Last Week

Tomorrow is my last day teaching all five sections, as I am ceding the classroom control of the world literature classes back to Mrs. Moore. It has been a fun ride, but now we are wrapping up the Iliad unit. Altogether, I'd say I taught the class for nearly nine weeks, though Mrs. Moore still played a significant role in setting up the unit projects and has done more grading than I think cooperating teachers normally would. I have done as much as she would allow, but I can understand the desire to maintain control over the gradebook.

At the same time, Mr. Scott has given me complete access to entering his attendance and grades for the three sections for which I'm responsible. I have learned how to create assignments and update grades readily, and it is valuable to be able to view the students' cumulative grades. Mrs. Moore and I reviewed the final grades for the first marking period today, and the numbers are, simply put, abysmal. There are a number of students earning As and Bs--those are the students doing the work. And then there are the rest, most of whom will have great odds to overcome if they are to even sniff a D. I tried to evaluate what I have done over the course of the term, and I compared the numbers to my theater classes (well, the high schoolers), and came to a reasonable conclusion: it doesn't matter the content area, the approach or the difficulty level--students with the willpower to do the work will do well, and those who don't, fail. While it's presumptuous to based statements on just ten weeks in the classroom, it is evident that the students have been passed along, coddled and allowed to get by simply by doing the minimum.

I have given multiple appeals to the students, reminding them that even striving for sixty or seventy percent success won't cut it--those would be the employees who would be laid off first. Colleges won't look at Ds and willl be concerned with Cs. Students have to expect more from themselves. We've evaluated the work, too, and students even admit that the work isn't hard. So why don't they do it?

It starts when the students are younger. My middle school students hardly ever miss school and rarely miss an assignment. Granted, these kids are almost all overachievers, while the high school students in my classes have likely never fit that bill. That being said, I expect more from the students, and I don't put much credence into the low test scores. They suffer from test fatigue and believe the test results don't mean anything, so the students don't try to do well--they just get through it.

The other reason my seniors are not doing the work is that they have too much going on outside of school. They have jobs and sports and familial responsibilities--at least one has a baby at home to care for, and many fill in parental roles for their younger siblings. We have tried to be accomodating by giving students time to do work in class and giving them plenty of notice on more time-consuming projects. Some take advantage of the time, others don't.

I had my final evaluation last Thursday. My university supervisor came back to see the theater class presentations, which were a mixed bag of results. I tried to make sure the strongest presentations went first, and I ended up being a little disappointed with how the students did overall. Perhaps that's because my expectations were so high. Some groups did work really well together; others, well, I think I covered that on a previous post. Now that all groups have presented and the papers have been graded, I am proud that I took the leap of faith and went big for the research project. But after seeing the overall grades, I can understand why Mrs. Moore is struggling in her decision to pursue the big, exciting project she has planned for the spring, or whether she wants to stick with simpler, paint by numbers-type assignments. With such a high failure rate despite manageable, relatively easy work, how can one expect students to succeed with a more challenging project?

My feeling is that we must keep pushing. Students who are challenged consistently will work to overcome those challenges; apathy sets in otherwise. If I can continually push myself to keep the options limitless for students, I believe there will be success. And if nothing else, I'd rather be able to say I tried with my best, rather than settling for just getting by. Isn't that why I'm changing careers to be a teacher?