Deadlines, Brunch, and Breaking Bad

I woke up early Saturday morning to an email from a student who was very upset that she didn't get her essay submitted to the online anti-cheating portal, turnitin.com, on time. She is a wonderful, rule-following young lady, and she listed many reasons (careful to say that they were not excuses, aw!) as to why she couldn't get it done, including going to a crying friend's house until past midnight thus missing the midnight deadline. I believe her. But now what do I do? Do I penalize her? The whole point of the website submission is to prevent cheating. The site searches the internet based on strings of words in the essays. It then publishes percentages of matches. (see screenshot below)

You can even see the two students who did not submit on time at the bottom. They're two very reliable students, and consequently as I was making this screenshot, I realized the email-girl was not one of these. Yikes! So I guess I have to step back and think about the actual objective of having this resource. They all turned in actual paper essays on Friday in class, so whomever did not submit to this site by midnight shouldn't really be punished, right? As long as I let them submit it at some point so I know they didn't cheat, right? Am I being too soft?
This brings me to my next point: some fellow English teacher friends and I had brunch on Saturday (on Pitt campus for nostalgia purposes, of course!) and inevitably brought up school as a major topic of conversation. We can't help it--we love it! Anyway, we debated whether or not deadlines in school were too strict. One friend teaches middle school where they are now expecting teachers to accept assignments no matter when students turn them in "because they showed performance of the task." I can see that in middle school this might be necessary; in fact, I worked at a district that had separate report card grades for two categories: Academic Knowledge and Daily Performance. Essentially every single assignment had to be broken down into those two categories, and while at first it was a major pain in the neck, by the end it took onus off of the teacher and showed students/parents the true origin of the bad (or good) grade. For instance, an essay might be 30 points AK for content and 15 points DP for things like having it turned in on time, submitting a rough draft with the final copy, participating in class activities such as peer editing, etc.  So the end result is 45 points but now it's compartmentalized. Again, good for middle school, might be too much for high school.

We kind of tossed around the idea that real world scenarios have deadlines, but aren't they often flexible based on professional courtesy? I mean, the world doesn't end if a report doesn't make it on time, things can be worked around, apologies can be made. Does it really matter? That sounds really bad, but I guess it brings me back to reminding myself what the true objective is and focusing on THAT rather than the other little stuff. Maybe this is why I was a high school academic rebel. We continued to ponder whether it was a learning lesson in itself to take responsibility for late assignments and be ready to work with the consequences, and I think that's where we left it...because it was then my eggs benedict showed up and I don't leave a benny unattended for very long.

So yeah and Breaking Bad, I've been watching some of the marathon all day, admittedly this is like the 3rd time I've seen any of it. (cue the "OMGs") And this guy was a chemistry teacher? When are they going to make a show about a rogue English teacher?? And hmmmm what could that premise possibly be? I'm serious, let's work on this, people.

The Freshmen

Something so cool happened the other day.

On a whim, I gave my Argument and Debate students a snippet of the piece we read from Rosen's book Rewired ("Why Teens and Tweens Hate School.") I knew it would be a little over their heads, but it happens that most of them are gifted (scheduling gifted classes gets tricky..they end up traveling together a lot) so I thought I'd give it a shot.

I had a sub for a training session (for learning how to conduct an online class, can you imagine?! haha) so I had given them a table to chart their findings as they read. They had to put information on both sides of the spectrum and formulate an opinion after finishing the table; after that, they had a short reflection where they explained their choices.

The result? Awesomeness.

We spent most of the next class period "divided" (sitting on opposite sides of the room facing each other) and debating (practicing our learned debate skills, of course) the positives/negatives of Rosen's theories in the article. About 2/3 of the class chose that technology advancements were good; that they themselves were bored in class and needed to be educated using the newest and latest media. The other third (and I'm surprised there were that many!) disagreed and said that boring was ok for learning and gave some very insightful support for the theory that we shouldn't just cater to the ever-changing technological advancements.

I attached a picture of the notes below...some of the phrases are cryptic, but I think you can get the main idea.

Regardless that I tend to agree more with the "Affirmative" side, I thoroughly appreciate the "Negative" aspects as well. One of my favorites (that went on for awhile in discussion) is the fourth line down: "Traditional= organic learning." Students were emphatic that the older "book" style of learning forced students to learn on their own and formulate their own findings, whereas just going to technology for answers and resources was too easy. One student truly impressed me by saying that hard work is okay and actually very effective in order to be successful. He argued that students are becoming too reliant on instantaneous information and that we (teachers) need to remember that ideas come from somewhere (that's where the 'organic' comes into play) and how would technology and the cool new stuff even exist without an idea coming from someone's brain? 

Another interesting "negative" was that it was still boring, but just on a screen. Now, that is frightening! How do we avoid this? I think first and foremost we need to remind ourselves that just because we plugged our computers in and showed a video, that does not make for authentic multimodal learning. And clearly, as this picture shows, kids are picking up on these failed attempts.

So interesting that 9th graders had these wonderful insights. I was impressed and intrigued!

Which will hold true until they choose the topic for their next debate, which could range from "Is Batman better than Superman?" to"Sporks should be served in all restaurants." 

Ah, freshmen :)

One of Those Days When...

...I feel like a bad teacher! I did everyEVERYeverything to help students understand what I meant by "personal statement essay," but by the end of all four class periods, all I heard was...crickets.

I mean, I am talking after period 4, I regrouped and talked to a same-class colleague in the hall en route to period 5, got re-inspired on the lesson content, and this time...it was as if I had purchased a flat of crickets from Sam's Club. AND THAT WAS THE "GOOD CLASS!"

What was happening?

By the end of my fourth grueling College Writing class, I was ready to flop into my moderately-comfortable rolling chair and give up. On top of it all, I spelled three words incorrectly on 8th period's whiteboard, which are officially more misspelled words that I have written on a board in my entire teaching career (spelling nutso, I am). And they called me on it. It was fabulous, I tell you...just fabulous. It was as if I had stumbled upon some black hole teaching day from hell.

So I took a deep breath and starting "googling" (is that a word in the dictionary yet?). What could I find to insipre these seniors to write personal essays that were sure to wow the colleges of their dreams? I dug deeper into why I thought they were so lost; I asked more colleagues for their input. They assured me that this happened every time with with every teacher of this assignment, as it forces students to trash every writing rule they have learned since 3rd grade and stare themselves in the mirror to write a selfish, descriptive piece about an impactful time in their lives. Upon further examination, all of the teachers involved in this discussion chimed in that, jeez, this would be a challenging task for us, too, and we are considerably more experienced than the seniors!

Luckily, these discussions helped, and I found some resources on the internet that had some examples of good/bad personal statements that will hopefully give them better jumping off points. And I'm dedicating the rest of the evening to coming up with a creative lesson opener. I fear that I have lost a little bit of my "middle school mentality" after moving up to the "big kids" this year, and I don't want to forget that they're still kids and enjoy having fun in school. I vow to inspire them tomorrow! Cheesy teacher moment...no doubt.

But the theme here is that I don't want any more days like this. Next semester when I have to teach the same content, I am going about this a different way, and I can't wait for another shot at it. For now, I'm mentally preparing myself to go in with some new examples and perspectives tomorrow...get ready, kids!

Funny the Way it Is...

So I'm a teacher. I'm a teacher who loves finding the humor in teaching. Overall, it's humorous to me because I grew up not really loving education. In fact, I spent most of my high school days really, really hating education. Ironically as ironic can be, I find myself back at my own high school where my colleagues are my former teachers.

I actively remind them that I am sorry for my behavior.

My former scholarly disobedience and hatred of all things academia has, though, let me see from both sides of the coin. I feel like while I constantly feel a twinge of guilt about this, I can use this to help motivate students who normally would pull a "me" and just pull away. I am brutally honest sometimes with them, telling them that sometimes knowing exactly what happens in Hamlet isn't that important, but learning ways to translate seemingly impossible text is a skill that can translate into future success in a field of their choice. It's funny for them to hear a teacher speak like that, but I think to them...it makes sense. Because it does to me.

A little more specifically, being a teacher is humorous on daily level. My bff teaching buddy who lives several hours away shares early morning texts with me, often with multiple cuss words or complaints about how dark it is at 5 a.m. If we weren't able to laugh at these little annoyances, we would probably be on the road to becoming those old, bitter, ditto-packet from 1990 teachers sooner rather than later. While some people might challenge me and say that cyncism and sarcasm are not qualities of a good teacher, I think that having a realistic view and not being the Miss Squirrel ("Bad Teacher" antagonist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ1QWLPLBGc) is more of who I am. (please don't mistake this reference to me thinking I am the bad teacher from the movie--hahaha!) Anyway, for me, the humor standpoint works. I think...well, it's worked for four years I guess. We'll see. Stand by.

This blog is going to be a dedication to all things humorous in the world of teaching. I usually try to come up with one thing by the end of each day to tell a friend or family member in an anecdotal fashion, so I figured a blog was a good forum for a broader audience to see the enjoyment I have each day. So, then...enjoy!