February 2, 2008

Mastermind

As a child, I was constantly re-vamping something. As I underwent the rapid change of elementary schools and landed finally in a school which instead of encouraging me to excel, actually tossed me back quite a bit, I began re-designing the school system. I didn't realize that third graders do not design school systems. It didn't occur to me that I was being presumptuous or precocious. I saw an inefficient system and I wanted to improve it. I walked around for days contemplating various issues from how to decide which classes were tracked, how many tracks to have and how to train the teachers to treat everyone. That last was especially important to me because I had started noticing what damage a teacher could do by choosing the wrong methodology.

Yeah, I know. What third grader does this?

The Mastermind.

You see, when taking the Meyers-Briggs personality questionnaire, I come out as an INTJ. Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judging.

People like me tend to build systems, to look for inefficiencies and fix them. And to a third grader forced to re-do 6-8 weeks worth of work upon arrival at the new school, the entire issue of public education seemed highly inefficient. And since this particular move from Austin to Arlington involved not just a movement within the area ... but a larger move ... it occurred to me that there was no national school system. Just lots and lots of little school systems.

So how in the bleeding hell could there be any standards across the United States? There weren't even visible standards going from Austin to Arlington.

Obviously, this is an inefficient way to educate our youth and build a nation.

Of course, I was the one to do this.

No wonder the teachers at my new school were at a loss regarding how to handle me. Since the INTJ personality type is found in just 1-2% of the population and tends to have far more males than females in its category, they were at a loss as to just how to get this "hysterical female child" who was pretty close to emotionless as well as quite serious and logical to shut up so they could get on with their jobs.

I considered going to the principal to discuss the issue, however, during the new student orientation, I had already decided that our principal did not understand that children are real, reasoning beings. She had that saccharine smile and was so quick to look away from child to the important adults. Marina Margaret Heiss says that INTJs tend to look at anyone who is "'slacking,' including superiors, [with dis]respect -- and will generally [make them] aware of this." I had learned by the age of ten that letting it be too obvious that I disapproved of lax or illogical behaviours (which I defined, of course, as behaviour not following my system of logic, which was, of course, the RIGHT system ... after all, I had honed it to an art form) ... I had learned that letting my opinion about such wrong logic or lax attitude was rather dangerous to my well-being and peace of mind. So, instead of talking to the principal for whom I had no respect, I began asking my teachers why they set up their classes in the way they did.

I rarely got a straight answer.

So, I began developing my own rules. In fact, by fifth grade, when I read Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, I was utterly enthralled with the character of Professor LaPaz who stated:

I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

I drove teachers batty ... I hated being in trouble ... I was a good kid ... and yet, there were times when they would watch as I deliberately disregarded a rule, cooly, calmly and whilst looking them straight in the eyes.

There was the instance of the substitute teacher in fourth grade. I needed to pee during math class. The substitute decided I was simply going to cause a disruption or that I was going to wreak havoc instead of going to the restroom. She told me that I absolutely could not leave. First, I hated it when any adult "decided" that "all children are X way." What an illogical system of belief!

Secondly, the deal is ... if I actually admitted to a teacher that I needed to go ... I was at least 10 minutes into the wriggling dance which means if I don't go soon, I'm going to burst my bladder or pee all over my desk. I absolutely HATED having to ASK to go to the bathroom. I wriggled and debated. I asked again. The substitute got angry and lectured the class.

I got up and walked out whilst she was distracted a moment later. I had to PEEEEEEEEEEEE, dammit.

Since our school was always in a state of utter chaos, with some 200 children in my grade level all in one huge "room" ... this was not quite the feat of stealth you might otherwise think. I went to the bathroom and then waited until one of the teachers rang the bell indicating it was time to change class areas. I waltzed back in, gathered my stuff, ignored her and went to my next class as if nothing had happened. I then, on the advice (okay, the insane egging on) of my friends, proceeded to write an "anonymous" note to the substitute telling her how evil she was and how behaviour like that was exactly how she was going to wind up "with dark puddles in the classroom."

Apparently, my regular teacher informed me upon her return, I made the substitute cry with that note. Not that I saw. She just looked pissed off to me. Which I thought was far better than pissed on, which was another option I had considered (actually, I thought about peeing in her desk chair ... meh, close enough). And the thing is, I didn't do this out of meanness to her ... but so that she would learn. Even considering peeing in her chair, I didn't understand this as a vicious act of grossness or vandalism. I thought I was logically teaching her something she needed to learn in order to be a better teacher. When a child claims they have to pee and does "that" wiggle ... you better freaking rush them to the bathroom!!

This happens in part because many INTJs do not readily grasp the social rituals; for instance, they tend to have little patience and less understanding of such things as small talk and flirtation (which most types consider half the fun of a relationship). To complicate matters, INTJs are usually extremely private people, and can often be naturally impassive as well, which makes them easy to misread and misunderstand. Perhaps the most fundamental problem, however, is that INTJs really want people to make sense. :-) This sometimes results in a peculiar naivete'

That's from Marina Margaret Heiss again.

I was obviously having issues grasping the social rituals there!!

The thing which perhaps confused my teachers and my family the most ... that confuses my friends today ... is that an INTJ tends to define success for themselves. We don't necessarily define it the way others expect.

I was a smart kid. I could work incessantly on some projects and pay attention to the smallest details - my system building tendencies at work. Worksheets and tests, I would race through, doing less than a stellar job and getting tagged as "not living up to full potential." I got high enough grades to keep almost everyone off my back or at least keep their displeasure to a level of background noise I could live with. The more astute teachers knew I was hitting that minimum just to shut them up and it either drove them nuts, or they docked me points just to make me work harder ... and a few special ones left me alone because my grades were my choice (of course, some didn't give a crap, either).

All of this has led to complications in my adult life, of course. The novel I completed for my master's degree remains in a drawer. I've never sent it out to be published. Most of you find that mad, don't you? All that work to create a world and write some 300 pages ... and do nothing with it? What was the point?

Eh, while a great many unpublished writers claim that they do not write for publication, most of them do at least have publication as a serious goal. I mean it. I wrote it for me. I enjoy having people read it ... but ...

My goal was to write the book. It was publishable when I finished it in 1996. At least, it was comparable quality and theme to other science-fiction books being published at the time. Today, I've seen other writers hit some of my same ideas. It doesn't anger me. It makes me smile. I was right on target. If I were to bother attempting to send it out today, I'd need to do some updating. It wouldn't be all that hard. But I don't do it.

Why? Largely because you need a one page summary of your novel to send out with the first three chapters and your cover letter - whether to agent or to publisher - provided either actually accept "over the transom" manuscripts. It's a process in which your work often gets rejected unread.

And, I find marketing myself difficult. I can market for products, for other people ... and I do a damn good job at it. But myself? Not so much. I want to fan out some of my work and let my work speak for me. I shouldn't need to do anything else. So trying to summarize my 300 page novel into a single page ... writing a cover letter for a job ... these are impossible tasks for me. Insurmountable problems. Social rituals that I do not comprehend and yet am forced to attempt to fake my way through.

From Personality Zone:

Masterminds are rare, comprising no more than, say, one percent of the population, and they are rarely encountered outside their office, factory, school, or laboratory. Although they are highly capable leaders, Masterminds are not at all eager to take command, preferring to stay in the background until others demonstrate their inability to lead. Once they take charge, however, they are thoroughgoing pragmatists. Masterminds are certain that efficiency is indispensable in a well-run organization, and if they encounter inefficiency-any waste of human and material resources-they are quick to realign operations and reassign personnel. Masterminds do not feel bound by established rules and procedures, and traditional authority does not impress them, nor do slogans or catchwords. Only ideas that make sense to them are adopted; those that don't, aren't, no matter who thought of them.

My partner, indeed, most people who know me well, wind up guffawing when they read that paragraph describing the INTJ ... it's so very much the distilled essence of me.

I enjoy being an INTJ and couldn't imagine being any other way. I'm quite comfortable with myself. However, I constantly seek to minimize certain INTJ tendencies ... I constantly grapple with how to market myself ... with trying to be a bit more outgoing instead of so intensely focused on whatever my goal is. (As Heiss says, "Whatever system an INTJ happens to be working on is for them the equivalent of a moral cause to an INFJ" ... and that can sometimes be quite off-putting to other people!)

And here's the real deal ... whilst I have a tendency to refuse categorization (I hate About Me boxes, for instance and mine universally say little about me except that I hate the damn things) ... this one category of INTJ does tend to "hold" most of my traits. But like any category, it describes an aspect or a trend and does not contain me.

So while I am an INTJ and proud of it ... I am myself as well. I am not constrained and defined by my personality type any more than other people are truly defined by theirs. I use that box as a jumping off point to understand why I act the way that I do and how I can improve my relations with others. I do not use it to limit myself but to improve myself.

And that, I suppose is why I hate About Me boxes. They don't serve to improve me, but to encapsulate me ... a distilled short form of me to feed to other people.

As with marketing myself in general, I prefer to fan out a selection of my work and let that speak for me instead.

Posted by Red Monkey at 8:44 AM | Comments (9) | People Say I Have ADHD, But I Think - Hey Look, A Chicken | Why Johnny Won't Learn and Mrs. Curnutt Is Tired of the System | Stumble

May 26, 2007

Captain, my Captain

Once upon a time, there was a book called Sound and Sense. And every Friday during my senior year of high school ... we worked on poetry in English class.

With all apologies to poets and would-be poets and enjoyers of poetry ... I friggin' hate most poetry. I adore Stevie Smith ... some Yeats ... ee cummings ... not a whole lot else. So, naturally, I was not ... shall we say ... enthused ... by English class on Fridays. I dutifully read ... considered ... and ... was mostly boreded. not because the words didn't move me, necessarily, but because poetry tends to be the last bastion of HIDEOUS conformity in American high schools. There is, according to many (but not all!), teachers of high school English, just one canonical interpretation of that poem.

B O R I N G

That's not what poetry is supposed to be about. It's about free-thinking, free-association, non-conformity, not just thinking but BEING outside the box.

In short, poetry does not belong in the hands of the average English teacher. (And I say that as a former English teacher who taught for nine years.)

In fact, my high school English teacher (who also taught at the local university), thought that I was something of a screw-up who didn't necessarily belong in AP English.

The truth of the matter was that I had already learned a lesson which was of vital importance to some (but not all) students. School, ultimately, doesn't matter. It wasn't my life, although my mother wanted it to be ... although I already knew I wanted to go to college and grad school. Playing the game of School was not so important to me as finding my own way was.

So ... I'm watching the commentary to Dead Poet's Society, and I go to Wikipedia ... as I am wont to do ... and discovered something that made me laugh.

The hideous "excrement" that Mr. Keating has the boys tear out of their poetry book ... is ... in fact ... nearly word for word an early chapter of ... you guessed it ... Sound and Sense.

Now, what really cracks me up about this ... is that I was, as usual, boreded. That class was just nothing to me. Another 55 minutes when I really just wanted to work on my novel and ignore the class, like most of my classes senior year. (Umm, since about third grade, actually.) I did the work. I did the reading. I regurgitated what we were supposed to regurgitate. And, going through those Friday exams as quickly as I could ... I began writing a parody of the poem we were critiquing (after I'd written the required interpretation essay of the "real" poem, of course).

My teacher, bless her, told me what most of my teachers told me through the years: "If you'd just slow down ...."
Of course, that was before ADHD was recognized, really. I was going as slowly as I knew how ... but writing a parody of the poem was far more interesting to me than writing the "official" interpretation of the poem.

Eventually, though, I got boreded with that as well and began using that time to write poetry of my own rather than restricting my thought to simple parody of the poem in question.

One Monday ... as our teacher was handing the tests back ... she began talking about one student's interpretation of this poem. I believe it was called something about Mr. Z ... and it was a poem about being black in the United States. And she talked about how one student interpreted the deliberateness of the title as Mr. Z feeling like he was last in society because of his colour. Yanno ... Z is the last letter?

Apparently this was a somewhat novel interpretation.

She first attributed it to Kyungah. Then Susan. She went down the "rank" of smart kids.

Each one said they hadn't thought of that.

In truth, it was me. I waited for her to remember. But she just about when down the list of students by GPA.

Because high school is not about free thinking. It's about conformity. And I managed to not conform on a regular basis. I wasn't a jock, exactly. I wasn't what we called a "drama mama." I wasn't a nerd. I wasn't the typical honors kid, even.

No matter how often people wanted to put me in a box and shut it, I had a tendency to unseal the seams and combine jock and drama and honors and slacker ... all together in one chaotic and yet truthful package.

In short, I tried very hard to seize my days ... to think.

And so I wasn't terribly surprised when Mrs. Ward couldn't seem to realize that I had come up with this "novel" interpretation.

But when Dead Poet's came out just two short years after I graduated from high school ... I was surprised that another writer had tapped into "my" brain so very well. Had tapped into that desire to both please my parents and be myself all at the same time, impossible though that was.

Captain, my captain.
I stand before thee
before you all

and scream my barbaric YAWP
from the top of my mountain
from the top of my desk

It's not what I say
It's not what I saw
It's what I choose to do

It is not that the sheet which leaves the feet cold is too small
It's not that we stretch it and pull it
It's not that it covers aught but our face

It's that we try
It's that we do
It's that we are.

It is not Captain my captain.

We are our own captain.
We must own our decisions.
We must own our lives.

Posted by Red Monkey at 1:00 AM | Comments (2) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Why Johnny Won't Learn and Mrs. Curnutt Is Tired of the System | Stumble

April 16, 2007

How Many Slices of the Pie Are There?

I know everyone in the blogosphere is going to be talking about this ... but I'm going to take a different approach.

I don't make any claim to know why someone shot up the campus and I'm not going to speculate on who nor why.

But I am concerned about a culture of anger and a culture of entitlement. And these are not just issues in the United States ... or even the Western World.

What is it programmed into us as humans which makes us think we deserved something that someone else has? What makes us think that hurting other people is a reasonable solution? or at least a reasonable reaction to our mundane circumstances? (I'm not talking about self-defense here ... that's another issue completely.)

Posted by Red Monkey at 2:49 PM | Comments (1) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Why Johnny Won't Learn and Mrs. Curnutt Is Tired of the System | Stumble

March 16, 2007

?-vert

When I take the Meyers-Briggs test, if I remember correctly, I usually score INFJ, as do many many teachers and professors.

People who know me are sure that's wrong.

Why? Because to people who know me, they think of me as an extrovert. They know I clown around, I'm silly, I'm me ... and I don't care who knows it.

But the fact of the matter is ... if you get me in a situation where I don't know anyone at all ... I'll become the standard wallflower. I'll find a nice darkish corner ... the back of the room ... and just stand there, silent. Watching and observing like a good li'l writer-person.

I've been thinking about that a lot this week where I've been mostly silent online. I've been working on a few projects, not the least of which was a book cover for a friend's poetry collection on lulu.com. (When it's up on Lulu, I'll publish the cover and the link to buy here ) But I've also been thinking about what it is to put yourself "out there" for others. And the answer is that I suck at it.

I'm willing to risk improvement, but it's a really hard process for me. Talking to people whom I don't know is a very draining thing. The deal is ... an extrovert will get an energy charge out of talking to others. An introvert will get an energy drain out of it.

When I taught ... and my goodness, how I absolutely adored teaching ... I had to gear myself up for it and I had to wind down from it afterwards. There was a tremendous energy drain involved in preparing for class ... but it was well worth it to me.

But online? Online I can be a bit of the extrovert that I can't quite be in real life. And that's not completely uncommon, either. One of the main reasons that many teachers are using some form of MOO or online chat with students is because some students will "shine" online ... whilst others will shine during a face to face classtime discussion but despise the use of the online "discussion."

But what I wonder ... as we venture further into the age of computers and virtual connections ... is how do we define introvert and extrovert now? We have this tendency, myself included, to talk about the "real world" and the virtual world ... but I wonder if Gibson didn't have it right all along. Is a friendship conceived and carried out over the internet any less of a friendship than that of one face to face? I think about the people whom I have only known online ... some of them for 11-13 years now ... and we still "talk" regularly via the internet. I think of those folks whom I've loved and still consider friends ... even though one or both of us have moved away and we only talk once every great once in a while. I'm not talking about people that I've chatted with for a few months and dropped away. I'm talking about friendships over the internet ... and face to face ... which have spanned a year or more ... and several "deep" discussions. The kinds of discussions which involve a serious give-and-take and can't really be faked by actor in real life or online.

Are my friends in the "Banshees" any less friends than those I made in N.E.R.O.? Sure the Banshees only talked through emails and IM conversations. But the N.E.R.O. folks generally only talked in relation to the shared hobby we had first ... and secondly our personal lives.

What makes being social being social?

I'm not, by any means, advocating that all online relationships are the same as ... or even as "good" as "real life" relationships. But I am wondering if Gibson's description of what we would call real life isn't better described as the "meat" relationship.

Because I think I have several friendships online which are just as "real" as some of those I have in the physical world.

Then again ... maybe I'm simply a computer geek who doesn't know any better.

But I think of the people I've met from Wales ... from Australia ... from Israel ... from China ... from England ... from Belgium.

And I'm so incredibly grateful for the perspectives from other cultures ... for the reminder that "people like me" are not the only ones on the planet ... and for the reminder that other cultures are really not so very different ... that I think ... these online relationships are every bit as real as that of those who live in the same town as myself.

And I also have to wonder why a physical encounter with people I don't know leaves me so incredibly drained ....

.... whilst a virtual encounter with people I don't know leaves me charged and excited.

Is it the collision of new ideas? The fact that I am on the border of introvert and extrovert? (on the border, but still solidly on the introvert side). Or is it something else.

Dunno. But I'm grateful for the relationships face to face and through the ether, both.

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:43 AM | Comments (2) | Blog | Why Johnny Won't Learn and Mrs. Curnutt Is Tired of the System | Stumble

September 26, 2006

OCD + ADHD = Uh-Oh

Back in the dark ages when I was in elementary school ... back before people medicated and worked with people who had OCD (Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder) and certainly before anyone connected that eccentric and "womanly" trait of everything-absolutely-MUST-be-in-the-correct-place with abnormal behaviour, particularly in a kid, I was in fifth grade language arts class with a girl named, umm, "Laura."

First of all, let me explain this particular elementary school. (It was the third one I'd attended, so even as a fifth grader, I felt like I was something of an expert on elementary schools.)

Butler Elementary began as an "open concept" school, with grades one through six in one large "room" of the building. Each grade level was "divided" by rolling bookcases about five feet high and more of these bookcases were used to lightly subdivide each "classroom" within a grade level. Teachers' desks were in a cluster in the center of the grade level area.

It was utter cacophony and chaos in that one large room. Now the one-room schoolhouse does have some benefits ... but only when you've got a total of maybe 30 or so kids. Butler had more like 1000 to 1200 when I attended there, not counting the kindergartners, since they had their own room.

At any rate, there was a LOT of chaos in the building. A lot of noise. A lot of movement.

And then there was Laura who had to have everything just so.

Sitting down next to Laura in language arts class, I observed the ritual straightening of the books and supplies. Laura was a diligent student. Hard worker. Earnest. Determined. She was bright, too, but I think the other adjectives far outshone nearly every other trait she might possess. So, no matter what was going on around her in our madhouse of a school, she was diligently listening to our teacher.

Except, of course, for the first three or so minutes of class. It took her that long (at least it seemed that long to me) for Laura to stack her books neatly on top of her desk, largest volume on the bottom, progressively smaller as we got to the top of the stack, which was her assignment notebook. On top of her books, were her pens and pencils and the nifty eraser-thing. All placed in a particular order and lined up exactly so. Once she was done getting everything exactly right, then she turned to listen to the teacher.

As I said, back then, nobody really put fifth-grader and OCD together in the same sentence.

I, being me, would be utterly fascinated by this procedure.

Naturally, as soon as Laura turned her attention to the teacher ... her full attention to the teacher, I would carefully move the books out of alignment with one another.

She'd look back and immediately fix them.

Now, I'm not talking about shoving everything askew, here. I'm talking nudge one book a small fraction of a centimeter one direction ... another one a tad the other direction.

I mean, at first I tried the cruder methods. I simply reached over while she was looking and mussed the pens and pencils. She'd sigh and fix them all. It was after a few days of this, that I decided to become ... well, what passes for subtle in a fifth grader.

I began to keep the pens and pencils lined up perfectly ... but out of order. That took her a while to notice, but when she did ... yep, she had to get it all back to her order exactly. She got up to do something ... I re-stacked her books to change the order of two books nearly the same size.

She noticed that instantly upon returning.

Yeah, back then they not only didn't know OCD, but they really didn't know ADHD, either. I could NOT simply pay attention to the teacher and I certainly couldn't leave this scientific experiment known as the girl who sat next to me alone either.

Eventually, of course, I'd either grow bored, or distracted, or the kids around me would begin giving me THAT look ... I honestly wasn't trying to pick on Laura and I felt bad when the other kids would let me know I'd been at it too long. I simply could NOT figure out why she had to have things EXACTLY so. I could understand having things just so. But absolutely precision aligned, military corners on your bed, EXACTLY so just boggled my mind.

And if nothing else, I subscribed to the idea that you can understand everything around you in your environment. You may not want to expend the effort, but you can figure everything out if you put your mind to it.

I could NOT figure Laura out and it bugged the crap out of me.

Even at that age, I could usually figure people and their motivations out. I knew that Miss Gillette absolutely hated me and took every opportunity to pick on me ... why? No, I wasn't being paranoid. It was because at the beginning of the school year, I didn't do well on my spelling test -- because the teacher with the thickest East Texas accent I had ever heard was pronouncing the words. I was placed in the second high language arts group. Within the first six weeks period, Mrs. Gaines realized I belonged a level up, but ... and to this day I can't fault her for this ... she enjoyed having me in her class. (See, apparently flattery does go a long way.) But, the last six weeks of the school year, she bit the bullet and had me moved up because she wanted to make sure I was placed in the high group for sixth grade as well. Long story short, Miss Gillette didn't really believe Mrs. Gaines ... and she really resented having a new student at the end of the school year.

So while I couldn't stand Miss Gillette, I knew her motivations. I understood why she often made fun of my handwriting publicly. (It was atrocious handwriting ... I had no patience for trying to write cursive neatly. Legibly, okay. Neatly ... impossible!)

Laura, on the other hand, I really couldn't figure out. And that just bugged me for the rest of the school year. Luckily, the teachers did NOT allow us to sit together the next year. I'm sure Laura was beyond relieved. (Provided she didn't request it to begin with!)

Today, of course, I realize that Laura either had OCD "tendencies" or full-blown OCD. I'd treat her a lot differently today. Of course, most of us don't still act the same as our fifth-grade selves, thank goodness. But for me, it's as much because now I understand why she behaved that way ...

... and I better understand why I couldn't leave it alone, too.

Still ... to the teachers out there ... don't put the OCD kid and the ADHD kid next to each other, okay?

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:45 AM | Comments (4) | People Say I Have ADHD, But I Think - Hey Look, A Chicken | Why Johnny Won't Learn and Mrs. Curnutt Is Tired of the System | TrackBack | Stumble

August 22, 2006

The End of August

It's the end of August, and I should be preparing frantically for my classes.

I should be worrying over the syllabus. Is it understandable? Do all the links in the web version work like they should? Will the students be able to follow the navigation?

I should be prepping for the first days of class. How can I make an impression that this is NOT the same ole, same ole English class? How can I let them know that they can trust me? That I'm not a grammar nazi? That I'll listen to any reasonable ideas for essays? How can I convince them that when I say any paper topic related to our class topic is fair game, I really mean it? How can I convince them when I know for a fact that many of them have been burned before....

I should be ... but I'm not. Instead, I'm working as part of a marketing department for a couple of dot coms. A lot of writing, a little graphics, a little Flash.

I should be in my office, music cranked, trying to learn the names of my new students before classes even begin.

The fact of the matter is, I can't be without health insurance. And there just aren't that many college level teaching positions for writing teachers which are considered "full-time" positions with benefits.

It kills me to know how many "professors" out there hate teaching writing. Or hate teaching first-year students. And it shows. Their students know it. And in turn, they hate the class, which makes the professor hate teaching it more, and on and on and on.

I love teaching. And I think most of the time I showed that to my students. I think they got that. I hope they did. I hope I made my classes as much fun as a required writing class can be ... or at least made it as painless as possible. I know I didn't reach every single student - that's pretty much impossible no matter how hard you try. But I never did stop trying to reach them all.

There was the student who I encouraged to tackle big issues in education, something he felt passionately about. But then he refused to narrow the topic into an argument he could conceivably argue in 10-12 pages. He decided I gave him a bad grade because I disagreed with him. I didn't disagree with him at all, but he could never believe that. It was easier to reject my offer to go with him to the library and help him with the research and show him how to bring all of his elements together - if he'd just narrow the argument a bit more.

There was the musician who thought that writing didn't matter at all. I tried to get her to write about how to educate a trumpet player (her instrument). I found her some articles, even. But she decided that I hated her and gave her bad grades just because she was a musician. I tried to tell her that a requirement of the class was re-writing her paper, not just changing three sentences and then hitting the print button. At least not when her essay was missing an argument completely.

There were plenty of other failures. Plenty of students who thought I played favourites. That I was mean.

That's pretty much a job hazard when you teach. I accept that. I just never let it stop me from trying to reach them. Never let it stop me from listening to them and trying to adapt my knowledge of academic writing to fit their worldview and experiences.

But, I also believe that there should be some standards that must be reached to pass a class. There should be some lessons that must be learned before moving on to the next level.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of schools which think that writing matters, but that grading writing is an impossibility. These are people who will shred a colleague's writing ... but hesitate to give a student a C or even a B for something so basic as not having a thesis statement in an argumentative essay. I just feel that if I work with a student all semester on having a thesis statement in an argumentative paper ... that I have told them in comments through three drafts, I've taken them aside to talk about it, I've conferenced with them and helped them write a thesis statement ... if we go through all of that together and the student STILL doesn't have a thesis statement in that same paper at the end of the semester, we've both failed. I failed to reach the student and teach them something. The student has failed to grasp an essential concept, an important and crucial requirement to writing a good argument.

In such a case, I cannot "give" the student a passing grade. The student hasn't earned it.

Does it hurt someone's self-esteem to fail a class? Oh hell YES it does! I know that. I don't ... I mean, I didn't ... give out Fs lightly. There was always a wrestling with the conscience. A weighing of the goals and requirements of the class; a reflection on what I should have done, could have done. Sometimes it was obvious that the student just didn't care to put the effort in. Didn't think it mattered or that they could actually fail a class. I worried that I hadn't made their imminent danger clear enough. I worried that failing a class could be the last straw for that student in some way that I couldn't know about.

But ... what does it do to one's self-esteem to pass a class and then start your first job ... and have your boss tell you that your writing skills are sub-standard? to lose your job because you can't write what the boss needs?

Okay, writing an academic essay and writing copy for your boss's brochure isn't the same kind of writing. But if you can't adapt to writing for a specific audience, are you going to be able to write the copy one way for the client and another way for the marketing department? Are you going to be that flexible?

What do we teach students when we pass them and they know they don't deserve it? What do we teach students when we pass them and they think they deserve it, only to find out "in the real world" that their passing grade was a sham?

When I walk into Target ... or Kohl's ... or even the local grocery store, I'm bombarded with BACK TO SCHOOL. It's like a sucker punch every time.

I should be preparing for classes today.

I should be flipping through the magazine of student essays and seeing how many of my students had essays accepted.

I should be excited over BACK TO SCHOOL everywhere.

But I'm not ... and it hurts ...

... and I can't help but wonder if the person teaching "my" students is doing right by them.

Posted by Red Monkey at 8:30 AM | Comments (8) | Why Johnny Won't Learn and Mrs. Curnutt Is Tired of the System | TrackBack | Stumble