Pass or Fail: An Update

Not long ago I was worried that I would be failing half of the seniors in my poetry class. Last week I printed out missing assignment sheets for them and gave them two more days to get their work in. I debated doing it at all because I didn't want to give them the idea that I would always give them second and third chances, but the results are in and I'm glad I made the move I made.

Last night I entered the grades from all of their late work into my gradebook software. Instead of eleven students earning F's, there are only two! One of these students has only come to my class once in six weeks of school; I wouldn't even recognize her if she walked by. The other has a serious attendance issue and misses at least three days a week of my class. She makes it to her other classes, but not first period. There's only one D, too, which may be adjusted because he is a student with special needs. My poetry class is an interesting one. In the senior class there are ten students with special needs. Five of them are in my class. Last time I wrote on this subject all five of the students with special needs in my class were on the list of failing students and I wondered what modifications I needed to make for them. Turns out that giving them more time to turn in work was the way to go because all of those students are now passing. What is really exciting about all of this is that I figured I would have to reduce the number of assignments I counted for these students, but I went ahead and calculated their grades based on what they had turned in and the results were beautiful! All of my students with special needs have B's or higher in poetry without modification! One student even earned an A+. This same student has really struggled in other English classes. His dyslexia sometimes prevents him from spelling his own name correctly. He has been resistant to my class by complaining about it when he comes into the room and saying he wants to switch to P.E. but when it comes down to workshop time, he always has insightful things to say about the poems of his peers. His own work has stunned his classmates and he has a knack for hinting at something deeper than surface level description. I actually see that by the end of the semester he might be a fine poet. Because spelling isn't a big deal in our class and certainly isn't a topic to be discussed during workshop, he is released from his normal hangups. I can silently go through his poems and correct the spelling errors for him while praising the content of his work publicly to the class. I can't wait to see the look on his face next week when he sees that he has an A+ on his report card, especially because last week he had a D. This is the kind of reward we work for!

I'm feeling really satisfied with the poetry class right now. While Writer's Workshop is a bit heavy on the "I like this because..." comments rather than any critical feedback, I've decided to go with this for now. We've completed one full round of workshop where every student has presented a piece of their original work to the class for feedback. Even though this is a small school and students have known each other well for four years, they have expressed surprise at some of the things they've learned about one another in six short weeks of poetry. I am humbled that they have been willing to share this experience with me. Believe me, they were extremely resistant at first; I am the outsider. But they are moving forward and letting me bear witness to their lives. There is so much pain in this class. The short list includes child molestation, alcoholism, violent death, cancer, imposed immigration, and never knowing a father. They are writing through it and for the time being I will keep workshop as an uncritical place as they continue to become accustomed to the idea of sharing such raw thoughts.

I leave you with this anecdote from yesterday's workshop. A young man presented one of his own poems. He almost didn't read it to the class because he said, "I don't think it's really a poem. I don't know what a poem is." The class encouraged him to read it anyway and at the end they said, "Yes. This is a poem." The irony is that inside his poem he talked about being a tagger whose tag name was "Poem." Inside his poem he said he hates poetry and doesn't know why his tag name is Poem. I like to think that if he keeps writing he will become his name. I see the Poem in him already.