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.

Dealing with ADD

During today's kayaking outing, one of the boys was given his final strike and can no longer go out no the water with us. We were paddling through the Marina when a yacht tried to come in and dock. He had to get over to the side, but this one student paddled right out in front of the yacht and disregarded the instructor's demands. The truth is, I don't think this student knows how to paddle in reverse because he wasn't paying attention to instructions earlier. The instructor realizes this too and later was more sympathetic than when he paddled over to my student to yell at him that he would not be welcome back. The bottom line, however, is a safety issue.

I really feel for this student of mine (we'll call him Mateo). Whatever your beliefs about ADD or ADHD, put those aside for a minute and realize that those who are diagnosed suffer regardless of whether you believe in the disease/condition or not. Mateo stopped taking medication, per his doctor's orders, in middle school. He is off the wall on almost a daily basis. He talks in a high-pitched whine that is grating to say the least. He is also small for his age, but chubby which he publicly blames on free access to his uncle's taco truck. In the first weeks of school, he was my number one adversary until one day when he returned with his completed reflective essay after being dismissed from class and we had a heart to heart. He told me about the ADD and that he often gets angry in class. His angry materializes as incessant talking/whining and jokes. He told me he used to have a stress ball that he squeezed but students stole it from him last year (which reminds me that I was going to try to find him a new one and have forgotten it in my millions of other things to do). To make matters worse, Mateo is an outcast. The other students are dead tired of him because he is distracting in class, annoying, and different.

During our impromptu after school meeting, I suggested that he and I have a plan and a signal. If he needs to get up from his assigned seat because he is angry or overly restless, he shows me the signal and then takes care of his needs. I have a side table by my desk and a folding chair he can set up. Mateo now pulls his left ear when he needs to move. Well, that was the plan, but he's taken to just sitting away from the group on his own from the beginning. Sometimes he asks me if he can go for a walk and I let him. Yes, he is getting special treatment. I can hear my professor from the "Teaching Students with Special Needs" class I took last year saying, "Being fair is not treating everyone the same. It is giving people what they need as individuals." It is better for Mateo if he can walk away. It is also better for the class who can then concentrate on their own work. The good thing about Mateo is that he is smart and he has skills. With five minutes of focus he can do what takes other students a half an hour. This might be part of the problem and part of his lack of focus; it may be a way he's coped through being bored in school. I don't know. What I do know is that I wonder about the idea of mainstreaming all special needs kids. I want them to feel they are part of the fold of the school, but at the same time they do have the ability to severely stop the learning of others. If his behavior in my classroom became a safety issue as it does on the water, I would have the ability to remove him. But, that is not an option and I have to find a way to work with him.

I am getting better at keeping my personal irritation with him out of it. I feel like an advocate for him, and I'm frustrated that the other students are so mean to him. I need a plan and some supported back up on this because I think Mateo is in a position of being harassed and possibly even hurt by other students. I have heard tormented comments in the hall about him being "raped by his father," and there have been many comments made about his sexuality, students believing he is gay. One day last week, when I asked the class to write about what they would change if they could change anything in their life, he said, "I would change me. I'm too creepy and no one likes me." He was not shy or embarrassed about saying this but blurted it out to the whole class, who laughed and then got yelled at by me. I didn't fix the problem. I just got pissed off. The good thing is that as I write this update I know that I need to take this to the larger community. I am not the only teacher of Mateo's and we need to ensure his safety at our school. I'm off to write that email and then put my social worker hat to bed.

Pass or Fail

At a recent staff meeting we discussed the problem of students not completing assignments. One staff member suggested that when a large percentage of students are not completing the assignment, then maybe it's time to look at your pedagogy as a teacher. Several teachers felt offended or threatened most likely because as engaged teachers we are constantly examining our pedagogy and revising based on our students' needs. Soon there was division between those who think we are coddling our students too much by bending to their desires and those who think students really should be at the center of our teaching.

I'm not sure on which side of the divide I stand. But I do know one thing. After spending most of Sunday recording grades for my 18 seniors in Poetry Writing, there is a serious problem. More than half of the class has a D or an F. I'm required to submit grades this Friday. Several of these students are already on academic probation and receiving a failing grade in this class could be the deciding factor in whether they graduate or not. I am infuriated that this is the situation. I have purposefully structured the class so that it is supportive of the variety of special education students and academic probation students I have (my class is sort of like a collection of all the students who don't quite fit anywhere else). I told my students straight up on the first day that while I'll give them thoughtful feedback on their poems and suggestions for improving them, I will not sit around and try to decide if they've written a C poem or an A poem. For all intents and purposes, this class is a Pass/No Pass class. I tried to sell it to my class as "an easy A" or "the kind of class that will boost your GPA." I am shocked that so many are not taking advantage of it. There are currently seven students with A's and A+'s while eleven are failing. Granted, several of my "failing" students are special ed. so I will modify their grade by requiring fewer assignments, but as for the rest of them, I'm at a loss for words. It is not as if they didn't have warning. I distributed progress reports two weeks ago. I purposefully did not give them any new assignments for a whole week and gave them a deadline to get in their late work. Many of them turned in their work. One student even stayed until 5:00 on a Friday night to get his stuff done. The problem is that after they submitted late work, they slacked off again. They are now missing a whole new round of assignments and classwork. I am ticked off. I do not want to fail these students. I do not want poetry to be the class that broke the student's diploma. I don't want poetry to leave a foul taste in their mouth.

And yet, they must have a foul taste from school if this is how they are operating. I know that there is at least one "A student" in my class who has a "D." She is trapped in some sort of vicious circle of turning in late work only to slack off again. I don't know what to do. There are other variables, too, like the death of one of their classmates in the first week of school. Should that be considered in their grade, that many of them may be mourning and I don't even know or have any way to gauge this? Listen to this soft talk? Aren't I supposed to prepare them for the "real world"? How many of us have had to push ourselves through a hard day, a hard week, even when we experienced a family member's death, a desperate break up, a medical emergency? What employer out there is going to weigh all of this so gently and modify a grade or payment?

Where is the hard line? Is it in my classroom? A few years ago several new teachers who graduated from my program got jobs at the same high school. They were assigned senior English classes. All of these new teachers together failed a significant percentage of the senior class because they refused to give into the mentality of "Well, they are seniors. They aren't going to do anything anyway." All four of the new teachers were fired because of it, because they were honest, because they held their students to high standards. I sat down with my principal today and told her what was going on, and she did not bow down from the possibility of so many F's, though she suggested I think about the motivation of a high grade. I read her point, but I can't dole out B's or even C's to students who have not earned them.

These grades are compounded by a sudden drop in attendance of my class. Granted, it's a first period class. Many students show up fifteen or thirty minutes late. But many more are not showing up at all. Their grade is clearly affected by poor attendance as I give points for classroom work and participation. Most of the students I am most concerned about weren't even here today to receive the print outs of their missing assignments. In my mind, they deserve the F.

But then I think about extenuating circumstances. There's my student who has lost both her parents. She lives by herself now and works after school. Earlier this week, her car was stolen. And another student who lives with his grandmother and had a family emergency last week. Still another whose mother is an alcoholic. What good does loading an F onto an already heavy load do? What real world do I think I'm preparing them for? They are already living their own real world that I know so little about.

If I return to the idea of examining my own pedagogy, I become lost. I thought I was creating an opportunity for excellence, a climate of support and experimentation, a place to build confidence. I'd like to throw grades out the window because I hear my tired, sad, almost beaten down students trying to stand and be heard. I have to weigh if the passing grade or the failing one is the greater gift, and remember to give with love which doesn't always look pretty.