Frustration Incorporation Irritation* Nation

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Frustration Incorporation; Iratation Nation

Well, it's paper-grading time again. This is, as a rule, always a bad time. It's feeling lately, though, that these times are getting worse and worse.

The first semester of this school year, when I had a parade of whiny, entitled kids run to the guidance department to tell on me for giving them the low grades they earned on their shoddy papers, sort of scarred me. I consider myself very fair with my grading. There is an expectation which I set forth at the onset, and I help and guide and conference along the way. There is a level of quality that I expect to see when I collect good copies. When that level is not reached, the grade goes down incrementally based on just how far off the expectation it is. Then, when kids get their graded papers returned to them, there's a strange level of surprise and cries of "But I worked hard on that!" Well, sorry, but it wasn't hard enough- I don't know what to tell you.

This semester hasn't been as bad with the complaints, but the papers have been worse! The first paper--a literary analysis on a short story--was a nightmare for me from beginning to end. I did more work than they did, for sure. I started by framing each and every short story and our discussion of it from the standpoint of whatever literary device I knew that particular story would be analyzed on the paper (since, of course, I knew the paper prompts while we went through the unit). So each kid had copious notes and examples of how the target device was being used effectively for every story. Then, when it was time to start writing the papers, I gave them access to a guide to writing such a paper, reviewed this document in class with them, showed them--step by step and piece by piece, from the introduction to topic sentences to integration of textual evidence to transitions to concluding sentences to conclusion--how to craft and each part of the paper. Then, after the broken down part, I went through a completed and effectively crafted example paper for them, color-coding it by part (transitions, topic sentences, evidence, etc, each getting a color) so that one could see simply by looking at the colors that each paragraph had all the same pieces. I taught them (and gave them a handout for their future reference) how to incorporate and properly cite their textual evidence. Then I conferenced with them about their thesis statements to be sure they were headed in the right direction on the paper. Then I conferenced with them about their outlines to be sure they were still ok, giving feedback on quote selection and topic sentences. Then I required a rough draft edited by themself and one other person with that other person also drafting a paragraph articulating what the paper seemed like it was about being an outsider reading it (so students could make sure that what they were meaning to say is what they were actually saying and could fix it before). Then the final paper was due.

One would imagine--and the one in question here was me--that the papers would be of a good caliber because of all the lead-in work we'd done. I was wrong. They were very disappointing. I struggled through them, shaking my head at how they didn't answer the question that was asked, didn't take feedback I'd offered along the way, didn't make modifications after their reader indicated that their paper needed changes, didn't cite things correctly or incorporate their evidence appropriately, didn't edit before turning it in, didn't meet page requirements, didn't didn't didn't... didn't do a good job.

I was disgusted and upset at that experience (particularly as that is the easier paper to write of the 2 core papers!), and I vowed that the second experience would not be as bad. I also vowed that I wasn't doing as much work with conferencing (which ate up a lot of class time and my own personal time and attention) since it clearly hadn't made much of a difference anyway since they aren't willing to make changes along the way due to laziness. I determined, though, that maybe the approach was part of the problem--maybe they would have had less difficulty with paper content had THEY known the questions for the papers as we worked on them in class, the way I had known them. Even though I taught to the paper topics, they didn't always know that's what I was doing.

For the second paper, then, my first order of business was to decide that I was going to give them the paper topic question up front before we even read the literature that they'd be writing on. That way, they could constantly read with a specific purpose and through the lens of the paper. The second order of business was to assess the previous results from past compare-contrast papers. Those papers are classically not very good. Why, I wondered? I know why: because I usually have them compare 2 pieces of literature, and those 2 pieces are often in verse (poetry) form, so maybe they'd have better things to say if they didn't have so much working against them. So I chose a prose version of Beowulf (one that I usually do with the Basic kids, which is certainly accessible to Academic level students) and decided to have them compare images of light and dark within in it (which are so prevalent that to miss them would mean one didn't read the text) which is also something I've done with Basic, so, again, Academic should be smoothe sailing on it. I organized charts for them to track light and dark images, and we read the text and their class discussions were really on point. I was feeling hopeful. Closer to the end, I gave them a bullet list of what should go in each paragraph so that when they were drafting over the weekend or late at night the night before, they'd know precisely what I was looking to see.

Even though I was backing off of the conferencing check-in points (since I didn't have time to conference anymore), I still chunked the assignment for them since they are inept at time management. First I had them draft their theme statements (after having a lesson on it), then I had them write body paragraphs one and two (which were due 5 days before the paper and which I checked and gave minor feedback on), then I had them write the intro and body 3 paragaphs (which were due the day before the paper and which I didn't check). On paper hand-in day, 8 students didn't hand it in! The papers have been gradually trickling in the rest of the week, but as of yesterday, 2 girls still didn't do them. Have I mentioned that, as a core assignment, this paper is worth 10% of their grade FOR THE COURSE???

As I've been grading them (since Wednesday. They are averaging Cs with me being generous in the grading), I've become increasingly disgruntled. It's as though I didn't give them any instruction at any point in time. I might as well have said, "Write a paper on this book. But don't bother reading the book!" Here's the major issues I've seen:

• No theme statement (which is obviously an issue since body 3 is supposed to prove their theme!)
• Weak/missing/or off-task topic sentences (when someone puts on a requirement sheet "a topic sentence that expresses that lightness means goodness" or "a topic sentence that expresses that darkess means evil" is there really a lot of room for confusion?)
• Examples in the light paragraph don't actually contain lightness in them; examples in the dark paragraph don't contain darkness in them
• No connection back to theme in body 3, but instead weakly done, lame conclusion-type coverage in a paper that doesn't ask for a conclusion
• No explanation of the significance of the quotes selected to show light/dark
• Less than 3 quotes in the body paragraphs
• Misspellings, factual errors, use of 2nd person, contractions, not color-coded, incorrect font/margins, missing name and page number in header--pretty much no editing and formatting directions taken into account
• Inability to meet the minimum page requirement of a whopping 2.5 pages

One kid so far wrote about a different topic altogether and didn't cover light and dark but instead the duality of nature (which was the topic of the example theme statement I supplied them, so it isn't even as though he's being original!). One kid turned his paper in 2 days late and it was 3/4 of a page short AND missing 2 quotes. One kid turned in his paper with the pages out of order.

Today's batch just got worse and worse and worse. Ds and Fs abounded.

Reading them, I felt like someone was playing a cruel joke on me.

Not only did I re-structure this paper for them and choose a different, easier topic for them than I've done with kids in the past, but I thought that I'd accounted for everything and put it in writing and gave everyone a copy and explained and modeled and chunked and lowered expectations to such a degree that, in my mind, I'd created an idiot-proof task. I set these kids up for success.

AND THEY STILL FAILED!

It's hard not to take this personally. I can't help thinking of it and wondering what I may have done differently to make it easier still for them. But I know--and I know to my very core--that this is NOT my fault. This is not a case where there's been a miscommunication and they didn't understand what I wanted. This is not a case where the material was too difficult for them to discuss intelligently. They had the standards. They'd done good work with the material in class and already discussed it intelligently. No, this is a case where I was asking them to do something, to show a product, to put a little effort into what they were doing. This was a case where I was asking them tothink. But that is something that they just will not do. And how dare I ask them to do it?

I can say with some degree of certainty that I have spent longer grading and commenting on some of their papers than they did writing them in the first place. I am absolutely giving them a lot more thought.

I don't know when it happened that thinking and working and effort became impossible tasks. But I do know that I have just about had it. I'm at the end of my rope.

I'm not even supposed to enforce my late penalties (even though I'm doing it anyway) because the shift is toward separating so-called behavioral characteristics (responsibility, meeting deadlines, being awake in class, for instance) from summative assessments (the paper quality itself). This means, for example, that if the kid who handed in his paper on Thursday had written an A paper, that he should get an A on it despite it being 2 days late. The penalty for his lateness should be addressed somewhere separate.

I think that's complete and utter bullshit. Here's my example: Say "Bob" is in the business world and is assigned a presentation for a Monday meeting at 9am when the dude from Tokyo is flying in. "Bob," though, isn't prepared at 9am for the meeting. Thankfully, "Bob" has the presentation ready on Tuesday and it's freaking excellent--the best presentation ever. Oh but wait-- the dude from Tokyo flew home Monday at noon and the company lost a million-dollar deal. Is that going to be ok? Is "Bob's" job efficacy going to be measured on the presentation he had ready the day after it was due or the one that wasn't ready when it was due? Exactly. Time management is part of life. Some people argue that school isn't business. I disagree with that, too. Schoolis business. It's the business of learning. And time management and organization and chunking assignments and meeting deadlines and creating a quality product in the time allotted to one are all lessons of life.

It doesn't matter what we do in the classroom, because kids today just don't care. They don't want to learn. They don't want to work. They don't want to think. And if we try to hold them accountable, we're the bad guys.

Oh yes, paper time is a very, very bad time indeed. It makes one face the hard, ugly truths of this job.

Uglier still: I have 17 more to go.

Posted by Natalie M at 10:19 AM 0 comments 

Labels: angry, bad students