Category: Teaching

I’m a teacher, and that’s scary, in that I have more influence over the minds of youth than your average bear. Not as much influence as, let’s say, Jay-Z and Beyonce. Let’s keep it real.

This is Only a Test

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Everything is a test.

No, seriously.  There are no exceptions.  If you’re not testing yourself, you’re being tested by your peers, and if you’re not being tested by your peers, then you’re being tested by your kid, and if you’re not being tested by your kid, then you’re being tested by THE UNIVERSE.  But here, today, specifically, I’m talking about academic testing, and to be ultra-specific, I’m talking about academic testing in public schools.

America has lost its mind over testing.  The education system is so twisted up in knots over the issue, it’s like a drunken octopus having a bar brawl with another octopus, except that the other octopus is just the first octopus’s own back arms.  There’s no way to tell if he’s winning or losing, it’s just flailing and drowning and sucker-arms and ink.  Is that squids?  That’s squids.  Okay, it’s like a squid…

With one hand, they (politicians and boards of education) tell us (actual educators) that it’s not supposed to be all about the test.  That the test is secondary, that there are other, better ways to assess what students have actually learned.  (What are those ways?  Hem, haw, well, that’s, you know, we don’t know.  Performance assessment?  You can grade those fairly, right?  RIGHT?)  With the other, they shut down schools for weeks at a time to do what?  Oh yeah, assess student learning in the only way that really makes sense, the only way you can really measure it.  TEST.

But we’re not supposed to teach to the test.  No, no.  Teaching to the test is teaching in a vacuum.  Bad, bad.  Connect what you’re teaching to the real world.  But is that on the test?  NOPE.  Because you can’t test that.  Not efficiently.  So we go around in circles not unlike a tremendous deuce circling the drain.  Teach this, not this.  Here’s the test, but ignore it.  Whatever.  I don’t have the answers to the problems of this testing issue, and I won’t pretend to.  What I will do is share with you some testing-related absurdities.

It’s no wonder students freak the fargo out when it’s time to test.  It’s not uncommon for schools to have counselors on standby in case some kid has a total nervous breakdown.  Like just shutting down and refusing to pick up a pencil.  Or throwing a desk.  Or staging a potato salad riot in the cafeteria.  That didn’t happen?  Okay, but the first thing definitely happens.

Other things happen, too.  Here are a few things which have happened in my school over the past week of End of Course Testing.  All of these things require a full written account by the testing administrator to justify after-the-fact corrections to an answer sheet and, in some cases, a rescheduled testing session for the student in question.

1.  A student nearly came to blows with a teacher trying to confiscate his phone in accordance with testing rules.  The student would later claim he “didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to have it” despite signs on every door in the building, a verbal admonition at the beginning of every testing session, a warning on the morning announcements, and general goldfingered common sense.

2.  Numerous students (like, too many to count) misspelled the name of the school.  And, I’m sorry, our school does not have a funky name.

3.  A student misspelled his own name.  I am not making this up.  (By the way, is it bad that as an English teacher I had to look up how to spell “misspell”?  I think that’s bad.  It’s also ironic.)

4.  A student fell asleep and drooled all over his answer sheet.  (This, apparently, happens all the time.)

5.  A teacher fell asleep and was therefore unable to call time at the end of the session, thus negating an entire classroom’s testing session.  (Okay, that wasn’t my school, but holy sharknado.)

*Heavy exhale*  It’s not my goal to be a dumper.  I really try to find positives and find productive ways forward, but this whole squid-octopus bar-brawl clusterfargo over testing is so asgard-end-up that it’s impossible for a guy like me to see any kind of light at the end of any sort of tunnel.  We are deep underground, running out of air, and at times it feels like it’s time to call off the search.  Don’t even get me started on a Common Core debate.

Aaand this is the part where I realize I’ve lost what little audience I have.  Too many education-related posts on my non-education-themed blarg and I’ve burned the souffle.  Or the souffle went rogue and attacked the chef with a blowtorch.  Don’t fargo with souffles.

FINAL THOUGHT: Testing is like a butthole.  It stinks.

No, that’s it.  You were expecting something more eloquent?

Don’t worry, next post won’t be about work stuff.  It’ll be about… I dunno.  Space unicorns.

15 Tips for Writing an Actual Graduation Speech that Actually Doesn’t Suck

Pavowski1 Comment

Remember you're unique, just like everybody else.
Remember you’re unique, just like everybody else.

In a surprising twist yesterday, the little blarg here got a handful of hits from, presumably, high school students looking for ways to write a graduation speech.  Oh, dear.  They stumbled into my lair, hoping for advice, only to find me talking all about ME.  I cackled.  I chortled.  I guffawed.  But then I thought.  Wait a minute.  I’m a teacher.  There are students out there looking for help.  My tiny little minuscule platform, for better or worse, was a source they came to in search of that help.  Am I not obligated, then, to provide some measure of that help?

I thought some more.  Obligated?  Perhaps not.  But it could be fun, and it might even help some of them (henceforth, some of YOU) out.  MAYBE I could actually provide a service.

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How About a Graduation Speech that Doesn’t Suck?

Pavowski5 Comments

One of my students came to me for help writing a speech today.  She’s in the running to be one of the speakers at graduation and wanted my help in ironing out some of the details.

She’d written … not a bad speech, but a boring one.  It bespoke the regular regurgitated platitudes of high school: these are the first days of the rest of our life, the things which seem so important now are really very small in the scheme of things, limitless potential, blah blah blah.  Nothing wrong with it, but nothing particularly right, either.  I asked her what her goal was in this speech:  why did she want to give it, rather than let one of her classmates give it?  Why did she feel it was a speech worth giving?

She responded by saying that she wanted to write something people would enjoy.  HMM WHERE HAVE I HEARD THAT, OH WAIT, THAT’S MY GOAL.  She said that she wanted to write something that her classmates could relate to. YEP THAT’S ME TOO.  It didn’t occur to me at the time but in retrospect, by which I mean a few minutes after she left the classroom, it struck me that her fears are the same as my own.  She wanted to write a speech with broad-based appeal, and it was falling flat.  She wanted to be inclusive to everybody, and ended up sounding placating and boring.  She wanted a speech that would be memorable, but had written something utterly forgettable.

Where had she gone wrong?  I dutifully examined the speech with her, taking it line by line and thinking of ways to strengthen this sentence, simplify that idea, and all that stuff.  But the underlying problem, the one that I couldn’t point to and say, “here’s where you screwed up,” was the absence of heart.  She was so focused on getting her audience to connect with the speech that she had forgotten to write something she could connect with.  As a result, and not surprisingly in the least, her words were bland, disjointed, and uninteresting.

What to do?  When words give you trouble, you bust out the WordHammer. Go for the jugular.  Write what’s real and immediate and bloody and visceral.  Throw judgment out the window, kick doubt right in its asgard, and write some TRUTH.

The theme of the speech is time?  I shared with her a paradox which baffles me every day.  The days are so long, but the years are so short.  Every day it feels like there are so many hours to fill.  There’s time to go for a run.  There’s time to go to work.  There’s time to do a bit of writing.  Cook dinner.  Play with my kid.  Relax with my wife.  Watch some TV.  Read a few chapters.  Do some laundry.  So much time.  And yet, it feels like my high school’s 10-year reunion (such as it was) was just a few short weeks ago.  (Spoiler alert, it was five years ago.)  For that matter, it feels like I was in high school just a few years ago.  (Spoiler alert, it was MORE THAN five years ago.)  My son is two, running circles around me in the yard and counting to ten and happily calling out the color of every object in the house, but it feels like just last month he was a newborn, red-faced and squalling and unable to even roll over on his back without help.  I told her those things and reminded her that the days are long but the years are short, then I asked her why she suddenly seemed enraptured.

“I just hadn’t considered your life before.”

It’s indicative of the human condition, I think, that we turn inward.  That we focus on the immediate, that we focus on ourselves.  But it’s that very tendency that limits us as storytellers.  It’s a bizarre paradox.  To tell the best story to the widest audience, we have to make it accessible and real.  But to make it accessible and real, we have to forget about appealing to the audience and share the gooey, tasty bits of ourselves that we never think to tell about.  Try too hard to appeal and the story sounds forced, awkward, and hollow; tell a personal and nuanced tale and suddenly readers you don’t even know can relate.

You know that old adage about the student becoming the teacher?  The other half of the equation is that the teacher sometimes becomes the student.

Things I learned:

1.  Know what you want to say.  My student was so preoccupied with giving a good speech that she hadn’t bothered to determine whether she was delivering a message worth sharing.  The message matters.  In a lot of ways, it’s all that matters.

2.  Focus on the story before you focus on the audience.  The story has to come first.  After you know the story, then you can fine-tune the words and the metaphors and the way you tell it to your specific audience.  But if the story sucks, no amount of turd-polishing or clever wordplay will make it not suck.

So she left feeling better about her speech (I think) and I got back to work on my story with perhaps a bit more clarity and confidence.  Twelve hundred words today, and I think they tell a pretty good story.

By the way, I’m not sure if it’s a bastardization of a better known aphorism or what, but I first heard “the days are so long, but the years are so short” a few years back from my dad, and it proves more and more true every long day and short year.  Thanks, dad, for helping me to see something I hadn’t before.  (ALSO, SEE, I DO LISTEN.)

I wish I had had a teacher like me in High School, I’d have thought I was hilarious

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It’s the end of the year for teachers and students.  Inevitably, irrevocably, ineluctably (whatever that means, I just wanted another “i” word [okay I just looked it up; basically it means the same as inevitable, GOD English is a silly and redundant language, I feel silly and cheated but also my vocabulary has increased by 1 so yay]), things are spinning down and wrapping up.

We’re all tired, kids and adults alike.  Summertime ennui is creeping in at the edges of our vision and it’s becoming plain that, soon, there will be nothing to fill our long days but the sound of our own thoughts and the hum of crickets in the night.  And the screaming of children.  Don’t forget the screaming of children.  (That’s mostly for the adults.)

It’s creeping in at work, too.  Things are so nearly finished that it’s hard to put the same zeal into creating assignments and leading lectures and discussions.  That’s the challenge, of course, and the job, no doubt, but some days it’s easier than others.

In creating the last project grade for the year, (I wanted to make it easy in the interest of giving my students an opportunity to improve their grades before the final, but I also want them to know that I KNOW it’s easy and that they should feel silly if they don’t do it) I found traces of my Pavorisms voice creeping in.  I felt it, and I went with it.  Then I went back and rejiggered the whole assignment so that it would have a bit more flair.  It just felt right.  And it feels like it belongs here.  In fact, I think I may start presenting all of my assignments this way.  (In this voice, I mean.  Not here at the blarg.  I’d like to keep my handful of readers.)

So here it is, copy-and-pasted for your pleasure.  The better bits are toward the end.  Enjoy, and if you have any questions, see me after class.  I’ll be in the parking lot, headed for a barbecue.

For the record, I teach Seniors.  And yes, I’m giving them this assignment, pretty much as you see it here.

 

 

End of the Year Macbeth Project

  • Yep, there’s a project.  Yep, it’s a bit involved.  But don’t worry, IT’S EASY.  As long as you’re not a slacker.  This project is presented as a dialogue between you (in italics) and me (in the bullet points).  This line is me speaking.  The next line is you.

Why would you give us a project NOW?  You stink, Mr. P.

  • I know.  But one day you’ll appreciate the fact that I made you think about this story, and that I didn’t let you take the easy way out, and that I reached into your brain and pulled from its squishy depths the kind of thinking that…

All right, all right.  FINE.  What do we have to do?

  • Select and Illuminate 4 key moments from the text.
  • Explain in a paragraph of 5 sentences or more how each of your illuminations exemplifies both the plot (what’s happened) and the mood/theme of the text (the feeling).  (That means 4 paragraphs, y’all.  One for each illumination.)
  • Why explain?  Just because YOU think it’s obvious DOESN’T MEAN it’s obvious to EVERYBODY.  And don’t say “I drew him like this because he’s crazy.”  You can do better.

What do you mean “Illuminate”?

  • It means you’re going to create something that sheds light on the text (the story, the characters, etc.).

Okay, so what should each illumination look like?

  • I’m glad you asked!  Each illumination should have its own page (or slide, or square, or whatever) in a clear Moment -> Illumination -> Explanation format.  Say you do some art!
  • —  Moment: Act 2, Scene 1: Macbeth sees the ghostly dagger.
  • —  Insert your own Illustration!
  • —  Explanation: We drew Macbeth mostly in shadow because his thoughts are turning dark in this moment.  The hallway is bare and foreboding, symbolizing his decent into evil… (extrapolate to your heart’s content, but make sure your heart’s content is five sentences at minimum.)

How can we present our ideas?? We are delicate snowflakes, each unique and wonderful!

  • —  Yes, and you are all delightful.  Be creative.  Here are some ideas:
  • —  Soundtrack (choose songs to suit your moments)
  • —  Storyboard / Illustrations (illustrate a scene or key moment)
  • —  Original raps / poems (write something that sums up the moment or one character’s take on it)
  • —  Maps of key locations (use details from the text)
  • —  Character Biographies (again, be specific and text-based)
  • —  Artifacts (for example, the dagger they use to kill the king – just make them school safe)
  • —  Family crests (what images would symbolize the characters?)
  • —  See me if you have another idea – I will probably say it’s okay!
  • —  UNLESS YOU ASK IF YOU CAN USE IMAGES FROM THE INTERNET.  NO INTERNET IMAGE COLLAGES – THAT’S LAZY

But how will we be graded?

  • —  An EXCELLENT project (A-B) will show lots of detail, color, neatness, and evidence of thought, because you care about your work.  It might even be typed, or even (be still, my heart) run through a spell-checker.  Your explanation will be grounded in the text with CITATIONS (the knife is covered in blood because in II, i, 46 Macbeth says “on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood”).
  • —  A PASSABLE project (B-C) will show some detail and evidence of thought.  It will be reasonably neat because you worked reasonably studiously on it.  Explanations will be grounded in the text, but you will forget to cite your specific textual connection, because, really, who wants an “A” anyway?
  • —  A CRAPPY project (read: failing) will show little detail or evidence of thought.  It looks rushed and messy because you put off working on it and then rushed to finish it at the last minute.  It will not bear much connection to the text because there is not time to do your work properly when you rush it.  You will turn in a crappy project because you are either passing so strongly that one bad grade won’t hurt you, or you’ve been failing since September and you just don’t care.
  • —  By the way, don’t turn in a crappy project.

Why should we bother?  I mean, the year is basically over, right?

  • —  Well, who knows?  MAYBE this assignment will be worth so many points, Mr. P feels ashamed even talking about it.
  • —  MAYBE it will give you the chance to eke out a few more points before the final coming up soon (Oh, by the way, your final is worth 20% of your overall grade, can your grade survive that?  NO?  Then think of this assignment as a few extra pillows at the bottom of the Grand Canyon you’re jumping into.)
  • —  MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, if your project is extra-awesome, you can earn some extra credit points.  MAYBE.
  • —  I am obligated by my conscience to tell you that you can substitute the word “Definitely” for the word “Maybe” above.

Fine, we’ll do it.  But when is it due?

  • —  Even classes: May 6
  • —  Odd classes: May 7

Holy crap, that’s a lot of time!

  • —  Yes, it is, so you have no reason NOT to finish it and turn in something awesome!

Will you accept it late?

  • Yes.  BUT.  (There is always a but, just like there is always a butt.)  The closer to the end of the year you turn it in (the last day for grades being May 16th) the less likely I am to get around to grading it.  I can’t help it, I’m lazy.  Make my job easier if you don’t want to sweat it.  Get it done on time.

Do I have to do this alone?

  • —  Heck no; I don’t want to grade that many projects.
  • —  Grab three of your closest friends (well, don’t grab them, you know what I mean) and knock this thing out together.  Maybe you’ll learn something about each other as you work toward a common goal.  Maybe there will be a sappy soundtrack played in the background as you work.  Maybe you’ll have cake when you’re finished.  (Don’t bring cake to my classroom.)

But what if my friends are lazy?

  • —  BETTER YET, grab the smartest people who will work with you and make NEW FRIENDS.  Nobody smart will work with you?  WORK ALONE.  Better you do a decent project alone than a crappy project with the kids who will be here next year.

What should we do with the extra blank space on this paper?

  • I don’t know.  Smart money says use it to make some notes!  Or doodle a spaceship hauling a cow into deep space.  Or cover it entirely with penguin stickers.  The world is your oyster!

You’re weird, Mr. P.

  • Sorry, I didn’t hear you.  I was busy jumping in my spaceship so that I can haul this cow into deep space.  (I’m making Astro-Burgers.)

 

 

 

 

 

Yup, Summer’s here soon.

Tone it Down (Pun intended, but I regret it now)

Pavowski2 Comments

I’m struggling a lot with tone today.  No, not my shower- or car-singing (always pitch-perfect, thanks very much).  That is, the way I’m saying the things I’m trying to say.  Or maybe it’s a struggle with voice.  The two are interrelated but not interchangeable, which is irritating in practice and maddening to try to teach.  Point is, the howler monkey of doubt is all up in my business about the words I used today and I can’t shut him up.

Accidentally Inspired is a whimsical kind of story about a whimsical kind of guy in a whimsical kind of situation. (See, that sentence right there is the kind of thing I’m talking about.) The story itself is playful and fun, so it needs to be told (correction, it BEGS to be told) in a playful, at times ridiculous kind of way.  BUT (There is always a butt, and there is also always a but).  The rules of proper writing, and good writing, and especially of intelligent and, probably, consumable writing, dictate that playful, whimsical, overworded writing gets treated with an axe rather than a razor.  When I go through and edit, I’ll be cutting off limbs, not whiskers.

But I love my playful, too-verbose tone, the Id-Writer protests, it works for the story and it works for me and I LIKE It GOLDFINGER IT DON’T MAKE ME CHANGE IT.  And I’m at war with myself, because on a lot of levels, I agree with him.  However, the Id-Writer and the ego-writer will eventually have to sit down and share a conversation, and I’m afraid that when they do, I’ll need to hire a cleaning crew to get the blood off the walls.  The ego-writer wants the book to be read, and to be accessible to everybody, and for people to love the story and the way that I tell it, but the Id-Writer only wants to tell the best fargoing story in the best fargoing way I know how to tell it.  The Id-Writer swears a lot more, and is (probably) more likely to bludgeon the Ego-Writer with a keyboard or a hammer or in fact anything else that may be handy, including my own precious pseudoganglia.  Are there pseudoganglia in the brain?  I don’t know, I don’t do Science (see below).

The more I think about it, the more it dawns on me that this is probably a problem (a probable problem, whee) best left for Future Me to deal with, not that Past Me and Present Me aren’t adding to the steaming pile that is (will be) is inbox on the daily.  Nonetheless, it’s bothering me now, and if it’s bothering me now, it’s gonna end up on the blarg, and here it is.

So how do I deal with voice and tone in the here and now?  I have no fargoing idea.  I hate to cop out, least of all on myself, but I really am at a loss as to how to fix this problem.  The tone of a story isn’t just window dressing.  It’s an integral part, a functioning limb in the Rube-Goldberg machine that is story.  The story-bone’s connected to the tone-bone.  (ahuh, huh.  I said tone-bone.)  Change the tone and you change the story.  The Tell-Tale Heart, if told in a humorous fashion, could very well be a humorous story.  Take the rhyme and meter out of Doctor Seuss and you’re left with a sharknado-ey yarn about a couple of bored kids and an asgard-hole of a cat and his two asgard-hole pets.

I guess that for lack of a better idea I’m just going to have to do with this problem what I do with 98 percent of other problems that have cropped up while writing this thing, which is make a note of it (see this blog entry), chuck it in Future Me’s landfill of an inbox, and allow my Id-Writer to toss back another creative beverage, press on writing, then run screaming madly into the night, leaving a trail of ink-blood and rent pages in his wake.

Say what you will, but that guy knows how to party.

If you’re reading this, help (Future) Me out.  Any thoughts on how to clean up my tone and get all my overstatements under control without totally changing the feel of my piece?

(Sidenote).  On the topic of I don’t do Science:

This weekend, while sharing dinner with my family, my engineer sister related a question from a very difficult engineer’s exam that she has just taken (results pending, but considering her average level of achievement, I imagine they’ll not only pass her but ask her to write the next version of the test).  I’ll do my best.  Say you have to replace 100 light bulbs in an apartment building.  Each bulb has a 1 percent chance to be faulty before it’s plugged in.  Say you take a random sample of five bulbs.  What is the likelihood that the bulb you chose will be faulty?  (I fully own that I may be remembering the question wrongly in order to make my answer seem righter.  Sorry, sis.)

Easy, right?  1 percent means one in one hundred.  Five bulbs means five one-in-one-hundred shots, which is to say five-in-one-hundred, which is to say one in twenty, which is to say, FIVE PERCENT.  This math I did in my head quickly before announcing my findings to the table.

My dad, a math teacher, just shook his head.  My sister, the engineer, did the same, and then said, “That’s cute,” before sharing a laugh with my dear, loving wife.  (NOT THAT SHE KNOWS MATH EITHER.)  Hear me now, and believe me later.  You don’t tell a thirty-year-old man that he’s cute.  That’s a good way to get a dirty look and a sternly-worded blarg post written about you.  If said thirty-year-old man does or says something that is so oversimplified and ridiculous that it doesn’t make sense to explain to him how he’s wrong (I’m not saying this is ME, okay, I’m just SAYING), the way to handle it is by nodding politely at him and telling him yes, not only is that correct, but you’ve brought a new level of simplicity to what I wrongly assumed was a very complicated problem.

Take that, sis.  You may be smarter at every turn (including the turns I haven’t thought of yet, because you took Calculus in college while I took creative writing) but you’ve now been lambasted in the immortal turns of the internet.  LAMBASTED I SAY.