December 6, 2012 · 9:41 am

Teaching Up

One of the last writing assignments I ask students to do is called The Last Word Is Yours (not my original assignment; I have taken it from some brilliant teacher somewhere who offered it up). In it, students are encouraged to evaluate the year, subjects they liked, ones that they didn’t think worked so well, and provide some overall advice about the class for future years. They tend to be honest, thoughtful and quite helpful.

About three years ago, one of my students told me–nicely, I have to note–that I should teach honors classes because he felt like that would be the group of students that would fit me best. I didn’t think much of it. I’ve always taught kids who struggle. I have never had a desire to teach kids who were on or above level; honestly, the challenge for me is to get the kids who are below up and past grade level. I’ve tended, also, to be relatively successful in those endeavors.

My niche was/is(?) kids who struggle.

Then, this year, through some over-enrollment problem (maybe?), I ended up with three sections of honors sophomore English.

Three. That’s teaching the same class back-to-back-to-back, which means that the first time is shaky, the second time the lesson is usually entirely revamped, and the third time, I teach it like I intended to teach it. I thought I’d initially be bored with the same thing, but it’s amazing how reflection helps to immediately change what didn’t work into what works better. (Side note: I should do a separate post about the power of reflection. It’s perhaps the most useful habit I’ve ever cultivated that I can directly tie to improved practice)

So maybe that student from the past is laughing now that I’m teaching honors, but I‘ve also gotten a much better understanding of what it means to teach for equity. Because in honors classes, the expectations are simply…higher. Read 30 pages and be prepared to discuss character motivations, motifs, themes, whatever. They do it. Write a 2-3 page response about something that interested you about this article, making intertextual connections that demonstrates your understanding of the essential questions. Done. Attend this event because, as a literary citizen of the world (what I call them), that’s what smart people do. Done.

This is similar to my realization that kids in the suburbs write more papers than ones in the city. Honors kids have entirely different expectations for what they’re expected to do. As we all know, though, kids rise (or fall) to our level of expectation. What would happen if we simply (ha, simply is such an understatement, but go with it) expected kids in the track below honors to do the same thing? Sure, we’d have to work like hell to make that happen–I mean, we’d have to counter years of low expectations and bad habits, but it’s been done before by numerous excellent educators–but what’s stopping us?

My immediate future goal is to create an intentional community in which the students in the track below honors spend a year with me and leave prepared to be successful in an honors class the following year. This means that I’m going to have to think about all the “stuff” that goes into creating an environment in which an honors student is successful, but geez–I spend my time immersed in data. Isn’t this another chance to look at the data in a way that actually privileges kids who need it most? I’m moving beyond deficits.  I already have some hunches, so I’ll spend the next few months creating this space and then, hopefully, the next school year making it happen.

Working Title of this endeavor: Project Lab Classroom 2013. I told a former colleague that this might just be the hardest thing I will have ever done in my life, but it could be the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life. I can live with that.

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November 11, 2012 · 11:12 am

On This Incredible Day

I returned to class to find that one of my students had taken some liberties with a poster hanging on the door. He/she had taped a picture of Sweet Brown, a Black woman made infamous for her reaction to a fire. She essentially became a viral sensation for all the wrong reasons.

Anyhow, her particular response, “I ain’t got time for dat” was what was posted. While I wasn’t shocked when I saw the meme, I was…disappointed, I guess. That’s the beauty about insensitivity and all that’s wrapped up with it (racism, classism, sexism)–when it hits you in the face, you have to deal with it. I mean, I could have simply ignored it, took the poster off the wall, tossed it in the recycling bin, made a comment under my breath about “these kids” and kept it moving.

I didn’t, though. I told the kids that I was bothered by the poster for several reasons, the greatest among them being that it traded in stereotypes. That it made fun of someone who was Black, poor, from a region of the country that was different from ours. And I’m sure I fumbled around for some other words, but I tried to raise awareness, but I also intentionally made a point not to preach. Preaching gets you nowhere. You’re better than this, I said, simply, finishing with something like I need you to be the people that ask questions about what we see, that make things right, that don’t do what’s easy because it’s funny.

On the fly, when grappling with issues like these, I can either be dynamite or dismal. I think I was probably somewhere in the middle: I was tired, I was annoyed and I was, as I said, disappointed. I mean, we’d had some breakthroughs already in class, addressing issues of oppression and inequality, so when this incident reminded me of how much further we all must go…yeah, I was fumbling and stumbling for my words.

I gave the same speech to all the classes. I will probably never know who did it, but at least the message was consistent: you’re better than that. We don’t trade in stereotypes in this classroom. Ask critical questions and make some change in the world.

That night, while checking my email, I found that one of my students had sent me a link to an article about ironic racism, Antoine Dodson and Sweet Brown. He asked if I could send it out on the class Twitter, thought it germane for the conversation earlier that day.

OMG. They GET IT! At least one of them does. All it takes is one, right?!

I can’t quite describe that moment: me sitting at the desk, with some cynicism attempting to dampen my spirits, and there’s this kid’s email…

Next day, I read the article to the group and explain that said student gave me the language I needed to express my frustration: ironic racism. We had some brief discussion and I posted the article, both on Twitter and on the FYI wall (the announcements section of the room).

I am so grateful to him first for being an ally (because I have few kids of color in my classes this year), for being able to speak truth to power, for giving ME the language to use…for taking responsibility for helping us all understand why we need to wake up and pay attention.

Yup. It happened. On that one incredible day.

And I can quickly summarize that in the days after, I ended up having some moving conversations with kids about awareness, about their own anger that people weren’t more outraged, about being invited to bring my fourth period to an assembly for LGBTQ awareness…all small steps to moving us in a positive direction.

I also realized that I, too, have a choice. I can be disappointed in the kids, or I can be heartened that–together–we can string together more incredible days, where events such as this happen.

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November 3, 2012 · 10:27 am

This is DEFINITELY on the test…

One of the tasks we oversee in my school is administering the PSAT. I have to proctor it to my homeroom kids, the majority of whom I don’t teach. Instead, we see each other daily for about 20 minutes of awkwardness: I tell them all the things the school says they need to know (upcoming events, educational tidbits, which of late concern the election, distribute lunch detentions that the deans give me to pass along to particular students). They half-listen, some annoyed, others amused at my seeming ineptitude for idle chatter and paperwork. It’s funny, too, because they all know each other from the year before and have existing relationships. I’m the new kid to that homeroom party. For the most part, though, we get through it, and are finding our balance.

This is the group that I was responsible for for the PSAT. Every sophomore at this school takes the test, whether they want to or not. Whether they have any idea what the purpose is the test is for, or not.

What I realized–during that period where you tell kids to write their address, fill in bubbles, sign their name–is that there are particular bubbles on the form that stand to either advantage or disadvantage kids of color. One bubble asks for them to identify their race. Another asks if they want to be identified for awards based on their race, while a third asked for their email address if they wanted to be contacted by colleges (and the latter is not just about kids of color). When I was walking around, making sure kids were filling out their forms correctly, I noticed a number of kids of color (not just Black kids), not filling out those questions.

I asked one of them why and she shrugged, said she didn’t want to.

Warm demander alert!

I suggested she fill out ALL of those forms. Why count yourself out before the game even starts?! Rinse and repeat same suggestion for the other handful of kids who were uncertain about filling out those questions.

As they proceeded to take the test and I proceeded to proctor, of course I began to think about whether other kids around the school had folks who checked to see if those boxes were filled out. Look, I love young folks, but when left to their own devices, they’re gonna skip things, but when they’re skipping measures on standardized tests that might actually benefit them in the long run (and I’ll loosely define benefit for these purposes), I worry.

So many measures are uneven and biased that if they can get some small foothold that positively influences their future, we have to make sure they’re taking it. Even if they don’t want to fill in the bubble.

We gotta pay attention. All the time.

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Aside

Othering, Adrienne Rich and Truth

My class is hard. I’m not going to lie. I ask kids to do a lot of reading, writing and thinking, and they complain but they generally do their work. That fact–that they always do their work–has taken some adjusting, as I tend to get about 80-95% of a return on my assignments in general if I’m lucky. Now, I’m probably always going to get 100%.

What I’ve found is that the kids of color and the low income kids are struggling mightily. I’m starting to (warmly) demand that they schedule conferences to talk about their work, checking in with them more frequently, encouraging them to stick with it. I need them to realize, through my words, my actions and my beliefs, that they can do this work. It’s gonna be hard as all get out, but they can do the work.

It’s discouraging when I give out grades and one student’s score has moved incrementally. I want to rage with her, at me (are you really doing right by these kids? I often goad myself). But then, just when I’m at the point when I’m wondering what I’ve gotten myself into and if my approach is wrong, the literature gives me an answer.

In this case, there were a few minutes last week before all my writing conferences began, and three of the kids were hanging out (I think one had intentionally “confused” his conference time and wanted to chat sooner rather than later; I obliged). I asked them some questions about their lack of participation, and one brave soul admitted that she felt intimidated by the vocabulary her peers were using. I told her that half the time, they weren’t even using the words correctly; rather, what mattered was that they were trying. That’s how you learn, I said. You got to get the words into your mouth, turn them around, so that they begin to feel like your own. Most of this work we’re doing, I continued, is about a willingness to try, and to know that yes, in the beginning we might all feel like we’re clueless, but at least we keep trying.

We’d just talked about post-colonialism and Othering and the Other, and I said something to the extent of, “You’re letting them Other you. You can’t let that happen. In a way, too, you’re Othering yourself because you think you can’t do it. Don’t let your fear win.”

Silence.

But that’s what it was, othering, on multiple levels: their silence building, their fear of not knowing preventing them from even trying to speak at all. After that conversation, I became even more aware of interactions and discussions and creating spaces for kids to enter into the talk of a classroom. (Funny how I forget my own hesitancies and reluctance when I’m talking to kids. I know exactly what it feels like to sit in a group and sweat and worry about how to interject, how to disagree, how to offer something new to the conversation. That’s why I’m trying to figure out how to get them involved.)

This week, we’re about to celebrate the National Day of Writing and a student’s father, who’s a poet, is coming in tomorrow to do some reading with us. He’s asked kids to read an Adrienne Rich essay, “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Writing,” as well as having them read several versions of a poem. I asked him to show them his process, of how a draft moves from an idea, through revision to a momentary final poem. He’s agreed, and I’m so stoked to see this all play out tomorrow.

I gave the essay out yesterday (Wed.) with the instruction to read it in preparation for Friday. One student, of the three that stayed behind last week, came into homeroom and said she was up all night reading Adrienne Rich.

Um, stop. Rewind. HOLD UP. She showed me her thoroughly annotated essay, pointing out places where she agreed with Rich, bold paragraphs marked to indicate where she was moved and inspired.

“I have lots to say,” she said. “I’m going to speak up. I can’t wait.”

And I still need to unpack everything that happened in that moment and I’m sure after tomorrow, when they blow my head open with their talk I’ll have to unpack even another suitcase, but here we were, a teacher who was quickly running out of strategies and a student who sincerely doubts herself, and there’s Adrienne Rich, offering us a way through.

Much of teaching is about trust: can you work with students, create a community that encourages them to take risks, to listen to each other, to try new ways to write, to read to think. I’ve also found that it’s about just telling them when you make a mistake (sorry, that timeline I proposed was entirely unrealistic. My class is not the only class you’re taking; let’s rethink); that you’re off your game (yup, I was up grading so I’m not going to get that other thing back to you today); that you don’t know (seriously, I’m going to have to look up this punctuation rule; I just don’t remember it).

This truth is incredibly freeing, and the start of something meaningful.

Rich: Yet, if we can risk it, the something born of that nothing is the beginning of our truth.

Maybe this is the beginning of their truth, too.

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October 18, 2012 · 11:13 pm
October 18, 2012 · 8:38 am

New School Chronicles: My Albatross

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Papers, there are always papers to be graded (or at least schlepped around until I feel guilty enough to grade them)…

If you look closely at the picture that accompanies this post, you’ll see a couple of things: first, you’ll see a pumpkin that a friend brought me as a housewarming gift. You’ll see my red teacher bag, most likely filled with stuff that I can’t quite ever clean out, and you’ll see that blue reusable bag teeming with student papers to be graded.

Two things remain constant in that picture: first, my teacher bag seems to always have the same contents: a couple of folders that catch stray papers, handouts I want to amend, something left on the copier I forgot to file away, a half-finished book of some genre. The blue bag is similar in its consistency as well: it always has some handful of papers from students that I’m in-the-progress of grading. ALWAYS.

Here’s what happens: I assign a paper for the week or two-week period, we write hard and, because the kids are honors kids, they all turn in their papers. On time. Maximum length. That’s probably about 25 papers on average, per class. I have equal parts exhilaration and dread when it’s paper turn-in day. I’m stoked that I’m going to get some relatively decently written papers and I’m reticent because I then have about 1 1/2 weeks to turn them around. I binder clip the papers by class, then put them into the blue bag to bring home with me. When I get home, though, the bag goes on the chair, my sweater usually atop that, and then I start doing other things (like, I don’t know, LIVING). The next morning, as I’m rushing to get out of the door, I look at the bag again, sitting in the exact place where I left it, taunting me. As I sit on the subway, I always have a brief, intense conversation with myself about whether I should just start grading, but then, I get selfish and remind myself that I’ve promised that, for the 40ish minutes that I’m on the train, I will read whatever I want to, because that is my right as a reader and that is what I need in my life.

The papers don’t get graded. Repeat this cycle for about a week, of carrying the papers to and from school, of not removing said papers from the bag, of dodging student comments about when those papers will be returned.

Mind you, I’ve become an even more efficient grader over the last three years. A former colleague taught me how to notice themes and write these brilliant writing notes that address issues, but, in order to craft those writing notes, you first have to…wait for it…read the papers.

Finally I reach a point–usually after I am made to feel guilty by a student who never asks any questions but, on this particular day was “just wondering” when we were going to get our papers back because they wanted to work on improving their writing and something about feedback (good one; they know that if they ever couch their requests in such a way as writers improving their craft, I’ll attempt to move heaven and earth to make it happen), I cave.

I stay at school, pull out the papers and grade, and grade, and grade. Or at least read them, make notes, and occasionally get blown away by kids who are coming into their own by learning to write a compelling argument. I lay the albatross down momentarily, at least for another week, when the cycle begins anew.

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October 9, 2012 · 1:18 am

Re-Envisioning the Dinner Table

I was between places for about two weeks. It was an experience I found both unsettling (where to put my dogs, my stuff, my BOOKS?!) and freeing (once the dogs were in their favorite kennel, that left me copious time to loiter in book stores, see neglected friends, attempt to dig myself out of the mishegas that had somehow become my life). It was also during this time that some great friends offered me a place to stay. One of them was a teacher and we’d spend moments here and there throughout those weeks chatting about teaching. She teaches in the city, in an under-resourced school, and she’s amazing because she just gets it done. She does not allow the fact that they are poor, or second-language learners, or have a disability prevent her from teaching them to be great.

I often reflect on moving to the suburbs and now back into the city, the differences between the two places. Finally, in one of our conversations about Lisa Delpit and cultural capital and all that stuff that’s difficult yet critical to discuss, we hit upon it: Kids who are privileged–in whatever ways they are privileged–have incredible opportunities to sit around a dinner table and soak in knowledge. So it might not matter that something is “missed” in school in favor of test prep or remediation. A parent or someone is going to probably mention some fact, or concept, or build background information, fill in those gaps.

For many underserved kids, they don’t have those opportunities. This is not a pity party, so hold on. They have plenty of strengths, but–and I’m channeling Theresa Perry here–they don’t have someone/anyone systematically handing over knowledge and cultural capital in any consistent format.

About a week ago, I took up another friend on her offer to have dinner, the night after I’d moved into my new place (finally). Of course I took her up on that! We enjoyed this stick-to-your-ribs soup and then, the parents of another family that was there, too, asked their son about a quiz he had the next day.

The cities in Japan. They quizzed him. Then, because he couldn’t name all the cities, they printed out a map of Japan, labeled the cities with him, and then proceeded to come up with a creative mnemonic for him to remember on his quiz the next day.

I was in awe: it was exactly what I meant about the handing over of cultural capital AT THE DINNER TABLE.

I could not have scripted a better moment if I’d tried.

Now what if we re-envisioned the dinner table, took it out of our houses (for those that even have those things, and let’s be real–not all kids do) and brought it to places where kids could sit down and “eat,” as it were? What if we encouraged kids (and adults, too, most likely) to pull up a table and give them the nourishment that they need?

Classrooms can be such places, yes. Wherever these spaces crop up, shouldn’t we hand over the cultural capital in a way that allows them to walk in the world as more knowledgeable, more brilliant young people?

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September 27, 2012 · 10:00 am

Reading Junot Diaz (with Marvin in the Margins)

Drown always comes up as a book people often use in their classrooms. Kids love it, they say. That refrain, of kids loving it, is usually enough to garner at least one copy of said title in my classroom free reading collection, but I let Drown allude me. Two years ago, while combing through my department head’s binder, I found some stories from Drown with her meticulous notes and queries to push kids into and through the text, and thought that I’d use those stories in my Modern American Short Story unit.

So late to the party, I was.

The kids loved Junot. Rather, they loved the humor, the honesty, the heartbreak of the characters. When we read the New Yorker short story “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” we had an intense discussion about Oscar: fool or hero? Wasn’t dying for love admirable? (Many thought not. Oscar, they reasoned, was just a pitiful loser).

When I knew Diaz was releasing a new collection of short stories, I was more receptive (finally). I often half-listen to adults, but when young people talk, they generally have my full attention.

After being completely floored that my young Dominican students (particularly the boys) had NO IDEA who Junot Diaz was, and after I made several grandish claims (see earlier blog posts), I photocopied his short story “Ms. Lora” from another New Yorker where it ran that summer.

I was so anxious to finally read This is How You Lose Her that I ordered it on Amazon, was promptly struck with book buyer’s amnesia (it’s happened before), and purchased another copy in a local bookstore. (And maybe I was attempting to correct my book buying karma by keeping it local–sort of).

Then, I intentionally took the subway from one end to another, purposely scheduled a meeting and arrived an hour early so I could read and not be interrupted, so I could have the experience that kids have been having all along.

This experience of reading TIHYLH has been infuriating, comforting, endearing…makes me want to reread every page real slow because I don’t have something to read next that’s going to be as good.

I vacillate between wanting to punch Yunior in the face for being so callous with women to hoping to offer him a soft place to land for losing his brother to cancer. I want to shake the women who bide their time with men who see them when their “main women” are otherwise occupied. I want to take others by the hand and tell them to just hold on. It gets better.

I read so many pieces of text in my life that I think I lose my edge of actually feeling…thus, when I read something and it sucker punches me, I’m disoriented, gotta tell everyone about it, intentionally schedule reading time into classes so kids can read (but really so I can read, too).

What am I going to do with that extra copy? Well, I emailed that student who I had in class this summer and told him I’ve ended up with an extra copy of the book. Does he want it? Wait. First, I emailed him to ask if he knew the book was out and he said “Ha, way ahead of you Kim. This Is How You Lose Her, planning on getting it this week. Also, the short story Ms. Lora, was phenomenal. The Dominican culture in it is very similar to my own. I never knew I would ever find such things as the plastic covers on sofas being written about in a book! Hope all is well.”

I’ll make sure that extra copy gets delivered this weekend and follow up in a few weeks. I will listen more than I speak, simply content that a book and an author can create a text that we care about and will talk about for months to come.

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This is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz

Then, he’ll return the favor. “I’ll have a book for you by the summer comes,” he writes.

And he will.

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September 21, 2012 · 10:06 am

New School Chronicles: The Discourse of Teaching

At some point in Ph.D. school, I was in a class about discourse. My professor explained about one type of discourse in particular (and the exact title eludes me now, ugh) that one could be in a situation and learn the discourse, but, eventually, the truth would out. One might attempt to internalize the patterns of speech, of nonverbal communication that accompanied that speech, etc., but one day, that same person would find him/herself in a situation that required them to know the nuances of that discourse. Not knowing those finite details–which people who had grown up with because they had created the discourse–the “imposter” would be detected. Thus, one could swim in those waters but the possibility existed that they would one day be found out. I think that’s accurate–I’ve somehow lost all my notes, but these theories bubble up at the weirdest moments.

I bring that up because that’s what teaching in the suburbs felt like. I was out of step when I first began, but through careful observation, reflection and patience, I learned the discourse of teaching in a suburban school: how to talk about practice, how to lead discussions, how to do things differently than what I knew from an urban environment, essentially.

However, I never quite felt comfortable with that discourse. It never felt quite right, quite…me. I missed my more familiar discourse.

Now, in a different environment, I think the discourse is more appropriate to what I want, but now, there is nuance. So, while the discourse of this new place is familiar, I have opportunities to inflect that new knowledge from the suburbs.

I’m creating a hybrid discourse. This creation is both exhilarating and scary–but what I’ve realized about this process is that I’m not afraid to try it anymore. I used to be, so scared that I was going to mess up, not do something right…fraught with stress and tension.

Now, though, I’m much less hesitant to at least “dip my oar” into the waters and paddle. How interesting, too, it is to brush by familiar touchstones and carve out new ones within my practice, and to invite others to do the same.

There’s room for all, here, and because this is a hybrid discourse, I’m hoping to alleviate the fear that there’s a “right” way and a “wrong” way to do it.

We just gotta do it.

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September 21, 2012 · 9:54 am

Developing Professionally

Years ago, I received an award as a young teacher from my regional professional English teaching organization. After attending the conference to receive the award, I started attending yearly, got up the courage to present a few times, and eventually became part of the board as the chair for Urban Outreach.

Last weekend, we had a board retreat in Maine (which is beautiful this time of year). We’re in the process of ironing out workshops that are directly responsive to what teachers need, particularly in relation to understanding close reading in the age of the Common Core Standards (i.e., what it is and what it isn’t, and the various ways to do it).

In preparation for that decision, various board members have been demo-ing potential workshops. Two in particular were so informative, useful and…good, just good, that I had that moment of being in a time and place with master teachers who are generous with what they know. I felt so lucky. The thing is about master teachers is that I think they rarely will acknowledge they’re masters (because teaching is so darn humbling at every moment of the day), but when you’re watching them go about their business–and even when you’re listening to the sort of meta commentary they’re giving when they’re chatting before or after they present their workshop–you learn so much.

They are also honest: they speak about their frustrations, their challenges, some occasional victories, and they humanize teaching enough to make me feel confident enough to at least try what they’ve presented in my classroom of kids, and try it with enough confidence that I think what I do might have a shot of working. And if it doesn’t, that’s okay, too. They are there to listen, to suggest, to tweak, to encourage to try again.

Thus, this service to the profession has done a tremendous amount for my own professional growth. Since I’ve joined the board, I’ve benefitted from some true mentoring: about practice, about professionalism, about life.

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September 13, 2012 · 9:27 am

New School Chronicles: Capacity

John Updike wrote a poem called “Capacity,” a fantastic summary of 26 passengers on a bus. Among the descriptions include affable, bibulous, corpulent, garrulous, jejune, knockabout, querulous, rakish, xanthic, zebuesque. How incredible are those words? How much fun would it be to use those words to teach vocabulary and to have students come up with their own (positive) descriptions for the people on our own (classroom) bus? Aren’t we all passengers?

I got that idea about teaching that poem from a former colleague. I have been turning it around in my head how I might use it. I want to do a more intentional vocabulary study. I think we could take ownership of those words, study synonyms, modern usage, do some composing.

This poem also makes me think of who these passengers are on this bus that I attempt to steer this semester. I have adolescent and adult learners and on the very best days, I put the two in conversation with each other, as what is going on in my high school classroom directly informs what I do later that day by working with preservice teachers.

Of late, I’ve been trying to help the adolescents think of their capacity to learn, particularly as related to effective effort and grit. Essentially, smart is what you get by using specific strategies to improve. Intelligence is not fixed. The bell curve is wrong.

That’s a hard pill to swallow for some honors kids. And incredibly freeing for others. Seriously. As we were discussing growth vs. fixed mindsets, more kids would speak up, confirming being called smart by well-meaning adults and peers, feeling pressure to live up to their siblings’ accomplishments, thinking that one is “just born smart” and that it’s an indicator of unsmartness (my word) if you have to work hard. I can see how learning how to foster a growth mindset can mess kids up if they’ve always been told they were exceptional, that this rarefied air is reserved for only a few–what, the keys to the kingdom are that accesible?!

By the time I rolled around to the third period of teaching that lesson again, I was well prepared for their resistance, astonishment and some simmering anger. And then, they began to ask the questions that leads me to believe that these just might be the change-agents in this world we need them to be.

One student asked a question about IQ, which led to some uncertainty about even knowing what the test measured (it was originally used to identify people thought to be the best military leaders), that a few had taken it, that it asked “random facts.” Then, we somehow got onto talking about standardized tests, and another chimed in that the correlation between how well you di on the SAT was really about how much money you had. That response caused another to ask about the relationship between race, class and SAT scores (I couldn’t have made this up if I tried), which was answered by a student who had done that very research over the summer. That led us back around to an entirely innocent question posed by another student, about why we needed these tests in the first place?

And….bell.

Whoa. I was happy to have that moment to pause, wrap it up, tell them we’d continue the next day in the context of reading Carol Dweck’s Mindset and the article about grit by Jonah Lehrer, finishing with effective effort narratives. I want them to have some tangible reminder of times when working hard and working smart helped them achieve success. Well, that’s in my head about where I want to go. Wanting and doing are two very different things, but I think it’s an important use of our class time, these few days we’re spending on fostering a growth mindset. It sets the stage for the on-going conversations we’ll have about their growth over the term. When they can chart the point from where they started and the tangible growth (through a variety of measures, only one of which includes a grade, which I know is important, but I also stress that the grade is merely an indicator of where they are at that moment in time and, again, with effective effort, if they want to change that grade, we can work together to do just that), that means something.

That develops their capacity to be better students, and also develops my capacity to be a better teacher.

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