You Don't Know What You Don't Know

Five classes, all new to me, four different schools, in five different campuses. 74.5 miles between the two furthest. Twenty-two hours of driving a week. Fourteen weeks. 85 students. A bazillion essays. And I did it. I finished. I really did.

This past semester, Spring 2014, was one of the most challenging I have ever had, but also one of the most incredible. As a result of dedicating so much time to prep, classroom, and driving, I have not had a lot of time to do my own writing. Now that the semester has ended and all the grades are submitted, I have decided to take the time to reflect upon what I have learned from my students.

Lesson 1: Students Need to Know That Their Professor Cares

My most challenging class was a remedial college writing class. The class was difficult simply because it was remedial. The latest studies show that by college age, classroom instruction in grammar has very little impact, and I have used this as an excuse for years not to cover much grammar during lecture. Further, I rarely mark grammatical errors on my students’ essays because I save comments for the content. Too many comments written by the professor just frustrates students and they quit reading and do not take in any of the recommendations for improvements. However, this class needed grammar lessons.

I have heard that Tim O’Brien, author of the highly anthologized short story “The Things They Carried” does not move past the level of paragraph in his workshops, but this is because he goes in-depth. I did not move past the level of paragraph because my students did not know how to write a complete sentence. They needed to be told what the definition of a sentence is. The class did not even begin with essays, but with paragraphs. This is how you write a topic sentence. Make sure that every idea is connected. Etc, etc, etc. For the first month of their writing, if it wasn’t a sentence fragment, it was a run-on. What’s a fragment? I asked them. What’s a run-on? They had the same old grammar phobia that all students seem to have. What’s a noun? Give me an example. Find the verb in this sentence.

At first, I felt like I was completely out of my league. I was a tee ball player showing up at an NCAA practice for a big ten baseball team. And so, I did what I always do: I made them work harder. They were required to write weekly paragraphs, and each week, I made the print out the paragraphs, we marked them up together, they edited and reprinted. I would not accept them until they were virtually perfect. We read published texts and we examined the sentences. What is a verb? What is the verb in this sentence? What is the subject? What part of speech must a subject have? I had many rules for our classroom, but one of the most important was: I don’t know is not an answer. At first, every answer was a guess, and ended with a question mark. If it was correct, I asked why; if it was incorrect, I asked why.

Worse than the battle of knowledge and skill was their work ethic. They did not hand in work. They did not come to class. They did not do the reading. I tried to motivate them in every way that I could: praise when they did what they should, extra credit, gentle teasing, quizzes, pulpit speeches, stories of personal experience in which I worked very hard or failed myself because I did not work hard enough. And still, attendance was lousy. I cannot teach you if you’re not here, I said again and again. Come even if you don’t have the work. Come even if you’re late. I might give you a hard time, but I’m going to be glad that you are there. And so will you. I did everything except stand on my head and spit wooden nickels.

The last week, when I was collecting their paragraphs, one student looked very upset. “Wait,” she said, “aren’t you going to tell me what’s wrong with it?”

“No,” I told her, “it’s the last class. From here on out, it’s up to you.”

“Give mine back,” she said, and began to mark it up.

“Me, too,” a chorus of voices said, until I had handed back every paper. I smiled. It was the first suggestion that they actually cared.

On the last day of class before the final, we were reviewing an essay called “How to Make It in College Now That You’re Here” by Brian O’Keeney. One of my students, who hated to read out loud but grumblingly did so every class, read, “Many of us never did much studying in high school; most of the learning we did took place in the classroom. College, however, is a lot different. You’re really on your own when it comes to passing your courses. In fact, sometimes you’ll feel as if nobody cares if you make it or not.” She paused. “Boy, is that true.”

“Hey!” I objected. “Do you know how much intestinal distress and sleepless night y’all have caused me?”

“Well, you care,” she said. “And my study skills professor. But that’s it.”

“Is she right? Do you agree?”

“Yes,” they said, each naming one other professor who cared.

“The rest are just here to pick up a paycheck,” another girl said.

“If they’re here for the money, they’re definitely in the wrong place. Trust me, if I didn’t love teaching, I wouldn’t be here.” And of course, they wanted to know how much I was paid, and of course I did not tell them. But it struck me that all along, when I was trying so darned hard to get the best work out of them, to push them to just put in a bit more effort, they already were. They were giving me the absolute best that they knew how. Further, as I racked my brain on how I could encourage them, I’d already found the secret: they knew that I was invested in them and wanted them to succeed.

Old Reliable Got Me Through Another Semester

Part of me felt really good about what I had accomplished over the semester. But part of me also felt really sad. The effort that they had put in was the best that they could do. For whatever reason, be it personal, financial, or simply learned habits, they were not able to give any more. Perhaps worse was that these students felt uncared for by their professors. Maybe their professors did care, but did not know how to show it. But some of them might just be checked out. And if that’s where you are at, you should not be teaching.

When I read the finals from the class, all of the students had made progress. There were significantly more grammatically correct sentences than on the first-day writing sample. Many more were on topic and able to develop a single idea and argument. I had taken a few pictures of them on my phone on the day when they were complaining about the lack of love from professors. I had taken the pictures because I knew that I would miss them.