondering if what I want for students is realistic. Do I want everyone to travel with books? Do I think we all need to be “readers” (whatever that means)? I don’t think that’s what I’m after. I do want all students to have reading as a back pocket possibility. I want them to develop the empathy and the knowledge and the critical thinking that come from reading. Literacy is a pathway to many kinds of success, and I know that very few people who have achieved only functional literacy are able to follow that pathway with any ease.
Now I’ve gotten lost in the weeds of this post: I’ve been typing and erasing for too long and I feel silly for starting my vacation thinking about this, but I can’t stop. Do I write about what I’m doing in my classroom? Do I link to more information? Do I share my hopes and dreams for my students? Maybe not today. For now, I’ll go back inside and go through that bag of books to find ones that students might read, then I’ll snuggle in with my cousin-nephew and see if I can tempt him into the world of Dragon Masters, one of my own children’s favourite book series when they were his age. I’ll have to pull him away from the iPad, but it’ll be worth it in the long run.
And I’ll write more about literacy later – because heaven knows I’ll be thinking about it.
The thing about the March Slice of Life Challenge is that it always happens in March. Another thing that always happens in March – at least if you’re a teacher in Ontario – is March Break. Every year I tell myself that this is great because I will be able to write SO MUCH during March Break. I will go on vacation and everything will be relaxing and wonderful. I really should know better. I’ve been doing this long enough that I should be realistic about day one of March Break. And one day I will be. But not today.
On the first day of break, physics seems out of whack. Gravity works overtime; the air thickens and acceleration is slowed; every action requires more force to begin and results in smaller than expected opposite reactions.
Today, as in years past, I am sitting on the couch, mindlessly playing games – Wordle, Sudoku, Connections, Strands, Duolingo, even my Castles of Burgundy app – while telling myself repeatedly that I should get up, I should pack, I should write, I should…
Here, I’ll take a page from Sherri and make a chart:
What I’m doing
What I think I should be doing
Sleeping in
Getting up early
Having a second pot of tea
Emptying the dishwasher
Playing games
Writing
Duolingo
Commenting on other posts
Sitting on the couch
Laundry, packing
Talking to my mother
Talking to my mother
This is why it’s early afternoon, and I’m only starting my day – even though I’ve been up for hours. This is why even though I have lots of writing ideas, I don’t know what to write. This is why I wish that physics allowed for teleporters that would function exclusively to take tired teachers to vacation destinations.
Listen, I promise that one day I’ll write more. I will be witty! I will be wise! Today, however, I will accept the reality that today is not one day, it’s just day one.
We’ve been reading short stories in Grade 9 in preparation for reading Jason Reynolds’ novel Long Way Down. We’ve reviewed/ learned vocabulary like “plot” and “climax”; we’ve talked about summary vs retelling vs opinion; we’ve read a story with an ambiguous ending (because I know what we’re getting into); we’ve even practice discussing big ideas, like equality and utopia. Some days are good – like Tuesday, when the Socratic-ish discussion of equality led one group into a discussion about whether police need to be more powerful than everyone else; suddenly they were thinking deeply about the story and our world and things that seem awfully important – and some days are, well, less good.
Today, Thursday, I asked students to choose one of three prompts and write a one or two paragraph response. I firmly believe that this is a reasonable expectation, but 24 students means 24 different interpretations of reasonable, and some students were not happy with the request. Still, I was surprised when a usually strong student called me over about five minutes into our writing time, clearly distressed.
They had chosen the prompt “In your opinion, is the society in “Harrison Bergeron” a utopia?” even though they missed the day we discussed that. On their screen they had written, “No.”
They looked at me, a bit wide-eyed, and said, “I don’t know what else to write.”
“Mmmm… “ I said, “I can see the problem. I’ve made a mistake.”
“Yes,” they nodded emphatically.
“May I?” I asked, as I reached toward their keyboard. With permission, I typed, “Explain your reasoning using examples from the story.”
The student breathed an audible sigh of relief and said, “Oh, ok” and immediately began writing more as they muttered, “It was a yes or no question.”
Yes, sweet child, it was a yes or no question. Thank goodness I was able to fix it.
Thanks to one of my colleagues, many of us have this sticker on our laptops:
You would think that this would help us remember to turn in our attendance for every class every day, but if our Vice Principal is to be believed (and he seems reliable enough), it does not.
As a result of my inability to submit attendance for all of my classes before 4pm, I have written myself an attendance letter.
(NB: Our lovely administrators would never actually write a letter like this!)
Dear [Employee Name],
We are writing to express our concern regarding your recent attendance pattern: specifically, [insert problem here: you keep forgetting to turn it in].
Our records indicate that you sometimes take attendance as soon as class begins. We commend you for your optimism! We know that on those days, invariably, at least 12 students arrive late – generally walking in one by one over a 45-minute period – and thanks to our fancy tracking system, you have to keep a record of the time at which each student enters the class. We understand that this might be difficult for you, but noting their arrival time is imperative for our systems.
We are here to support you. May we suggest noting arrivals on a piece of paper and hoping you don’t misplace it before you enter the data later in the day? Do you even have paper near you? If not, why not? If so, where do you keep it? And do you manage to keep a pen, too? That would be impressive organization for a teacher who is also moving about the room to respond to her students. Alternately, perhaps you could pause your instruction, freeze the projected computer screen each time another student enters, then navigate to our school attendance site and immediately enter their arrival. Would that disrupt your teaching? If so, what is your plan to manage that problem?
Consistent attendance taking is crucial to the smooth operation of our school. Your attendance-taking pattern has impacted [explain specific impacts, e.g., our records]. According to our computerized records, your period Z class has nearly perfect attendance, despite the fact that one student no longer attends school at all. We note, too, that you insist that this class is “nearly unmanageable” with “students entering and leaving at will.” This implies that perhaps you are forgetting to submit your attendance for this class.
We are here to support you. Have you tried using a hall pass system? Perhaps students in this class would be willing to write their arrival and departure times on a piece of paper strategically placed near the door. Attention: do not write student names where others can see them; this might be shaming. We realize that all the other students have seen the late arrivals; nevertheless, we invite you to manage attendance privately. Maybe you can place the paper a little out of the way? And put a cover on it? And you will probably want to attach a pencil. We are certain your students will use this paper appropriately. Also, please note that even if a student spends 70 minutes of the 75-minute class period “in the bathroom”, you should still mark that student present and note the time they arrived.
We encourage you to discuss any underlying issues that may be affecting your ability to maintain regular attendance, and we highly doubt that your attendance records reflect anything close to reality. Please reach out to [supervisor’s name] to discuss potential solutions and support options available to address these concerns. Please note that [supervisor’s name] is unwilling to text you every. single. day to remind you to do your attendance. That’s what your laptop sticker is for.
We value your contributions to the team and want to work with you to ensure your attendance meets school expectations.
Word problem: Having been made aware – repeatedly – that photocopying is consistently the largest line item in the school’s budget, a teacher has nevertheless decided to make photocopies for a grade 9 English class. The activity will require only one day, so students who are absent today will not need a copy. 24 students are enrolled in the class. How many photocopies should the teacher make in order to have enough for all the students without “wasting” money?
Break down using the GRASS method.
GIVEN: Read the question carefully. Figure out what values are given. 24 students are enrolled in the class.
REQUIRED: Figure out what is required. Enough – but not too many – photocopies for the students who attend class today.
ANALYSIS: Analyze the question and use appropriate math operations. It’s one week before March Break and one (1) student has already left on vacation. Their parent notified you. Experience tells you that up to two (2) more students may have already left without letting anyone know.
24-1-1 = 22 OR 24-1-2 = 21
It’s the first week of Ramadan and class is at the end of the day. There are at least seven (7) Muslim students in the class. Some of them will be fasting, and some of them may be fasting for the first time in their lives. This is difficult, so some of them may go home before the end of the school day. Still, it’s only Monday, so probably most of them will try to stick it out. Estimate: one (1)
22–0= 22 OR 22–1= 21 OR 21–1= 20
The flu has been going around. Loads of students and teachers were out last week, some for up to five (5) days. Today’s list of absent teachers is long, and during period one, about a third (⅓) of the class was absent. This class was pretty healthy last week. Are they more likely to be sick this week as a result? Check the online attendance to see if anyone has already been called in sick by their parents. One student is marked absent. Estimate: at least one (1) and up to three (3) sick students.
22–1= 21 OR 22–2= 20 OR 22–3= 19 OR 21–1= 20 OR 21–2= 19 OR 21–3 = 18 OR 20–1= 19 OR 20–2= 18 OR 20–3= 17
Last week you sent emails home to several families addressing student behaviours. Of the four (4) families you contacted, two (2) replied. How many of these students will attend class today? Educated guess based on experience: three (3) will attend and one (1) will skip in frustration.
21–1= 20 OR 20–1= 19 OR 19–1= 18 OR 18–1= 17 OR 17–1= 16
Finally, students may not be able to attend due to “Acts of God”: “I missed my bus after lunch” or “I got suspended for fighting in the bathroom” or “My best friend’s boyfriend just posted on IG and another girl was in the picture so I had to stay with her because she was so upset” or “Sorry, Miss, I forgot it was a Day 1 and I went to my Day 2 class and I only realized it wasn’t my class after 25 minutes.” Estimate for today: an optimistic zero (0)
WAIT: don’t forget to add in the extra copy for the student who loses their sheet between the time you hand it out and the time they need to use it. (approximate elapsed time: 8.3 seconds)
20+1= 21 OR 19+1= 20 OR 18+1=19 OR 17+1= 18 OR 16+1= 17
SOLUTION: Solve the question. Maximum photocopies required: 23 Minimum photocopies required: 17
Repeat these calculations for each of today’s classes.
STATEMENT: State your answer in simple words. For today’s classes, in order not to waste money, the teacher requires somewhere between 17 and 70 kajillion photocopies.
Realize after all of this that at least three students will be gone for some or all of the class because of a volleyball game. Their coaches posted about this on the email conference three (3) minutes after you finished photocopying.
Sheri set a timer and did a free write for six minutes because someone else did the same, so here I am, jumping on the bandwagon on day two. And I should know how to do this: I freewrite all the time in my teaching practice because I am forever trying to convince my students that it is OK – even good – to just write. My goal for them by the end of the semester is seven minutes. I have no idea why, but there it is. And truthfully, for grade 9, at this point we’re aiming for five solid minutes of writing.
I need to admit that I have deleted a few times already – but I swear this is mostly free writing and if I were handwriting this, I would have just crossed things out, so that counts.
Why do I free write with them? I honestly think that seeing someone else write, watching their process and their struggles, noticing how they pause and keep going, seeing what they throw away and what they keep, can help students understand that writing isn’t about presenting perfected ideas – in fact, it’s about the opposite of that: writing is about honing ideas, checking them out, looking at them from different angles, dressing them up in words and seeing what they look like, finding the places where the ideas aren’t entirely complete…
That’s a lot of mixed metaphors, but hey, it’s a free write.
So I write in front of my students, near my students, among my students. In class, I tell students that a preposition is anything you can do to a cloud – you can go in front of a cloud, near a cloud, through a cloud, over a cloud – and then we write sentences with prepositions, playing with making very long, very silly sentences.
I started this blog in part to experience for myself some of the things my students experience: writing on a deadline, writing when I don’t feel like it, writing when I don’t have much to say, writing knowing that someone else will read it.
Time is up. Now I’ve done my one-minute post-writing clean-up (another trick I use – so they re-read and make a few changes) so I can post this. Then, tomorrow, when we’re writing, I’ll have proof that freewriting is “real” and even shareable. Maybe this will even help them write more.
Persistence and Pedagogy 