Not quite the end of the week

Paul and I had a good dinner last night, in every sense. Our project is calling to both of us, and I'm looking forward to putting more time into it soon. I'm very pointedly not thinking about how much there is to do; I just want to simply do, let the thing evolve organically, and then look back on it someday and think, "Wow, that was a shitload of work!"

But coming out of our conversation, I posted to the ASLE listserve today asking for "norming" samples of student work from four-year college profs, and I've already gotten a couple of responses (including an interesting and useful response from a colleague here: thank you, Emily). One woman wrote at some length but didn't provide a sample: she doesn't want to ask for electronic submissions because of the fear of viruses (like not wanting to shake the clammy hand of every student who comes into Advisement)--but her assertion that she graded two excellent papers last night without any sense of what made them so excellent is not very helpful to me. I need to see the student artifact, as well as hear the teacher's evaluation of it. One woman did send a sample paper--but said it was the best of a bunch and that "context matters," so I send a reply e-mail to ask if she "curves" grades, and what grade she gave the one she sent. I hope I get further information from them, as well as more offers of samples. I may not change a damned thing as a result of all this, but the data is useful to my thinking.

The department meeting today was useful, too: there was a panel of people including a junior high teacher (who is also one of our adjuncts), a high school teacher (ditto), a professor from another community college--and because I came in late, I missed the affiliation/credentials of the fourth presenter, but they were addressing the huge chasm between what happens in high school and what we expect in college. The information wasn't entirely new: after my year in a high school (as a liaison with another community college), and from what former students have reported about their experiences as teachers in public schools, I know how utterly shackled K-12 teachers are. What I didn't realize is just how awful the shackles themselves are. No wonder our students are so shocked and frustrated when they walk in our doors. A few random examples:

In New York State, in K-12, as long as a student has a note from a parent, "excusing" an absence, there is no limit to how many absences the student can rack up--and it is the teacher's responsibility to get the student caught up with missed work.

Teachers are not allowed to teach entire books; they can only teach passages.

When students fail at a test one year, they are put in special classes--but they are not taught the skill they failed at; they're taught what they'll need to know for the next test.

Students are encouraged to use cell phones in class: teachers are supposed to have lessons developed so they can project something electronically, have it in front of the students in the room but also available to students on their smart phones (as if that's what the students are doing with their phones while the lesson is going on).

Students have to write two "essays" for the comprehensive exam at the end of 11th grade. The first requires that they "provide a valid interpretation of the statement" and then "agree or disagree" (my emphasis), and the second requires that they show how an author uses a specific literary element.

As for that last, I realize that essentially, my students are diligently doing precisely what they've been taught to do--and it is precisely what I do NOT want them to do. No wonder there are train wrecks all over the place.

The solution, of course, is to get parents and college students involved in protesting wildly to the state board of education and the state legislature. A lot of the focus today was on getting the high schools and community colleges talking to each other--but (as one of the panelists pointed out) when teachers go to the legislature, even the board of ed, with concerns, the immediate assumption is that we don't want to be held accountable. Education is no longer being run by educators, and the whole system is getting progressively more destructive to actual learning. But as one of my colleagues pointed out, education is simply facing a destructive force that is becoming pervasive in our entire society, especially in this time of economic worry. Everything, everywhere, needs to be justified monetarily, and immediately: no "this will pay off in the long term," but "can you prove that it's worth the money right this second?"

People were talking about their "retirement moments": the moment when things got so fucking gawd-awful in the educational "system" that they threw up their hands and said, "That's it: I retire." Talk about brain drain. And that doesn't even address the senior teachers who are forced out so they can be replaced by inexperienced young teachers who come with a less-expensive price tag. Can I resign from Western civilization (so called)?

Wow, I need to do a significant reframing here, or I'm going to be too agitated and miserable to sleep.

OK: here's what's good. There is a serious movement here to start communicating with some of the local high school teachers--precisely as is being done SUNY-Adirondack, which is also a community college (the community college professor at today's panel is from Adirondack). And, in a "put your words where your worries are" policy, I'm planning to write an open letter for our campus newspaper about the issue, encouraging students to get rolling on this--especially NYPIRG (New York Public Interest Research Group, a student run public advocacy group). If I'm fired up enough about this to lose sleep, surely I can put that fire to use in writing something.

And, shifting gears entirely, except that I'm still thinking about what I'm fired up to write, here's something infinitely less maddening: I've been having a blast contributing commentary on poems to our Creative Writing Project's Poem a Day celebration of April as Poetry Month. I haven't seen daily poems, actually (only one so far), but the colleague who runs at least the web portion of the CWP has encouraged me to contribute as many commentaries (and the accompanying poems) as I like. I've already done two: Harjo's "Eagle Poem" and C. K. Williams' "Whacked." I also want to do Linda Hogan's "Map," and a poem--I can't remember the author's name--called "Story Problems," which I found in Orion magazine. And one that's hanging on my "bulletin board" (aka, my closet door) at home, author and title lost in the holes in my mind but reminiscent of Robinson Jeffers. And some Jeffers. And Mary Oliver. And probably James Wright's "A Blessing." And, and, and....

Ah, now that's fun to contemplate. I do have student work that I need to take care of this weekend (as I can no longer count on time in Advisement to get my marking done), but I'll be in the office for a little while tomorrow anyway: I'm coming in for a training session in the new online teaching platform (with an eye toward possibly creating online versions of some of the lit electives I like to teach--or even teaching some of the electives that already have online versions). I'll have some time between the end of that training session and when I have to leave for my riding lesson (the first in about five or six months), so I'll do what I can tomorrow and hope to have very little to bring home for Sunday.

But now I'm meeting a colleague for another dinner out, so I'll fling this post up and hustle on out of here. Or West-Coast Swing on out of here. Or something.